Braving the Black Friday crowds, my wife and I headed out early Friday morning in the hopes of finding a few gaming bargains and potentially hard-to-get items.

WalMart opened early and we nabbed a Rock Band rather easily, which was great, because most other people were fighting over what size Polaroid LCD TV to get, so it was a quick in and out. Of to Target, where I picked up a copy of Gears of War (remember, I was late to the 360 show, so it was one game I hadn't got) for $40.

Anyway, to Rock Band. The box was impressively huge, almost intimidating, with about 100 different cardboard shipping boxes inside of it as well, but the notable addition was the bright neon pink leaflet with a warning/instructions regarding returning problematic peripherals. I figured this was EA's way of saying, "we figure that the drum kit will get some abuse, but here's our site for the limited warranty." So, my wife and I set it all up, plugged it all in, and away we went with the multiplayer. She deferred to me with the guitar, and took the drums instead. My wife is brave, but I was happy that we had another game to play along. We weren't terrific on a few songs (ok, she wasn't terrific with the drumming, but thanks to the "easy" setting, we managed) but we were having a blast. In fact, I would say that Rock Band far and away eclipses the GH experience if only because the gameplay so directly ties everyone in so well. It's not completely different from the bass/rhythm guitar co-op in GH2, but it feels much more... symbiotic, and when you get unison bonuses and other perks as a band, it is truly fun.

That is, until your guitar breaks.

Let's set the record straight, though. First, I'm an experienced GH player. No, I did not manage to 5-star Jordan on expert difficulty, but I have gone through the set list for all GH games on medium, and most on hard. I don't strum the crap out of the guitar, and I certainly don't have any unorthodox playing styles. I'm a down-strummer, like 95% of us out there.

So anyway, after my wife went to bed, I decided to try out the solo tour. I took my character and started with some comparisons to GH in my head. I played through about 12-15 songs and I had a blast. I had some trouble on the last couple of songs, and decided to call it a night.

The next day, we decided to get the band back together and we started it up with high hopes. The very first song was atrocious. I scored far less than my wife, who on easy difficulty, struggled mightily to get through the song. So, we tried it again. Same thing. I thought that there was lag, so I went through the robust calibration menus to see if I could fix it. Nope, similar problem. It wasn't that I couldn't hit the notes, it was that the guitar wasn't registering them completely, or it wouldn't hold certain notes. Then I thought, the USB hub might have an issue. I went through several checks, plugging, unplugging, and then finally just plugged in the guitar to the console itself. Played "Black Hole Sun" about 1/8 of the way through, and then I stopped, realizing there was a serious problem.

It was about 10 minutes later that I found message boards on various gaming sites that were filled with posts about Rock Band guitars failing exactly the way mine seemed to have. Apparently, downstrumming breaks the guitar. Period. People have reported failures within the first 3 hours of gameplay, and the issue has to do with the guitar registering double strums which effectively ruins the gameplay. Some people posted solutions ranging from "upstrumming" and "light flicking" and managed to overcome the issues... but you know what? No. I'm not going to upstrum. I wasn't hammering down on the strumming in the first place. I spent $170 on this gigantic box, and the centerpiece item failed to work after the most pedestrian of gameplay.

Good thing I had that handy neon leaflet to direct me to EA's support site, right?

After a few questions and an exchange of information, apparently EA is sending me a new guitar. 2 days air shipping, no cost to me. I just have to box up my other guitar in the box they provide (shipping too) when the new one arrives, which seems simple enough. Maybe a little too simple. I figure that with so many peripherals shipping in one box, EA must have figured in a marginal failure rate, but I get the feeling that these precautionary measures--while great for EA's customer service--were put in place because the anticipated failure rate was a little more than marginal. Perhaps even considerable, if you read the message boards on various sites.

Here's hoping that the replacement guitar can handle, um, downstrumming.