Wrist pain, and other rock-related injuries...

OK, so I eventually settled on Guitar Hero II for my after-work fix today. What can I say, I didn't feel in the mood for Battlefield and my brain was too fried for something as intense as SMT:DDS.

I love rhythm games like DDR, Guitar Freaks and all that, but the Guitar Hero games have something the Japanese games seem to lack- a real sense of roleplaying. Yes, you only have a 3-foot plastic guitar with buttons and a strum bar instead of strings, but you ARE a rock and roll hero while you're jamming on it. You can choose from a variety of venues, characters and guitars and the songs are real classic rock songs (OK, so they're mostly covers, but still...)

And the songs are generally pretty great. The first game has (among others) Incubus, Queen, David Bowie, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, White Zombie, Deep Purple, Bad Religion, Audioslave and FRANZ FERDINAND! Yes, 'Take Me Out' is available for you to rock out to! The sequel isn't quite as good but still has Kiss, Nirvana, The Stone Temple Pilots, The Living End, The Foo Fighters, Wolfmother and Rage Against The Machine. It's a pretty good collection of music.

Still, I can't help but feel that Guitar Hero II at least was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Where was 'Black Betty'? Where was 'Chop Suey'? Where was 'Unforgiven II', which has what it in my opinion both the best guitar riff and solo in history? And if they're going to use The Living End, then why would they choose 'Carry Me Home' instead of the far more appropriate 'All Torn Down'? They didn't even follow up on GH1's 'Take Me Out' with 'Do You Want To?' or even 'The Fallen', which is a crying shame. And there's still no AC/DC at all. I'm aware that there are licensing issues involved and that because of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode all songs must have both a good lead guitar and rhythm/bass line, but I really feel it could have been a bit better.

On the bright side, these games are doing really well, so we can expect to see several more installments before the series runs its course. Which means a whole lot more wrist pain before I'm done rocking. Ouch. Shouldn't have had that go at 'Freebird' on Hard level. 20 guitar solo sections in a row can really take it out of you, even if I failed around the 60% mark...

Maybe I should take the game's advice and consider buying a real guitar...?