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Comic for: July 19th, 2010
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Rock Band: "Brokeback Gamerscore"
Posted: Monday July 19th, 2010 by

My Gamerscore sucks. So I've been tearing through my games to try to improve it. I polished off a few of the LEGO titles and moved on to the pile of rhythm games. I'd forgotten the amount of enjoyment and frustration I derive from them.

Hands down the most frustrating one was Lego Rock Band. There's some kind of weird calibration issue and no matter how many time I run the calibration system, playing the songs never felt quite right. More often than not I would register as having missed a note when I KNEW I didn't. And each time I ran the calibration system I'd get wildly different results. Finally google tubed the problem. Buried within someone's review of the game was the mention of a similar issue. But they had tried something I hadn't, they'd read the manual. Silly me, I never would have guessed that if you were having syncing problems there might be some suggested settings listed in the calibration section of the game's handbook.

Well, I put in the settings for the closest match to my TV and it worked like a charm. For a guy who is used to playing reasonably well on Hard, it infuriated me to get 3 stars playing on medium. Yeah that's what happens when the lag is just ever so slightly off. Since changing the settings to what the manual recommended, I'm back in my comfort zone. There are still a few notes I miss that surprise me. But it doesn't cause me to tank easy songs any more.

Back to he Gamerscore, the most annoying (but understandable) issue with trying to wring points out the rhythm games, especially Rock Band titles, is the "band" heavy nature of their requirements. I'm a solo player. So there are a lot of achievements I just can't get alone. Though I did amuse myself on Rock Band Beatles. The Achievement requirements for "A Little Help From My Friends" said "Start a Story with a four player band". It didn't say anything about actually completing a song. So I plugged in the microphone, the drums, turned on two wireless guitar controllers, started a new "Story" and bling... achievement.

Another option of course is to start singing while I play the guitar/bass. But, really, no one wants to hear me sing, including myself.

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