Psssh. That wasn’t so tough. Here I thought Guitar Hero 2 was going to rough me up a bit, but after a four-hour power session, I’ve gone and made “Freebird” my bitch. Okay, I’ll admit it took tons of both skill and luck, but still, I imagined it’d be a little harder.

Oh blah. I like to pretend EXPERT doesn’t exist. Hard is just where I like things. Besides, Eric’s playing Expert, and he says it’s kicking his ass all over the place, and he’s a good ten times better at this game than I am. And yes, I named my band “Six Machine”. It’s a freakin’ awesome band name.

I guess that about wraps it up. I guess as kind of a teaser of the inevitable, I’ve already got most of my “10 best games of 2006” picked out. Guess where GH2 stands.

With every day that passes, my lust for the Wii grows stronger. Unfortunately, my fears that I will not be able to secure one on launch day are also increasing. Like, I’m having nightmares about it. But I’ll spare you my whining about that for another day. Today: Guitar Heroism. Sort of.

Long story short, I found this totally sweet program called Frets On Fire. It’s essentially Guitar Hero for your PC, but with a few key differences. One, you play with the keyboard. That sounds like crap, but the game actually suggests you hold teh keyboard like a guitar, and it works out really well. Guitar Hero vets will be rocking faces off pretty quickly. Secondly, you can add your own songs to the game, essentially giving it limitless potential. It’s kind of a complicated process, so I haven’t tried it yet, but the pack I downloaded came pre-loaded with all the Guitar Hero tracks and then some (try isoHunt) so I’m good for now. I’m sure it won’t take long before I try to stuff some Garey Hoey or more Blue Oyster Cult in there though. The only downside to the game is that it seems to be pretty buggy. so far, three out of five play sessions ended without my consent. If you need more songs that GH offers (remember, GH2 comes out in like three days) or want to see what GH is like without dropping ~$90, it’s definitely a good program to have around.

It’s been a while since I said anything about Guitar Hero, so maybe right now is a good time. I’ve been working hard at 5-starring all the songs on Hard, and slowly making progress through Expert mode. I’m definitely getting better, even though I stumble through most solos by luck alone. I swear, my fingers are nowhere near coordinated enough to play through some of the rougher spots that I’ve managed to succeed at.

The main driving force behind my effort to master the game is that now the entire song list for Guitar Hero 2 has been released. And if you know any of the songs on there, you’ll agree when I say that GH2 is gong to be monumentally difficult compared to the first. “Freebird”‘s placement as the final song is entirely deserved, as it’s a nine-minute song with a four-and-a-half minute solo. “Bark At The Moon” will look like a cakewalk compared to that. Hell, even “The Breaking Wheel” will seem easy once I’ve had my ass handed to me by “Misirlou.”

On the upside of all this, I procured the demo disc from November’s OPM, which conveniently includes a demo of Guitar Hero 2. And as I sit here, hunt-and-pecking away at the keyboard, eating my ramen and peas dinner (Dinner at 11PM? You bet.), I can’t help but wonder why it is that I’m not working on getting a respectable score on “YYZ.” It is a great demo though. I can’t get enough of “Strutter” and “You Really Got Me” is incredibly fun to play. The only bummer is that you need an SG controller (or perhaps a third-party Flying V) to play, so the demo’s only good for existing GH fans who can’t wait half a month more for the sequel. It’d be nice if they had Dual Shock support so people new to the game could give it a whirl, but really, what is Guitar Hero without a guitar controller?