Top 10 Greatest Videogame Moments, Part 3

2.) Draw! (1080 Snowboarding): Somehow, the inconspicuous game 1080 was able to make my list of favorite gaming moments twice. Pretty amazing considering the game wasn't even that great (don't let Daniel tell you it is...I mean it was great, but not actually good, if you know what I mean). Anyways, I believe Daniel and I were racing on the final level of this game, a big glacier/tundra mountain full of lots of powder and basically just a downhill dash to the finish line. Both of us were apparently hungry for that line on this particular day. Neither of us wanted to lose, and this is one of the few times in a racing game against one other person where neither of us did lose. Because we crossed the line pretty far apart from each other in terms of distance, but apparently at the exact same time. In huge golden letters, "DRAW!" sprawled itself across the screen. I am not sure by what measurement of time the game measured races, but somehow we were able to get the EXACT SAME TIME. Such a thing can happen in Tricky, down to the hundredth, but even then, it always awards one racer the victory over the other. I would think most games are this way--that they wouldn't allow ties. However, glorious 1080 is similar to glorious soccer in that you can actually tie in it. I know this is a stupid thing to post so high above some of the other great stuff above, but this was a mythical moment for the Waterford Boys, something dreams are made of. Indeed, the beauty of that final level--Deadly Fall--was dreamlike: stunning vistas capped in white stretching out as far as the eye could see, the bright yellow rays of the sun piercing the icy cold. This was a defining moment in our childhoods.

1.) The Log (Guitar Hero II): Now, as a warning, this is going to be a long post, so please bear with me. A lot of the above moments have been simply cute happenstances or memorable moments, but few have been the product of actual hard work (the 2:40 is one of those, as well as the other Guitar Hero moments). This achievement took me between a year and a year and a half to achieve. But oh God was it ever worth it. Let's clear this up right now: the Log is the guitar you get after 5-starring all of the main setlist songs in Guitar Hero II on expert (so basically every song in story mode). The guitar is an ugly thing itself, crudely shaped out of a log (hence its name). (You get the "Eyeball" for 5-starring all of the setlist songs on hard, which is a really good accomplishment--harder than beating the game on expert.) It is what it stands for that counts. It means that you are one of the elite few who have 5-starred every song from "Shout at the Devil" to "Free Bird." Here is another breakdown thread which shows the difficulty of 5-starring all of the expert songs in the series in comparison to each other: http://www.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60158&highlight=. It shows the pain I went through. Let me just say right now that it is a lot (A LOT A LOT A LOT A LOT A LOT) harder to 5-star songs than beat them. Just because you can beat the game on expert, please do not compare this with getting the Log. Even if you can 5-star 95% of the game, please do not compare this with getting the Log. I had gotten maybe all but 10 out of the 40 songs in the setlist within the first month or two, but it took me the last year to get those last 10. Some songs are exponentially harder to nail than others.

Some people might ask how you 5-star a song as opposed to just beating it. This has to do with your overall final score. Once you have a high enough score on a song, you 5-star it. The score needed to get a 5 star rating is based on your multiplier (the meter that shows whether you have no combo, a x2 combo, a x4 combo, or a x8 combo if you happen to be under starpower holding a combo) using a fancy mathematical formula that I do not know. Basically, if you hit a high enough score, you 5-star it. And you hit a high score by keeping a combo through as much as the song as possible and through using starpower (especially in parts of the song where the starpower is likely to reap you a high score--i.e., chords or passages with a lot of notes). It is obviously easy to combo the early songs, but later songs do not have many easy parts to hold a combo in. "Misirlou," for instance, has almost no passage where you can hold a combo consistently without large amounts of skill.

Let's talk about some of the tough ones. Everything in the first four tiers was not particularly challenging if you have already gotten to the skill level where you are thinking of going after the Log (a once inconceivable goal for me). "Freya" in the fifth tier was an obstacle, but it has so much repetition that once you bring the song into practice mode for a bit, you'll get it. By the way, practice mode becomes invaluable when you are going for five stars. I imagine most people do not utilize this mode during normal play, but it is a gift from God when you need to learn a part, because you are able to slow parts down and do them over and over again, until you get the fingerings right and get some muscle memory down, at which point you can speed it back up. Unfortunately practice mode was always very boring for me (if you haven't noticed in my post about not reading enough, I am a pussy when it comes to discipline and trying to have a long attention span). It was hard mentally to do a short part of a song over and over and over again, often on slow speeds, but that is what you have to do if you want to become a world-beater. I utilized practice mode enough to nab the Log, but I was never able to become a truly talented player because I didn't put in enough time in practice mode. I have read stuff from great players who say that they never even play songs normally outside of practice mode unless they are seriously going for score. That takes discipline.

In the next tier, we have a seriously annoying song, "Rock This Town." In his breakdown, Jesse smartly ranks this as #58 out of 64 in the game to 5-star. I don't know what it is about this song, but the rhythm is all kinds of fucked-up. Mike was known for his early passion for this song (possibly on hard mode? I forget...), but by the time we got to the thoughts of actually 5-starring it, he had to quietly step back into the shadows, because this is a song you don't attempt to tackle without some serious practice, and Mike was never as dedicated as me when it came to practice. Mike kinda stopped playing the game seriously after he completed it on expert. He wasn't ready to take it to that next level, just like I was not ready to take it to the next level after getting my Log (and don't let anyone fool you, there are many levels past this). We all have our limits.

The next tier is the penultimate one, and what a bitch it is (keep in mind I did not 5-star all of the songs in order--my final 5-star was in this tier, for instance, but the later ones do tend to be much, much harder than the earlier ones as you can see). "Madhouse" is the only (relatively) easy song here. You have "Carry Me Home" which is ranked two songs below "Rock This Town." "YYZ" is not exactly easy. Then you have "Laid to Rest," which was a personal enemy of mine. This is what I was talking about in a previous post when I said that some things were very hard for me that were easy to others. Jesse ranks this as a mid-upper level to hard song, but a lot of others never found this too challenging. I remember Mike being pretty good at this song (again, he never 5-starred it, though. Why not, Mike?). This was an absolute and total pain for me. The thing about this tier was that not only were the songs hard, they were all bad songs too. I hated pretty much everything on this tier ("YYZ" wasn't too bad). Fuck you, Lamb of God. I'm sure Greg is rolling in his shallow grave right now. I could never get the fucking melody of this song down, and that is probably the part that is easiest for everyone else. This was my #55 out of 64 total songs (there are only 40 in the main setlist, so this includes bonus songs too).

"Beast and the Harlot" was hard at first, but practice mode really helped me on this one, and I went on to 6-star it (this, "Police Truck," and "Number of the Beast" were my only final tier 6 stars). "Free Bird" also feels like it should be a lot harder then it actually is. "Institutionalized" is another story. This is just a damn hard song to 5-star. No if's, and's, or but's about it. You have to learn to hit the choruses in this song, which is not that easy, but once you do (through practice mode), this song falls apart under your sweaty hands. "Hangar 18" lies next--the second hardest song in the final tier to 5-star. There is no easy way to get around this. You have to learn to hit the bigger riff, which is no cakewalk. But there is absolutely no way you'll be able to combo anything else in the last two minutes of the song, because the rest is solos. Just pray for a good run.

This leaves two songs left, and these two are the hardest motherfuckers there are. "Misirlou" and "Psychobilly Freakout." I got them in that order, although "Misirlou" is conventionally considered to be the harder 5 star to get. I just had a lucky run on "Misirlou," which allowed me to get it. This is one of the few songs where practice mode really doesn't help you (at least not with the majority of the song). This is because you cannot slow down the fast strumming of "Misirlou" to practice it--it will just fuck your rhythm up. A lot of people have trouble with fast strumming in this series, so they get screwed come "Misirlou." The only reason to take the song into practice mode is to practice the final set of triple chords, which is how basically everyone gets the 5 star. Activate SP over these trips and you're pretty much golden if you hit them with a x8 combo. However, it should be noted I didn't do this. I never really practiced this part too much, so I almost never hit it with a perfect multiplier. That is basically how I did things in the game--I never hit the parts you were supposed to when I did pull the 5 star out of my ass for songs. I just had a lucky run where my rhythm was great and I hit most of the verses under x4. This is I would say my greatest 5 star ever (a case could be made for "Texas Flood," but I hit it under the influence of opiates, so I consider it to not be as legitimate).

"Psychobilly Freakout" was the last song I 5-starred out of the main setlist, and it took forever. There is absolutely nothing about this song that is easy. And almost nothing repeats other then that chorus, so you absolutely have to hit it and try to hit those ending chords with a multiplier. This song was a damn pain to get. When I did get that Log, though, God--that whole year and a half was totally worth it. It made the achievement so much more worth it that I put in so much effort.

I was not able to hit the equivalent of the Log in GH1, Guitar Hero: Rock the '80s or GH3. True, I did not put in as much effort as I did in GH2 and that is probably a lot of the reason why. In all of these games I was only one song away. "Cowboys from Hell" in GH1 (no practice mode in this game really makes it a pain to go after 5 stars), "Play with Me" in '80s (I was starting to get close on this one, and I think I could do it with time), and "Raining Blood" from GH3 (I was getting close in this too). It has always let me down that I never got these songs 5-starred, as well as the two bonus songs in GH2 that I never got. "Jordan" is considered to be an easier 5 star to get than "Misirlou," and I believe that. The only thing is, "Jordan" might be the hardest song to pass in the entire series. I have never once beaten it, and that is my biggest let-down. I would rather beat it then Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames" (I can't believe I once got past the solo of "TTFAF" and failed at 90% because my finger was on the wrong button!). I was able to pretty consistently combo everything in "Jordan" outside of the solo, but that fucking solo is absolutely insane on the GH2 engine (a lot more unforgiving than GH3's, and that is one of my problems with GH3: they made the engine so easy to hit HOPO's [hammer-ons and pull-offs] that they overcharted all of their [bad] songs as a result, making a mess of the game). "Six" was the other song I was never able to 5-star in GH2. This is somewhat understandable, just because this song is absoultely damn ridiculous to combo. Jesse ranks it as the fourth-hardest in the series to 5-star, right before "Cowboys from Hell" and "Texas Flood" (this was another luck run, and like I said, I was lightly under the influence of opiates, so I have never been as proud of this one as I have been of "Misirlou").

My goal was always to 5-star every single expert song. I think with a lot of practice I could've gotten almost all of them. After all, I was missing only 10. The only one that I perhaps would not have been able to get is the annoying oh-my-god-look-how-hard-this-song-is-lol song "Through the Fire and Flames" in GH3. This is exponentially harder to 5-star than all of the other songs. But still, I had it as my goal that I would get them all, so I was going to try. My descent into drug addiction prevented me from playing anymore, because, like I mentioned before, I considered being under the influence as cheating since I found that I choked less often when I was high on opiates. They helped with the nervousness of my playing, so I thought it was unfair to count scores while on them.

Let me take a minute here to give shouts out to all of the bonus songs and songs from other games which were also a pain in the ass to 5-star on expert. First, let's do GH1: "Texas Flood" is considered the second-hardest 5-star in the entire series (I believe that "Cowboys from Hell" is harder personally, but that's just me); "Frankenstein" is an absolute bitch to get; "Bark at the Moon" I got soon thereafter, and is an absolute rocking song; "The Breaking Wheel" is the hardest bonus song to get, and the only big strumming song in GH1--it is such a pain to get because its speed keeps on changing randomly.

GH2 bonus songs: "Raw Dog" (fuck you, this song should not be hard); "FTK" (stupid song, no one knows about it, and hence no one wants to play it); "Gemini" (wait...looking up my score, I never 5-starred this?! Maybe I did and never posted it, I dunno, but that sucks if I didn't...I had to have, come on! It is ranked as just above "Thunderhorse" and just below "Carry Me Home"; you know what? I think I got this, but I will go and check sometime, although I think my GH2 is missing at the moment); "Less Talk More Rokk" (hard until you learn it in practice mode, then it's a lot of fun); "The Light That Blinds" (fast strumming craziness); "Thunderhorse" (along with "Laid to Rest," this is the song I hate most in the game--not hard for anyone else but me apparently).

GH '80s: "Electric Eye" (lots o' chord changes); "Caught in a Mosh" (fast strumming without being "fast strumming," w/ lots of chord changes); "Seventeen" (to me this is the hardest song because of hand changes other than "Play with Me," which is all solo).

GH3: I never really tried that seriously at this game, because by the time I bought it, I was losing interest in the series (partly because of how bad I thought GH3 was compared to the first two--two words: sell out). I don't even know what was that hard in this game other than the ones I didn't get ("Raining Blood" and some pain-in-the-ass bonus songs that suck). Fuck this game. It's sad that the games actually got worse in the series after this.

Anyways, hopefully this post shows how important this achievement was for me. This moment is not so much an individual moment as much as it was the summing up of a year's-plus worth of effort towards one goal: 5-starring all of the career songs in Guitar Hero II. I have never been quite so obsessed with a video game as I was at the peak of my playing with the Guitar Hero series. This was always my goal, but it was my biggest fear that I would never quite get the Log. My final goal was to 5-star all of the expert songs and to get a bunch of FCs, and I vaguely knew that I might never get this, but I'm glad I got the Log on the path to that. It's one thing I can cherish forever to picture myself at the top of my abilities at this game. One thing is for sure: I will never be able to 5-star "Misirlou" again.

--Edward