Of frustration and fake plastic instruments

Sometimes you just have to accept your failures and move on with life.

For as much as I've played, become good at, had fun with and all-around enjoyed the "Instrument Protagonist" genre of video games - Guitar Hero 1 and 2 and Rock Band - I've never actually finished one of them on Expert. And, despite having just one song left right now in Rock Band on expert guitar, I'm no closer than I have been before.

Let's see. In Guitar Hero 1, I couldn't get past "Cowboys from Hell" or "Bark at the Moon." Guitar Hero 2, hit the brick wall at "Psychobilly Freakout" and just got stuck. And in Rock Band? The 9-minute-plus Southern rock epic "Green Grass and High Tides Forever."

Dammit.

I threw myself, fitfully, against "Bark at the Moon" for at least two hours before giving up - in one stint, mind you, I've tried it other times as well of course - and I'm doing much the same with GGaHT. The painfully frustrating thing with BatM was that I got to as far as 97% or 98% before failing. Nothing but frustration there.

I'm stuck at 72% or so on GGaHT, which is acknowledged as a sticking point in the song. There's another one at 84% and one in the 90s, I believe. Great. I have that to look forward to.

That's why it's on the Pile of Shame. I'm still working on upping my drumming skill, too - I just bought rubber silencing pads for my drums today, they work great. I'm working on high-level hard songs and starting up expert, but it's the expert guitar play-through that has me frustrated as hell.

At least Rock Band is insanely fun. At least it isn't unfairly frustrating, or the victim of bad game design - that's not the problem. I must stare into the abyss and see if it blinks back.