LGX+ and I played some Guitar Hero III last night in co-op mode and scored a couple of achievements. When he left, I took another stab at the achievements that I mentioned in the last blog post, "Who Needs the Power" and "Star Mania". After a good warm-up playing co-op mode, I was ready to take the challenge!

The first one, "Who Needs the Power", was fairly easily accomplished on around my third attempt, scoring 201k on "Cult of Personality" on Hard without using Star Power. "Star Mania" on the other hand, was still challenging. "Through the Fire and Flames" on Expert is very difficult, but after about five attempts I was able to activate Star Power the required three times to earn the achievement. I still can't get past the "Synth Death" section of the song (around the 53% mark) without failing, but at least I got the achievement.

While I was at it, I figured I'd attempt some other achievements. It didn't take long to earn enough money to buy the sole remaining character (the "God of Rock") from the Store, earning the "Got 'em All" achievement. I then attempted to do "Whammy Mania", which requires you to use the whammy bar on every held note on "Number of the Beast". This was very difficult--I didn't know there were so many short held notes during the solo sections of that song! It's difficult to use the whammy bar in time before the note ends, and since I was playing on Hard difficult, there were a lot of notes, so I thought I'd try it on Easy. That gave me the idea to play through the career mode on Easy to earn that achievement. Then I figured that I might as well kill two birds with one stone and do the Easy career with "Lefty Flip" on: playing left-handed, guitar flipped 180 degrees! It took quite a while, but I eventually did it, earning the "Easy Rider" and "Hendrix Reborn" achievements. Then I went through and made sure I had all songs "five-starred" to earn another achievement, "Axe Grinder".

I noticed that it was definitely easier to whammy the held notes on "Number of the Beast" on Easy, since it had so many less notes and they were a bit slower. After a handful of attempts I was able to earn the "Whammy Mania" achievement that I had tried earlier.

A busy, but fruitful, night!