Hosive

this is what my sweet t has been saving for. armed with $90 worth of gift certificates, a $10 coupon and my toysrus credit card which gets me 4% off, we headed to times square for the flagship toys r us to pick up guitar hero world tour(the full band game). theresa affirms that i am the master of the deal and laughs at how i accumulate discounts and coupons.

she loves guitar hero but when rock band came out, we resisted the temptation to jump ship to a different franchise. she is an early adopter and i am loyalist….with a common love for nintendo. so that combo left us waiting for guitar hero to catch up and then exceed the current band playing technology. with wifi access to the new guitar hero community, this is an endless box of musical fun. this is the real wii music….as opposed to that title that bears the name.

i wanted to get this early on sunday to avoid the crowds and lugging it around and through those masses; especially around times square…. but the store said they would not have them. i know that they lie and went to see after lunch. i didn’t want to wake up early and find out that they have decided to start telling the truth.

they are liars. they had at least 10 on display just for the wii…and 10 each for the other platforms. we picked out a box that looked pretty decent and the cashier immediately put it on the ground and put on the counter a pre-roped box with easy carry handle.

as i carried the box through the city, people gawked, pointed and lusted at our prize.

look at theresa tear into it! she can’t wait! i like making her happy. this year has been about that. more of her year since so much of her life is orbited around my life with the church and my work.

this is a small pleasure in life since i’ll wind up paying $50-$60 bucks out of pocket for the whole set….the price of a regular game.

there’s a lot of stuff here….drums, a guitar, the game, a mike, stickers….and tons of foam and packaging.

i am zero good at these games so theresa made steph play until steph was falling asleep with one eye open.

here’s the down side of early adopting….crappy products out of the box. the first few off the assembly line may not have all the bugs removed. theresa said that two of the drum panels were not responsive. she went online to find that many people had problems from the one theresa experienced to drums being too responsive. luckily, activision responded quickly and will issue tuning kits that will hopefully fix the problem. that seems to have satisfied the rabid fans. for now.

but when we invited people over…..they seemed to have fun just the same. these test drummers play their instruments hard so there were fewer problems with responsiveness. playing together seems to be a big hit. we’ve got all the instruments with the three included in the set and the old guitar from the original game.

so come on over and play in the magical fall with us. with theresa at the very least while i watch and laugh.

it is rare that i get to finish a video game. the days of unlimited hours of free time are past me. but over 4 months, which is an eternity for a video game beating, i beat zack and wiki for the wii! this was primarily a puzzle game where you are given different objects to be used innovatively in assorted scenarios. for example, you can use an umbrella as a parachute or flip it over and use the hook end to grab a latch just out of reach. some of the puzzles are mind numbingly hard while others are quick aha-s! but they are all for the most part very satisfying. there are a few that are cheap feeling….as in you feel cheated.

theresa and i beat rayman’s raving rabbits last year but with a lot of help from jeremy and steff. before that, i think i beat mario 64! which is over 10 years ago. i remember the good old days with my friend phil beating the mega man x games…all three of them. we were waiting to move to maryland and just killing time. we beat the first one in little under a week. our schedule: wake up, eat lunch, play until dinner, eat some more, play until the wee hours, repeat.

currently i’m playing endless ocean….a deep sea diving game. just explore and catalog. and also super mario galaxy. it’ll take me a year to beat that at the rate i go. my boy, brandon just beat it in little less than 2 weeks?