Talk about painful! I dunno… putting Painkiller as the last song (and presumably the hardest) is funny… that one I can do easy enough, but that freakin’ Dream Theatre song had me boo’d off a few times before I nailed it. 392/420 stars for the whole set. I even beat two songs on hard that I had never beaten before.

Of course, this morning I woke up and could barely move my wrist and my knee hurts like hell. Such is the price of satisfaction I guess. =)

How the hell do you take out that stupid tank?!? And why don’t they give you a bloody save point before you have to deal with it? Nevermind re-doing all the monkey business of jumping to platforms (which takes me I don’t know how many tries), but even after that I don’t get to save it before getting wasted by the tank? Gah! Time to play something a little easier like DDR or something. Sheesh.

On a side note, I’ve found that in some ways GH3 is both easier and harder than previous GH games. I also found that I much prefer the layout and whatnot of GH3 to the previous games. Oh, and the newer guitars are much better than the older ones. Tried playing GH2 on PS2 yesterday and I sucked more on it than I do on GH2 on xbox360. Dunno if it’s the guitars themselves or how it shows on the screen (graphics look kinda sucky, and there’s a definite lag and the calibration seems to have made it better but not perfect).

Oh, and Cowboys from Hell on the first Guitar Hero is still the only song I’ve not gotten 5 stars on in medium. Yeah, I’m not so good I can play stuff on hard/expert very well (hard I’m actually doing moderately ok at in that I’m half-way thru it, but with average 3 stars per song — expert is out of the question). Dang Pantera! Although, I honestly suspect that if they made Cowboys from Hell downloadable for GH2 or GH3, I might get my 5 stars… hammer-on’s I find are dang-near impossible on the first GH.

Anyways, on medium difficulty I’m ranked 104 of 184… and it was 182 earlier this evening so I’m presuming that more copies either got mistakenly sold a week early or it’s already out (but since I didn’t see it any other stores I looked at today to get Conan, I think someone let it go early).

Should probably be finished it tomorrow… too tired to play more tonight. Definitely has some cool songs tho. =) Guitar Hero II is still selling like crazy tho… on the 18th there were 898243 users on the leaderboards (at which point I was ranked 119207), and as of the 21st, which was the last time I checked the leaderboards, I was ranked 115949 of 908952. Gotta keep track of these scores somehow and the blog seems like the best place to do it.

Oh, and I have a receipt to prove I actually did buy it from Walmart tonight, before anyone starts thinking I downloaded it or something stupid like that. Kinda ticked that I didn’t walk away with Conan, but I’ll take Guitar Hero III… for now.

Well… brought it home and really got into it. Had to move the PS2 out of my office or I’d get no work done with my wife wanting to play it during work hours. At any rate, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on it in the evenings over the last week.

I’ll freely admit that I’m addicted to Guitar Hero like a crack whore is addicted to crack. I don’t think I was ever this stoked over World of Warcraft or EverQuest (back in the day), or really any other game I’ve yet played. I think part of it is that it doesn’t feel like a game as much as others do… no keyboard, no game controller, just a plastic guitar with buttons and some pretty furious finger work.

I’m getting better… not the greatest yet (but hey, I’ve only had it for a week now)… I’m managing to pull off five stars on most songs on Easy mode (I’ve beat all 3 Guitar Hero games on Easy so far, working my way through Medium on Guitar Hero II now). I’ve gotten a couple four star ratings on Medium, but I’m mostly hitting three stars. Although I’m definitely getting better. =)

It’s not quite like playing a real guitar but close enough that my brother, who can play guitar and bass, picked it up quite quickly last night. Give him a week with the game and he’d likely be embarrassing the pants off me.

Having said that… what could be better than a game that has classic tunes like “Balls to the Wall”, “Shout at the Devil”, and “Holy Wars” as part of it’s line up? Ok, there’s some pretty bad songs on there too, but it’s pretty gratifying to be able to say that I can play along with Megadeth… =)

Tried this new one from SOE the other day: Vanguard Saga of Heroes. Very nice graphics… almost too nice. Can’t play the damn thing without it being all choppy and stuff, even when I meet the recommended requirements. Aaaargh! Looks like EverQuest on steroids (the original EverQuest, mind you, not EQ2). Oh well. I don’t think much will be happening with that one beyond the initial 30 days. Pretty disappointed; it had some concepts that I thought would make a nice change from WoW, but it’s barely playable (well, it is playable, but not nearly as fluid/smooth as WoW is and come on, I don’t have crappy hardware either so it’s pretty irritating).

Oh well. Maybe it’s time to hang up the MMoRPG hat for a little while and spend more time playing Gears of War.

Guess I should have accounted for the release date when I decided on the Annvix 2.0-RELEASE schedule… with the expansion due tomorrow, the release date of 2.0 may get pushed back.

I’m not concerned tho… there’s only 3-4 of us who are waiting for it… they’re geeks too so they’ll understand. =)

According to my played time, I’ve spent 5 days, 23hrs, 59mins, and 34secs to go from level 1 to level 40. If I was a single guy with no hobbies, I probably could have done that within a month. So it’s taken me about 6 months (the /played macro doesn’t tell me when I actually started, so I’d have to look at credit card statements to find out when I actually started). So, now I can get a mount! Yippee! Unfortunately it costs about 90-100 gold pieces to pay for the mount and training, and right now I have 45g. So maybe I’ll actually get my mount when I hit 42. =)

Alas, I’ve probably died two dozen times tonight. Thank God this isn’t EverQuest… if it was, I’d probably be down to level 25 by now. But this undead travel time sucks.

Still haven’t got that stupid furbolg chief I need to get to finish my stinking quest, but I’ve had just about enough. Time to work on my leather working skills I think.

Good game, but damn frustrating sometimes. I guess I’ll watch Super Nanny with the wife (man there are some ultra stupid parents out there. I think I’d slit my wrists if my wife was half as crappy as some of the wives on this show.

Can you tell those spiders have got me in a mood?

Point in fact: My daughter (4 years old next month) has her own WoW account. Unheard of? Probably. She likes to play “barbie” with her characters… ticks me off when she plays mine (she’s insisting on her druid being able to shapeshift into a bear like mine, so I’ve been working her account while she goofs off on mine). Drives me nuts when my hotkeys are re-assigned and my druid is jumping naked on the beach like an idiot. Oh well.

And the real kicker is I can play on my mac… which looks much better than on Windows. Oh love of my life, why didn’t I pick you up before?