Thursday night, we were playing Rock Band, and she was giggling again.
“What?” I asked between a break in the lyrics.
“Nothing, nothing!” Katie smirked as she kept banging on the drums.
But I knew what it was: my vocals were coming through too loudly, and they sounded ridiculous. A quick visit to the controller and my vocals were muted behind the lead vocals, allowing me to avoid being mocked for the time being.
When my first set of DDR pads got destroyed after nine months of abuse at the feet of college kids, I can’t say I was terribly surprised – but it made me sad.
When I got Rock Band, and stories of flaky hardware were abound, I wasn’t terribly surprised that the strum bar on my guitar got a little flaky. Not bad enough to send in, but causing the occasional miss.
I’ve had to retire two DSes (busted speakers and buttons, then a non-functioning touchscreen), a Mac Cube (optical drive motor), two Sidekicks (trackball both times), a lampshade iMac (optical drive malfunction), a G5 iMac (power supply), and there was that whole 360 thing.
Things break, I know.
Never did I think I’d be such a hardcore SingStar player that I’d break the blue microphone, but here we are. Color me surprised just this once.
You will be forgiven for forgetting – what with the Wii and the PS3 launches – that Singstar Rocks (the US version, anyhow) shipped last week. [I posted about the tracklist previously.](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2006/09/singstar_rocks_us_tracklist.php) $50 gets you two microphones, 30 songs, and the ability to torture your cat by rocking out to Bloc Party.
The interface remains mostly unchanged from the UK version of Singstar Rocks. One thing I don’t recall being in the UK version (maybe this is in other version) is a “rap meter”, which appears at the very least in Summertime. Also, the menu music has changed.
High recommendations.
(Thanks to Katie for the somewhat embarrassing picture.)