Endless Setlist

Finishing 4-player Endless Setlist on Hard with my family was one of the most epic videogame experiences in my life. We spent over 2 hours stuck on Green Grass and High Tides. By the time we finished I was no longer playing the drums - I was the Commander in a Battlefield game.

Monitoring 4 people's star power and crowd ratings, calling in strategic star power strikes right before the singer gets frozen out in an extended tamborine section, trying to maximize both deaths per player by keeping them unconscious as long as possible before reviving them once more into the breach. By the time we finished the song, people were shouting, arms were thrown up in the air - I've played in FPS and fighting game tournaments before, but for my mom, sister, and wife, I think that was the first time they'd experienced the kind of fiero you get from a truly epic gaming win.

After GG&HT, we still had 5 songs left, but we were such a well-oiled star-power machine at that point that Won't Get Fooled Again, Flirting With Disaster, and Run To The Hills just felt like a detente after the climax of a really good movie.

What surprised me most about Rock Band, by the end of Band World Tour, was how well the game works on a co-operative, strategic, band level. Getting past the fun of playing the individual instruments, there's still an entire game left in the player interactions. Playing drums on a guitar-heavy song, I feel like a healer in an MMO, acting as a support class for the rest of the song.

On the sucky side, because of Live's connectivity problems over the break, I wasn't able to transfer over my gamertag, so I didn't get the achievement (at least my sister did). But hearing my senior-citizen, church-choir mother getting "Awesome" rapping Sabotage and Faith No More in her soprano voice was a worthy prize.