As noted in my most recent blog post before this one, I brought my 360 with me to work for the express purpose of marathoning through Too Human. It's a game that I'd been following for years, and as someone who liked Silicon Knights' previous efforts (specifically Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness), I just wanted to play the damn game. Even with all the mixed press and the controversy surrounding it, I still want to experience what Denis Dyack has been working on for the last 3 - 4 years.

Sticking to my policy of trying my damnedest to spend no more than $50 for a game (before taxes), I traded in my dust-collecting copy of Resistance: Fall of Man. It was packed in with my PS3 when I got it via eBay, I played it for 2 hours, didn't like it, and never took it out again. After using my EB Edge card, the grand total for TH came out to $43. I did text the_antipode in jest that I should have bought Kung Fu Panda as well, just to test Pereira's complaint. The more and more I think about it, I might actually go out and rent (but not buy!) KFP. Other Austin commented in my blog that it was actually tolerable, and that encourages me.

Of course, any conclusion I would draw out of this would be moot. I wouldn't be doing this to validate or invalidate Gamespot's scoring system or anyone's reviews on either TH or KFP. I wouldn't be doing this to shove a comment in Kevin Pereira's face. I'd just be doing this for ****s and giggles. Think of it as an achievement -- something you wouldn't normally do unless it was mentioned somewhere. Would you really go for 10,000 kills consciously if CliffyB didn't stick that Achievement in the game? I wouldn't have done this for any reason other than Pereira brought it up, and to me it sounded like something fun to do just for the hell of it.

I'm really liking Titan Quest so far (I promise this relates to Too Human). It's making me realize that it wasn't the excessive clicking that turned me off of Diablo (well, actually it was...) but moreso the randomly-generated environments that ended up somehow looking generic to me, as well as the progression model. In the original Diablo, all I did was go from town to the dungeon and back again. I didn't feel as if I was exploring a world, which -- for me -- is an important part of role-playing gameplay. That the randomized scenery looked largely the same and almost plain was another factor -- it's the same thing that drags down my otherwise intense experiences with roguelikes (Shiren The Wanderer, Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon). I know, I know, the loot and monsters were awesome, and that's why I stuck with the game -- but in the end, my brain just didn't appreciate the experience. I wasn't enjoying myself. Had I stuck with Diablo II a bit more, I might have liked it, since it gives you different lands as you progress through the chapters, but it just reminded me too much of the original.

With Titan Quest being modeled after a different mythology and in a totally different environment, I'm not as easily reminded of the "ugh" experience with Diablo. The gameplay is, at its core, almost identical; click and hold on monster 'til the lifebar disappears. But there's a sense of progress here that I didn't feel with Diablo, as I move from Greek city to Greek city. The story isn't terribly interesting, which is fine -- all I care about is jacking fools for their loot. The ability to choose two skill masteries instead of following just one path is great, too, and I'm really digging this mace I picked up that poisons every enemy on contact. Is the combat any better? Like I said, at its core it's almost identical to Diablo, which means that it's not all that satisfying since you don't really DO much. But the end result -- the dropped loot -- is what's entertaining about it. And these guys drop LOTS of loot, most of it useless, but still so tempting just because it's... lying there. So you really get the feeling of, wow, look at all of this stuff I *could* collect if I wanted to, and so when something special drops, you really feel that it's special. I don't play RPGs to feel like a badass -- I play them to explore, collect, and develop.

It's the same reason why I'm not deterred from Too Human's combat, even though I found the combat in the demo to be unfulfilling. Pushing and holding the analog stick does nothing for me, no matter how many 2378-hit combos you can do -- but knowing that at the end of this swarm of enemies comes another opportunity to upgrade Baldur, either by equipment or skill points, is what makes it all enjoyable. I just hope I fall on the side of people who aren't annoyed by the claim that too much special loot makes it not feel special. I've not yet played a loot RPG where they give you too much good stuff, so I don't know how I'll feel about that yet.

EDIT: I should probably start a betting pool to see if anyone wants to guess whether or not I'll even actually be able to play the game at all this week, thanks to my job. Who wants to bet that I'll actually go onto my own time before 9PM at all this week? Step right up!

For the first time ever, I'm taking my Xbox 360 with me to work. It's been something many of my friends have suggested I do, ever since I participated Zaps' Guitar Hero League union (now rebranded the Rock Heroes Union, run by GabuEx). This came about because I had to bow out of a semi-finals round on account of it taking place during the week, when I was not at home with my 360.

What's the big deal about lugging it around? Well, when I fly to work, I want to be in and out of the airport as quickly as possible. I don't want to check my luggage; in fact, I've had a few bad experiences with lost luggage (once when visiting my sister when she was living in San Francisco, and once when visiting Taiwan and subsequently had to buy a week's worth of cheap faux-brand shorts and shirts - Hike is NOT the same as Nike, believe me). So, whenever I can drag my luggage on-board, I do it. Whenever it's *just* too big to fit in the compartment, I gate-check it so that I can receive it right there as the nice luggage thrower puts it right in the walkway attached to the plane. No waiting for it at the claim and wondering if a thrower put it on the wrong belt, lost it altogether, or ate the entire thing.

Putting my 360 in my luggage would cause two great inconveniences:

1) During security check-in, I'd have to unwrap it out of whatever shirt(s) I'm using to cushion it, place it in the bin, and then re-wrap it and put it in my luggage. The amount of time taken and annoyance caused was not worth the hassle. Plus, that's just another electronic device that the friendly security people might find mysterious residue on. No, it's not what you think, perverts. They swab devices for chemicals used in explosives or something or other. Hell, don't ask me, I don't know. I'm going back to my trailer...

2) I'd barely have enough space to put everything I needed for the week. It was either take the 360 and it's overly large power adapter, or take the numerous t-shirts I needed for playing basketball and working out at the hotel gym.

The first inconvenience is greater than the second. Naturally, this is why I can take the monster with me this week. I'm taking a train to Harrisburg, PA where I go about 50% of the time for this project. Now, I've been doing this for the past few weeks, but in addition it also dawned on me that I'm just coming off of a mysterious ankle sprain. I did not visit the gym the entirety of last week and instead resorted to doing sit-ups and push-ups in the room, which didn't generate that funny bodily fluid most people call sweat. Hence the need for a gym t-shirt every day diminished, as did the need for my oafishly large basketball sneakers.

So, out went the T-shirts and big kicks, and in went the 360 and its monstrous power adapter. No need to take it out for security checks since there would be none for the train; no need to stress about whether or not I'd make it on time. (I'm notorious -- to myself -- for making it to the gate barely 3 minutes before boarding. Hey -- I'm not a morning person, and these flights are at 7AM. Give me a break.)

With this decision made, I decided to run out and buy Too Human. Part of me half-jokingly wanted to buy Kung Fu Panda, just for kicks, to see if that would satisfy Mr. Pereira, but my brain decided to not deactivate for once and prevented me from making that decision. So now Too Human sits in my CD booklet, waiting to be unleashed on the blurry, SD television that awaits in my hotel room. I also brought Blue Dragon with me since, you know, I can play that and edit the podcast simultaneously (Mark MacDonald apparently played another game or read a book while playing Blue Dragon).

If anyone wants to send me a copy of Kung Fu Panda, feel free. (...riiiight...)

Back when I was a wannabe writer looking to get my work in somewhere, and even today when I'm a wannabe writer lucky enough to have my work posted on this very site, there were many people I admired in games criticism/journalism. Today, one of those people has described his decision to pass from 17 years of working at Ziff Davis to working on The Sims. Jeff Green is leaving 1up, where he integrated himself after seeing GFW Magazine shut down, and he's leaving behind a giant hole.

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8865013&publicUserId=5380367

Greg Kasavin, Dan Hsu, Alex Navarro, Mark MacDonald, Crispin Boyer -- these are all names I followed that have since disappeared into the void, some turning up on the other side in product development as Green will -- and others... who knows. In any case, I wish the best for Mr. Green.

*I would have mentioned the other GSers who left and are now building a Giant Bomb, but they didn't leave the industry -- just this site.

EDIT: Forgot to say when. We record, as usual, on Saturday, starting 11:30AM EST. Get yer entries in before then.

We have our regular news bucket going on for the Trigames.NET Podcast, but I thought it'd be nice to do a little throwback to the listener appreciation day episode we had a while back and ask what topics you guys want to hear us talk about. Bear in mind that we don't always get a chance to play the latest games, so "what do you think about [game name]" is probably not going to get a lot of airtime but anything else should be fine -- current industry topics, retro topics, trends, et cetera. Send your topic ideas to the usual spot -- mailbag AT trigames DOT net -- and we'll try to cover as many as possible. If you have a topic that is so engrossing that we take most of the episode, we'll name the episode after you :)

AGAIN -- mail the topic to mailbag AT trigames DOT net please. We do not guarantee that we'll see -- and thus, read on-air -- anything that is posted anywhere else.

You can find Episode 104 here.

...mn near 3 hours long. I don't know how we got there. Anyway, within an hour of this post, the episode should be uploaded while I fall asleep for the night. The RSS will be updated tomorrow evening, so all you MP3 device syncers, you'll have to wait. So sorry.

In the meantime, read this!

Also watch this! It's like old times ;_; ...but with more cussing.

*As suggested by dannyodwyer, I've marked this as an editorial. (Can't wait for my past transgressions to come back and bite me in the butt... *cringe*)

If you listen to The Hotspot, watch G4's web content (or read Kevin Pereira's personal blog), listen to the Giant Bombcast and/or listen to IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, you might already have an inkling as to what this might be about.

For the rest of you, here be the skinny: On top of all the controversy Denis Dyack has caused for his game, Too Human, now game reviewers are getting into the midst of things. G4's Kevin Pereira has called out Kevin Van Ord's Too Human review. Then, as I was listening to the latest episode of IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, I heard Matt Casamassina saying that any critic out there who had given the game a middling score -- C's, 5/10's, et cetera -- had "no business reviewing games" and were "obviously reviewing the company, not the game."

Before I go on with my thoughts on this, let me disclaim now that, in the past, I once had this feature on Trigames.NET called "The Callout" in which I'd literally call out someone whose review I thought stunk -- and explain why. This was childish and stupid, and I stopped it after the second edition. (However, I've kept it up on the site as a reminder of the mistakes I've made in the past. If you want to see me at my very worst, feel free to search for it. I'm embarrassed, to say the least, and I'd definitely put this way below my Halo review on Trigames, my Final Fantasy VIII reader review on RPGamer, and my scathing forum defense of my Breath of Fire II Gamespot review on the "how low can you go" scale.)

With regards to Pereira's callout, I think Van Ord himself sums my thoughts up pretty nicely in saying that a little professional courtesy would have been nice. Why not start a dialog, instead of just throwing up your hands and saying, "That's bull. I gotta respond"? Kevin Van Ord is not a fanboy on a forum, using the veil of anonymity as a confidence booster to say whatever he wants about a game through text. Kevin Van Ord -- whether you agree with his views or not, whether you enjoy his writing or not -- is a professional game critic who holds himself completely accountable for what he writes. As such, I think Kevin Pereira -- a fellow critic -- should have treated him as such, reached out to him, and said, "Hey, I disagree with you, but I'd definitely like to discuss this further. And hey -- it'd make for a pretty interesting video feature, don't you think?"

It goes beyond that, though. If you're going to lambast a fellow critic on his own opinion / views, I'd think it would behoove you to give it some clear, articulate thought. Now, I know this is on KP's personal blog, I know he disclaimed that it was a rambly mess, and I can understand and appreciate that; he, too, should be allowed to voice his opinion in a manner he pleases. It's just that as a professional critic / game journalist, it doesn't look very good for your own official critiques -- in terms of perserving your integrity with your audience -- to spout out something jumbled and then go on to say that you feel the need to defend the game in question even more. One's review of a game should be based on his/her own views -- not the views of others. Of course, I'm not saying that he's going to go back and write his review to say, "And to the haters, screw y'all -- Too Human is fantastic! It's better than I say it is because someone else hates it!" But this type of message sticks in the minds of your audience.

(Two things. One -- Noct has informed me via the comments that Pereira is more a show co-host [Attack of the Show] than a critic/journalist, which changes the relationship between him and KVO somewhat -- but I still don't know that it necessarily validates what he did. Two -- I hope this isn't viewed as a callout of a callout. I'm not trying to demonize KP, nor do I think he has "no right" to do what he did. I recognize there's a thin line between giving your thoughts on what someone else says and actively calling their butt out and telling them they're wrong, and I hope I'm not crossing it. If so, I apologize for the ironic hypocrisy.)

Now, I have a different issue with the Casamassina thing. He basically makes a blanket-statement towards anyone who lowballed -- read: disagreed with his opinion of -- the game. Specifically, I remember him saying a C or C- was a lowball. You know who gave Too Human a C-? 1up.com's Giancarlo Varanini. You know GCV. He's been around. He's been around for nearly a decade. He used to write for ol' Gamespot waaaaaaay back when (oh look! Who's that newsie writing this news post way back in the year 2000?). He then moved to the Official Playstation Magazine before Sony ended its publication partnership with Ziff, following that up with a stint as a staff writer at GameTap (before it went under) prior to rejoining the Ziff army.

Then there's Jeff Gerstmann over at Giant Bomb. He gave Too Human a 3 out of 5. That's a middling score, and definitely below the "low eights" Casamassina said he'd have given Too Human had he reviewed it. Whether or not you agree with Jeff, whether or not you like his work, this man has also been around the industry for around ten years. Then there's Reiner from Game Informer -- 6.75 -- and again, Reiner has been around the industry for about a decade.

My question is, why does Casamassina insinuate that these people have "no business" reviewing games? Is it just because he can't stand that they disagree with him, which puts him at a similar level to frothing forumites? Or does he have some truly legit reasoning, none of which I heard on his podcast? I don't think that just anyone can come in and review a game, true, but I will say that anyone who can clearly write out their arguments in a balanced manner, understands games, and plays enough games to have perspective on what they're writing has at least some business voicing their opinions in a publication.

Oh, and lest I forget, it'd be anyone who also doesn't bow to personal pressures. Note: Casamassina clearly states on the podcast that the IGN Nintendo team is "very good friends with Denis" Dyack. I'm not necessarily saying that this alone colors his opinion of the game itself, but rather it colors his statement that others are "clearly reviewing the company, not the game" -- which is to say that it sounds like Casamassina takes every negative review as a personal insult to his friend. If that's the case, and that's what he thinks, so be it -- but that doesn't invalidate those reviews. Here, too, I would like to have seen some real reasons for why he thought Too Human was a "low eights" game and why exactly these other reviewers have no business in their trade.

I do appreciate that perhaps that wasn't the platform to discuss his opinions of the game, but it certainly doesn't help the issue when he's not backing up what he's saying. Casamassina himself has been around for an incredibly long time. He's an industry dinosaur with a robust track record, and as such, I expected a little more out of him.

Should I be opening a dialog between Pereira and Casamassina? Probably. But I'm just a peon, a lowly bug skittering around the bottom of the totem pole. I'm still more of a fan first and foremost. And as a fan, I'd wait for them to open a dialog with Van Ord, Varanini, Gerstmann, and everyone else who they felt "lowballed" Too Human (and felt compelled to comment on) first before seeing them waste their time on me.

As far as review scores and people griping about them, I used to be one of those -- and sometimes I still am. That's changed slightly since Alex brought me on to be a freelance peon. I can't say that my catalog of Virtual Console and "lesser-in-demand" portable games makes me a power in the game critic industry (hah! as if; I'm still a peon), but it does bring a new perspective when you're organizing a critique for a widely-read publication where you have to be extra careful about firstly backing up your points, and secondly making sure that the review hits your audience the right way.

By that I don't mean you cater to the audience to "make them happy" but rather the exact opposite. You can't just slap on a score of 8 or above on a game with flaws that could hinder the experience just because "well golly I had so much fun". We have to take into account whether or not the flaws are something that are acceptable in this day and age; we have to take into account whether our level of fun is tainted by nostalgia or certain odd predilections for certain game mechanics. Should I have given Shiren: The Wanderer an 8.5 just because I loved that it was a game made for masochists? No -- absolutely not. Could I justifiably give, say, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest a 9.0 just because I know how to progress through the game on account of previous personal (childhood) experience, even though the complete lack of in-game info will leave many people today gnashing their teeth at where to go next? No, of course not!

Every time I see a review that I personally disagree with, I now try my best -- though I still fail on occasion -- to look at it with this perspective in mind. Because hey, it hurts when someone insinuates to you that you don't know jack about games just because they don't like the score you gave something, even if you did your due diligence and backed up what you were saying. I'll still gripe among friends, yeah (whoever said I wasn't childish, anyway?), but I stopped doing the stupid Callouts even before I started reviewing for GS, and I'm glad I did. Nothing good could come out of them -- at least, nothing that couldn't have been better served by well-reasoned discourse and dialog.

(Note: The "recommend" versus "discussion" distinction bears mentioning here, in terms of: Does the review serve to recommend the game to the prospective buyer [Gamespot, Giant Bomb], or does it serve as a discussion point for those who want to dissect it and engage in discourse [1up]?)

So, I'll end this by going back to Too Human for a mite. What does it "really" deserve (hah! yeah right)? I don't know -- I've only played the demo. I see flaws, and I also see merit. Based off the demo alone, I would "predict" that I would give the game a 3 out of 5 on Trigames -- which, for us, still means that you should play the game while being prepared for annoyances (read: IT'S NOT A BAD SCORE! *jeez*) -- and that comes with a big fat "I could very well change my mind once I finish the retail copy" disclaimer. I still want to play the game, whether it be via rental or ownership, because even with all of the negative things said about it, there are still positives there -- even in the middling-score reviews -- that intrigue me. At the end of the day, and I said this on a recent podcast episode (I forget which), those that just look at the score and dismiss the rest might be missing out on something they'd truly enjoy, because, "*scoff* I never play a game that gets lower than a 9" is just not the way to go about things. Fair enough if you don't have the time or money to risk it, but there's no reason to be faux-elitist about it. Besides -- you never know if you'll end up thinking that the 9 was too generous

So like a moron, I did not bring the game box for Digimon World Championship with me to Harrisburg, so I won't be able to send the game back to my masters in Gamespotland until I arrive home in New York tonight. Seeing as I still have the game on hand, and I didn't bring any other games with me this week, I started fiddling around with it for a couple of minutes yesterday. Apparently, there's some combination of cages that causes the game to crash.

Yeah.

A little background, if you don't want to read through my review. In Digimon World Championship, you increase your Digimon's abilities by dropping the suckers into cages. The way the whole cage dealie works is that you've got this hexagonal grid of empty space. (The amount of empty space you're alotted increases as you win battles.) As you earn money from battles, you can buy more and different cages to increase your speed, HP, defense, special abilities, special character traits, whatever. These cages range from very small (one hexagon large) to very large (a five-hex mass).

So, in the Cage Edit mode, I was dumping in a bunch of healing cages next to each other just for kicks and giggles. At this point, all of my empty hex spaces were filled, and I was maxed out in terms of how much space I could gain (well duh, seeing as I had to play it all the way through). After I tapped the Exit button, the game just went to a black screen. No music. No frozen garbled stuff (a la NES). Nothing. I had to hit the power button.

I tried a different combination of cages -- no crash. I thought it might be that I filled the entire grid, which makes no sense since after the 8-hour mark I had had all of my hexes filled, but it was worth a shot, so I tried the original combination that crashed (for those who are playing, I believe it was a healing spa, then a mini-infirmary, then an infirmary -- all lined up next to each other on the bottom row of hexes) and took away a random hexagonal cage -- CRASH.

Reviewers are not bug testers. Their job is not to test out every combination of every single thing for defects. However, I really, really wish I had found this during my reviewing session so I could inform prospective buyers of this up-front. It wouldn't have impacted the score because the game auto-saves after each in-game day, and unless you do things drastically different within a given day, the events -- even battles -- are almost predictable (maybe a Digimon evolves an in-game hour after it did the first time before your game crashes, big whoop). But it's information that I think is valuable to know.

There may be more crashy combinations out there, so, buyer beware. Save your game -- as annoying as it may be to shut off and turn your DS on again (that's what manually saving forces you to do) -- every time before going into Cage Edit mode. Or better yet, take my 5.5 to heart and just don't buy the game.

Every time I introduce my friends to Rock Band or Guitar Hero, I find myself telling them, "Have you ever played guitar before? Well, it's like playing a real guitar. Kind of." Then I mentally flinch as I say that because, as all of you guitarists and string-instrument musicians know, it's not "just like" playing a real guitar.

I'm suspecting that the some of the backlash I hear about, "Oh, it's nothing like playing guitar, don't kid yourself" is due to ego -- and not necessarily wrongfully so. I mean, who wants to readily admit that years and years of musical training and practice can be sort of replicated just by playing a videogame that has one "string" and five "frets"? It's a little demeaning to the time and effort you put into perfecting your hobby / passion / career.

Let's be honest here, though: Fundamentally, at the very core, the idea is the same, and it's the easiest way to get your point across to the person holding the plastic. It's like saying "you swing just like a real batter would" when teaching someone about Wii Sports baseball. No, you're not really going to get the same control over how you pull the ball, or the height at which you swing, but fundamentally it's the same: swing the damned thing.

After getting past the cumbersome task of explaining how the note gems work, here's how I would try explaining how to physically play Guitar Hero / Rock Band guitar to a friend without saying, "It's like a real guitar":

1) The fingers on your fret hand has to be on the correct fret(s).

2) Pressing the fret button itself does not do anything, so you also have to strum to get the note to sound. The strum is what activates the note.

3) Then you get people trying to play repeating green notes by pushing down on the fret AND strumming exactly when each gem comes into contact with the line. So I tell them, no, all you have to do is hold down the fret. You don't have to press it each time. Again: it's the strum that activates the note.

4) Then some peoples' hands start getting tired from doing finger gymnastics -- lifting and putting down different fingers when different notes come down. So I tell them, if it's a "higher" note on the fret-board, you don't have to continually lift your other fingers -- you can leave the "lower" fingers down because of how the physics of a stringed instrument dictates sound.

5) I've never tried to explain how Hammer-ons and Pull-offs work. It's just too complicated to put into kindergarten off-the-street beginner terms.

Wouldn't it just be way easier to say, "Have you played a real guitar? Yes? Imagine it's like that." Immediately, they understand that they don't have to press the green fret button every single time green note comes down -- they can just hold it. They understand that fretting does nothing without actually strumming (finger-tapping notwithstanding; I'm fully aware that you can tap on a hot string and make a sound). They understand the concept behind hammer-ons and pull-offs. The understand how string physics work, and so they're not confused about whether or not they can hold down another button if they're playing a higher note.

Personally, I applied the very basic concept of cello-playing to Guitar Hero when I first started learning the game: You can put your finger somewhere on a string, but (for the most part) it ain't gonna sound until you pull your bow across that string. You don't have to push on the string every single time you want to produce the same note successive times; you just have to bow it. (...but no, you cannot tilt your cello to activate Orchestra Power.)

Next time a friend asks you how to work the plastic guitar, telling them that it's just like a real guitar isn't so bad. Or say what I say: "It's like playing guitar, but it isn't playing guitar." It'll save you a whole lotta breath.

There's another thing that a lot of people argue and cuss over, and that's whether or not playing a real guitar is "harder" than playing Guitar Hero. Honestly, the way I see it, there's no clear answer to this. Like any videogame, musical instrument, sport or otherwise, it's all about how you approach it. It's a videogame. Videogames can be harder than their real-life counterpart, and they can be easier than their real-life counterpart. You're used to doing thing one way, and when you have to adapt to the other, it's a jarring change. Imagine the batter playing Wii Sports is now looking at a ball on a flat screen, unable to control the height of his swing, yet he can hit homers from a pitching machine without a problem.

Here's the deal with Guitar Hero, the way I see it:

Guitar Hero operates on five notes and a note chart that dictates which notes need to be played in order to succeed. There's only one way to play that note. Further, think about the fact that there are only five real notes that you can play, but eight (twelve if you're talking chromatic) notes in an entire scale per octave. In other words, middle C is always middle C -- but the Yellow fret button isn't always A-flat; forget about across songs, too, because we're talking in the same song. When you're a guitarist used to the flexibility of playing any single note multiple ways, or used to being able to play a song by ear via relative or absolute pitch, of course it's going to be difficult training your ear to ignore pitch and getting used to limiting your pitch spectrum to five colors. This is why I just chuckle when people tell me that I should move onto a real guitar just because I can beat Jordan (and also coincidentally relates back to "Guitar Hero is NOT like a real guitar!!!111").

By contrast, if you're a musical neophyte, just having to follow five notes and one string is like reading the Cliff Notes version of War and Peace. Tone deaf? Screw that -- you don't need pitch. Rhythmically stupid? That's ok as long as you're on easy or medium -- the timing of the notes is easy enough to follow. Compare that to first having to learn how to read music -- as a cellist I had to friggin' learn bass, treble, and tenor clef, and then there's alto for viola players -- or memorizing the fret numbers on your guitar to read guitar tabs. Then you have to learn how to pick all six strings effectively, contort your hands into chord positions across those same strings, learn to associate the sound you make (or the note you play) with the almost infinite number of possibilities on the fretboard. Of course it's going to be harder to play a real guitar than it would be to pick up and play Guitar Hero. Someone who's a genius at Guitar Hero but knows nothing about a real guitar will still likely have to contend with the same obstacles.

Then you get people who aren't coordinated enough to follow moving stuff on a screen and associating it with the plastic instrument you're holding, though the same could be said for all videogames with these people. Maybe they'll have an easier time learning and practicing a real guitar, and vice versa: Maybe the tone deaf kid in the corner, who can't sing a lick, plays videogames really well and knows how to deal with the abstraction between screen and controller.

Which somehow leads me to my next stream of thought: I would personally like to yell at the parents who let their kid drop out of high school to play Guitar Hero "professionally." Apparently, the $1000 he's "earned" so far has been in free meals and other freebies and NOT in cash. How he convinced his parents that school was a waste of time, and Guitar Hero wasn't, is frankly beyond me -- especially with how much flak videogames are getting today (but that's another story). At the same time, I'd just as easily turn around and say that if the kid wanted to start a band, and he was good at music, dropping out of high school isn't ideal but it's not as ridiculous as dropping out to play Guitar Hero.

That's not to say that Guitar Hero players are losers, but it's simple logic according to the times: There's still a certain prestige for many people, for better or worse, to becoming a musician over playing games professionally, simply because there's a longer history of playing music as a career over playing games. I'm not saying it's right; I'm just saying that this is a perception that most people have, and that likely affects first how you'll get paid and second how you'll network and gain followers. Also, you don't necessarily have to be completely talented in every area to succeed in music, first because a band is a team effort and second because "successful bands" are born through different means (it could be lyrics; it could be production; it could be stage presence and/or looks... I hear Sid Vicious couldn't even play bass).

If you want to compete in Guitar Hero professionally, you likely have to be really. Damn. Good. You want to drop out of school and play the guy who FC'ed Through The Fire And Flames (Iamchris4life) in a tournament that will determine your income? Good luck, buddy. Yeah, sure -- Fatal1ty did drop out of school, and his counselor even encouraged him to do so -- but is this kid as good as Fatal1ty was in his game of choice? Will he be good enough to compete against those FCers on youTube? If he is, then bless him, and more power to him. But man -- the kid is 16. Only one (or two, depending on if he's an early-year birth) more year of high school to go. Just graduate at least -- or spend the time to get a G.E.D. Now I'm ranting and rambling, and I apologize. So I'll stop.

Wow. That was anti-climactic... how did we get here again? Here's more bundt cake.