We've discovered over the years of owning video games that they are great time-wasters.  I knew this, of course, from childhood, although I never did own an Atari (we had an Odyssey 2000).  My husband and I purchased a Sega Dreamcast when they were the "thing" (remember the commercials: "It's thinking"?) and played Midway's Hydrothunder until our brains melted. We still own the console for the sole purpose of occasionally pulling it out and playing it for old-time's sake. Then we got an Xbox. We promptly wasted a great deal of time playing such games as Halo, Gauntlet: Legends, X-Men, and Splashdown. Of course, when the Xbox 360 came out, we had to get that too. We added to our time-wasting games (Halo 2 and 3, Gears of War, and Bioshock) in quick succession.

We've finally met the category of ultimate time-suckers: the Guitar Hero series (and hopefully soon Rock Band). Oh, man.

Guitar Hero comes with a controller shaped like a guitar (you can play with a regular controller, but who would want to?). On the neck of the guitar are five fret buttons that can play notes and chords. On the body of the guitar are a strum bar and a whammy bar.



As the songs play, the screen shows the neck of a guitar (along with some background of a concert and a rock band playing). Moving towards you are the notes that you must play. The color of the note and the placement indicate the note to be played and the duration of the note. As the notes reach the circles at the bottom of the screen, you press the corresponding buttons on the frets and strum the bar.



There's a pretty wide variety of songs on these games, from classic rock to heavy metal to alternative. They vary in levels of difficulty as well, so for each level you increase in difficulty as you play the game. There are four levels the songs appear in: easy, medium, hard, and expert. The same song that seemed so easy on the easy level can turn into a real bitch very quickly. We noticed a significant increase in difficulty just between the easy and medium levels. The hard level is the one we're working on now, and it really is hard. I shudder to think of the expert level.

As with any video game, the longer you play, the better you get. I certainly would like to beat the game on the expert level. But I may or may not get there. I don't plan to spend all my spare time on this game (not that I have that much spare time to begin with).

Here's what happens when you spend too much time on the game:

This is a video of someone playing the really awesome song "Cliffs of Dover" by Eric Johnson on the expert level and getting a 100% accuracy rating.

This video is of the final boss battle (against Satan), playing a really kick-ass guitar version of The Charlie Daniels Band song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".

Of course, as with any video game, there is a danger of children spending too much time playing it. All kids should spend some time playing something, but it's definitely healthier to send them outside to play tag or something. Here's a little kid who should TOTALLY join a little league team or something, because he needs to get outside and away from this game!

Guitar Hero is a seriously awesome game. The game Rock Band takes the idea a big step further. With the multiplayer mode, you can have four people who each get to take a different role in the 'band". You can have a lead guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and a singer. I've been told by my students who have played Rock Band that the lead singer job is not difficult, but it's a great idea to include people who may simply not be able to master the other parts. From what I've heard from people and what I've read the guitar and bass parts are very similar to Guitar Hero, although several people have said they believe the difficulty is a little higher on Guitar Hero than on Rock Band for those two parts. The greatest skill that is acquired playing Rock Band is the drumming. It comes with a drum kit with a foot pedal and four pads to strike. It really does require rhythm to play the drums on these songs. While the guitar and bass parts of these games don't increase your real guitar-playing skill, the drumming actually can teach you some drumming fundamentals.

It boils down to this: Guitar Hero is a much better game for those who are only interested in the guitar/bass parts of the songs or for those who can't round up a posse to play with them. Rock Band is better for those who want a great party game, sort of the ultimate karaoke. Price, of course, may be a deciding factor as well; Guitar Hero 3 and a wireless controller cost about $90; the Rock Band special edition with the microphone, drum set, and guitar runs about $160 or so.

Once we feel we've mastered the material on Guitar Hero, we'll look into getting Rock Band. Then I guess we'll need to find some friends who can play with us. We need another couple with no life, like us...