9-5 Gaming: The couple that rocks together, stays together... rawking.

This weekend my fiancée and I preemptively celebrated three years together by going out and making our anniversary present Rock Band from Harmoix. The game has made a deep impact on the world and now more than ten of my friends have all shelled out the near two hundred bucks to get the set. This even includes my mother (and no I am not lying). Thanks to preventative money measures we had not gotten the game yet but this weekend that all changed.
If you have not played either Gituar Hero, Rock Band, Dance Dance please check your pulse and skin tone. You might be dead and or never seen the light of day in the last five years. In essence all of these games are the same in that they are all based on timed responses to ingame signals. The only thing that has changed is the interface. Between dancing, plastic ukulele wailing, drum beating, singing, line stepping, grocery shopping, and beating on cow udders in a "Simon" like way, all things have been considered and done. However if I was ever going to use the old trite "If you are going to do something do it right" I would use it to describe Rock Band.
Previous titles to Harmoix run the gauntlet or horrid party games. Games like Karaoke Revolution, Eye Toy: Antigrav, and Frequency were always bought by the same two sorts of people. The really lame host who whips this horrid game out on you too early in the evening before the booze has properly set in. Or the parent who thinks it would be a really great idea to murder your social life by buying it for you on your birthday, in front of your friends, and forces you to try it. Right after that came Phase, the game that makes you "dance dance" on your Ipod (not kidding). I am certain it did well in Japan. Then came Guitar Hero and it's sequel. It was brilliant, fun, and had been in the arcades for nearly two years already but we won't go there. In stead anyone with a Playstation2 or an Xbox could jam out properly in their bedroom. Finally geeks like myself had a replacement for the hockey stick I had been thrashing my home with for years. What Guitar Hero demonstrated to me was that this company had been making paycheck titles to make this game. More so than that they loved music and they were die hard geeks as well. Thus Rock Band came to be.

There is a kinship to geeks out there. The word geek is a slang term, noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, gaming, etc." if Wikipedia is to be believed. However note the word "including" here. Thus we can use a noun before the word geek to demonstrate what you are. Football Geek, Pokemon Geek, Gamer Geek, Mac Geek, Geek Geek (these people are strange), and yes Music Geek. Rock Band was the horrific marriage between Music Geek and Gamer Geek. Fortunately for us their offspring turned out to be the digital party game messiah.
When a game has contributors with the names Ludwig, Zildjian, Fender, Boss, and more tacked to not only the title but the equipment you lift from the box you know that this game was marinated for seventy two hours, then slow cooked to perfection with love. Yes love. That my friends is how my young wife-to-be whom has a level of punk behind her cute/crazy (the girl with the pink hair but a skull tattoo? Yeah that girl) exterior could rock out for ten hours with her game crazy husband-to-be who wouldn't go to bed till he five stared Danni California on Hard (he went to bed anyway).
So with that aside the game does the rock band tour and has points to save your performance and yada yada... By not sucking you earn cash so that, like most major games, you can play an elaborate game of dress up. Take my word for it guys (who actually play guy avatars) to skip the pants. There isn't a pair of pants worth to rock with. Now if you want to 80s metal it, goth it, or punk it in a way that states "I make a bazillion dollars a minute and get laid at sheer will regardless what I look like" then go totally insane with dress up. It's in the living room and no one has to know. Eventually you will have to actually get good though because eventually even the game will get sick of you and tell you to bump up the difficulty level or no more good Rock Crack for you.

You do not rock.
If you don't calibrate your TV correctly you will suck. If you think the game mechanics feel funny then this the case or you really do suck. You will know for sure when you go somewhere else, play the drums once and find out they work (when you don't suck). Also if you don't have XBox Live or the PS network I certainly hope you are able to listed to about forty five songs and play them over ninety million times. If not go get the online content and buy them all. Rock Band is getting more and more content and due to backing by major labels people are débuting titles on Rock Band. Those poor poor lawyers out there trying to ban video games just had the job turned up a few million degrees now that not only movie money is in games, but now music money is entrenched (and we all know how they like their rights). Also if you play the drums and want to ever actually hear music you will also have to buy these.
Also no one sings except the girl you nag to death to, or the 3 sheets to the wind jerk whom actually thinks he is David Bowie.
Alex-
My Chi..... RAWKS!
