Here's how much ass I kicked today

Here's some of the stuff I accomplished on Rock Band 2 today. I really should get out and be a little more social at some point, but I'm using the whole "transitioning into playing real drums" excuse and that's justification enough for me.

Rockin' out

Suck on that, Dream Theater.

So Rock Band 2 is good times. I got that fancy Ion Drum Rocker (the $300 one) and was initially disappointed with it since the cymbals aren't very responsive. I've gotten accustomed to hitting them harder, and I hear that you can "tune" them to make them more sensitive, so it's not as bad as I made it out to be. Its bass pedal is still pretty lame, though.

The game itself is great. It takes everything about Rock Band 1 that seemed like it could have been done better, and does it better. My only complaint is that it doesn't provide an easy way of keeping track of your scores and stars earned on each song. This is a pretty blatant omission, and it's pissing a lot of solo players off, myself included. I'm hoping for a patch very soon that changes that.

The last few songs on drums are pretty damn tough. I've beaten two out of the three "OMG no way" songs: Judas Priest's "Painkiller" and Dream Theater's "Panic Attack." I haven't really tried to beat Abnormality's "Visions" yet, because the song sucks and the beat is pretty much nonexistent. Maybe I'll do that today.

I do recommend this game, despite the few flaws that I've come across. It's a wholly better game than RB1, and the setlist is one of the best ever in a music game.

If you get the game, add me XBL (Gamertag: j00zt1n) and let's play.

Finally, here's me getting five stars on Everlong:

Break that street date!

I got Rock Band 2 today, despite its official release date not being until Sunday. Yeah lucky me. I've played a lot of it already, but I'm reserving final judgment until I see some more of the online stuff (and until I finally get to Everlong, AKA the one song I want to play in this game).

Good stuff so far, though. If you have it, hit me up so we can play some World Tour.

Journalism!

I wrote a story for The Rebel Yell about the music games coming out this holiday. Check it out. I wrote about Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Band 2 and even Rock Revolution (equal coverage means I talk about it even though it's going to suck).

In true UNLV fashion, the editor changed some of the things I wrote to make them less factually accurate. It's not a huge deal since I don't have much of an audience, but it really would be nice to have my work represent my knowledge and writing ability a little better.

Just please don't judge me by the headline, grammar, spelling or formatting of the story on that page. Judge me by what I type on this page.

General status update

It figures that I finally decide to work on improving my career score in Rock Band, right before its sequel comes out.

I've got a week to get into the top one thousand on the leaderboards for drums. If I hit that, I'll be happy. It'll help it I get my Drum Rocker sooner rather than later, too.

I played the other night and raised a whole lot of scores, and I did the same tonight. I've gold-starred at least half the game at this point, now it's just going to be about raising scores that I know I can do better on. Run to the Hills, I'm looking at you (only song I haven't five'd). Career score is up to 9.2 million, it'd be nice to get to 10mil this week.

In other news, Castle Crashers is one of the best games ever. It's so good that I don't need to explain myself. Just play it.

Spore is out, I've been hearing mixed things so far. To be honest, I don't really care about it. I don't like The Sims, and I don't think I'll really like Spore, either. It'll make millions, that's for sure, I just don't think I'll be contributing.

Unrelated note: My coworker decided to attack me with a Nerf gun today. When I left work tonight, I stopped at Target and got a couple Nerf guns to retaliate with. I modded one of 'em to be slightly more... functional, as well. Tomorrow's going to be a fun day.

I'm running on one hour of sleep in the last 36 hours, so I'm cutting this one short.