Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and DJ Hero, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Plastic Peripheral

There was a time, not long past, when music games consisted of you, a pad, and the thumping rhythm of poppy music. Sure, a few other games had come out that took you, a controller, and fingers and thumbs frantically tearing up your controller to the beat, but I hadn't heard about those. Except for Parappa the Rapper. That game was keen. But a few years ago, a game, with a little plastic accessory, would come in and change the landscape of the rhythm game forever.

And I thought it looked stupid as hell.

Seriously, a little fake plastic guitar with five buttons, a "strum bar", and a whammy that looked like it was Smiling Bob before the Enzyte? The real musician in me looked at it, looked at my guitar, looked back at the ukulele-looking control, and laughed and scoffed at those who decided to have "fun" with what amounted to a very complex game of simon says. What sort of loser would go out and spend a hundred bucks on a game that makes you look like an idiot, and transfers no real skills over to actually playing the guitar? Why not just spend that money on a cheap guitar and lessons, and impress your friends? You too could be that douchebag sitting on campus with your acoustic playing songs to the ladies, and not be "that guy" sitting at home banging around on your overpriced accessory.

So I ignored it for a bit. Having no desire to play it, and watching the ridiculous videos of people cruising through Expert mode, I let it fester in the back of my mind for a while. Eventually Guitar Hero 2 came out, so people could play it on their xboxs and see shiny note charts coming down the same thing that the first game had, except shinier. Shiny. About that same time the price for the first game had gone down and, seeing the reception of how excited people were for the second game, I decided that maybe I'd give it a shot, see just what the big deal was with this fake guitar peripheral movement was all about.

And I got hooked. It was such a simple concept, hold the button down, press the strum, whammy bar when a note was held, but it was so much fun. Playing along with songs I had no patience to learn on my "real" guitar, playing songs I already knew, and playing songs I'd never heard of, it helped to open me up to different bands and different styles of rock. So I rocked through it on medium in probably a day or so, having too much fun to possibly stop for anything.

Then I discovered the evil orange button. Don't let anyone fool you into believing that this button is anything but the devil. Well, at least until you can figure it out.

Anyway, that damn orange button is one of the reasons I gave up on Guitar Hero for a little while. I got the second one, played through it too on Medium, and promptly gave up on playing hard. "It's too hard," I said. "My fingers won't stretch and position like that," I whined. "Baaaaaaw," is probably what I meant. And then, one day, far into the past from now and the future from then, I played with someone who gave me the confidence to step up past the blue into the orange, and after a few months of practice I done got pretty good. (Special Mid-Article Pro-tip: Move your hand to where your pinky is on the orange button, and your index finger is on the red. It's easier to move your index to the green from there then it is to move your pinky from blue to orange. Also, alternate up and down strums!) Around this time, a new addiction had arisen from the world of rhythm games, and that beast's name was Rock Band.

Imagine, a whole new world of rhythmy goodness! Not only is my plastic guitar good for being a fake guitar, but now it can also be used as a fake bass. And drums come with it! Sure, it's not completely like real drums, but close enough to feel like I have some type of rhythm with my feet and hands, which, as many people found out soon afterwards, we do NOT. And singing! Well, I really let other people do the majority of that, but throw me a few beers and I'll be your huckleberry. For a solo player, it adds that much more you can do with the game. So as opposed to just playign through it once, you can play through it up to four times to see just how each part of the song works with the other parts, hopefully opening you up to just how awesome bands really are and how much work it takes to make a great song. And what Rock Band really did for music games, was take away the stigma of "just some guy with a plastic guitar" and turn it into quite possibly the funnest game you can have going at a party. Regardless of what their backgrounds are, people flock to a good game of Rock Band where they can make an ass of themselves or show off their "skill" to other people.

Introducing DLC to the mix, we now have limitless potential for how many songs we can fake rock out to, or really rock out depending on how much you get into it, but what's next? After all, even with all the bands and songs in the world, how many times can you rock your fake guitar before you get bored? Activision, being the kind, considerate overlords that they are, decided to go ahead and take a break from their nine Guitar Hero games releasing this year to show us the way. And the way is DJ.

Coming out last month, DJ Hero finally released. Being skeptical of a new rhythm game with a new peripheral, and being unsure of how exactly the damn thing would work by looking at it, I decided to hold off on buying it. I succeeded for 10 days. Then, in a fit of whorish passion, I ran to the store flung money at the counter for the ability to play around with a new plastic "instrument". And I'm sooooo glad I did.

DJ Hero is fun, plain and simple. It's got a learning curve, that's for certain, but once you get the hang of it and move on to the more difficult levels, just like in Guitar Hero, the feeling of accomplishment and being there are exponential. While I don't one hundred percent love all the songs on it, there is enough variety in the mixes that are there that aren't really any songs I hate, and they've moved on by the time I've figured out I don't like them. However, DJ Hero takes a step back from Rock Band and Guitar Hero, as even though it's been promoted as a "party" game, the learning curve and starting difficulty is too high for it to be passed around from person to person without them getting glossy eyed and giving up after half a song.

So, besides broke but jamming, where does this leave me? Happily enough, it leaves me broken and spent on the floor, wondering what song I'll get to play next or what mix of songs I'll get to hear remastered. Are plastic instruments ruining music? No, bad musicians who write terrible songs are ruining music. If anything, GH, RB, and DJ Hero are opening up people to new music, and helping the music industry. And if someone finds so much inspiration in playing their fake instruments that they go out and pick up a real one while also being inspired by the better bands on the games, we end up all winning in the end.