Guitar Hero
Red Octane

Oh, hello there, best game that I have ever played in my entire life.

I’ve just spent the past three days kneeling on my bed, staring at the screen, and frantically banging my head as I “shredded” my way through such venerable hits as “Higher Ground” (Chili Peps version, natch), “Iron Man,” “I Wanna Be Sedated,” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” I never want to play any other game as long as I live.

Guitar Hero comes with a little plastic guitar with five buttons on the neck, a “strum bar” on the body, and a whammy bar! You sit there and stare down the neck of a guitar on the screen, and as the little colored nubs scroll toward you, you press the corresponding buttons and “strum.” That’s it. Piece of cake.

Which is what I thought as I cruised the Easy level, where they only really use the first three buttons. Then I graduated to Medium, where the game introduces power chords and the fourth (blue) button. THEN I graduated-graduated to the Hard level, where the game throws the dreaded fucking orange button of death at you, along with thousands of power chords that transition quickly into solos full of notes. That is where I found myself so utterly immersed in playing this game that everything else in the world became peripheral. I swear to God, I put off going and taking a piss for a full hour because I could NOT GET THROUGH THAT FUCKING FRANZ FERDINAND SONG THAT I DON’T EVEN LIKE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Not like I wasn’t having fun. Even when you are miserably failing at Guitar Hero, it is still the Best Video Game Ever Invented. But yes, I will admit, I did start to get a little flustered.

And then the secret to Guitar Hero came to me, in the feverish haze of my sixth consecutive failed attempt to perform “Spanish Castle Magic.” To win at this game, you must give yourself wholly over to it. It is just like Dance Dance Revolution, only it’s your hands that must be freed from their inhibtions and allowed to caress the neck of the toy guitar like two swans speedily making love on LSD in heaven. That’s all there is to it!

And there I was—ripping out the guitar riffs to Judas Priest and Incubus songs like I was the fucking Lord of Ripping Out Guitar Riffs. I played Sum 41’s “Fat Lip” and the entire crowd at the Toxic Tour went completely apeshit. FOR ME!

Oh, that reminds me. I didn’t tell you about Career mode yet. You choose a character (the best ones are the skinny punk and the huge, hulking metalhead) and then a guitar (they have Les Pauls and shit).Then you have to play your first gigs in a shitty basement. You work your way up through larger and larger venues, earning the right to play more and more songs as you go.

Eventually, you can “buy” the right to use other characters. My favorite special character is the Grim Ripper, a ginormous fucking dead guy in a robe. It’s fun to make him play really pussy songs like Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.”

One thought—they better be working on a way to get more songs into this game, like expansion discs or something. Because I am not bored yet, but I can only play “Thunder Kiss 65” so many more times before I just start barfing.

A small quibble though. Guitar Hero is the fucking bestest otherwise.


State of Emergency
South Peak Interactive

The whole “Oh wow, you get to shoot cops and shit” thing wears thin really fast when you get a clue and realize that shooting at cops is not fucking cool—it’s lame. And playing a rioter isn’t so cool when you remember all those clowns from Seattle. They were stupid-looking!

However, State of Emergency 2 is still a pretty fucking good time. I love games with sniper modes where you can set the clock to infinity and just sit up in your little sniper spot forever, just picking people off or maybe taking a break to hang out and think about stuff.

When you get bored of that, you can switch to the fucking sick free-for-all mode, where you run through the streets shooting and smashing everything in sight.

If you can turn off your conscience (and I can), this game is great.


25 to Life
Eidos

Another game where you wander through a shitty “urban” neighborhood shooting the shit out of everyone. Don’t these virtual dwellers of virtual ghettos ever get tired of virtual bullets constantly flying around their heads? I know I would.

That said, 25 to Life is really fun. It has a good southern-rap soundtrack and the gameplay is easy to control. I think that’s the most important thing in a game like this—good character control. Good sound effects are important too. When I blow a hole through a coke dealer or hit a cop with a bat (again with the video-game cop-hitting—seesh!), I want to really FEEL the sound!

COLONEL ED SANDERS