{"id":24,"date":"2007-01-25T18:10:35","date_gmt":"2007-01-25T23:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/24"},"modified":"2014-06-05T11:00:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T18:00:49","slug":"guitar-hero-bark-at-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/24","title":{"rendered":"Guitar Hero: Bark at the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The songs in Guitar Hero<\/em> are divided into six levels of increasing difficulty. The highest level is unavailable on Easy mode, so when I unlocked it on Medium, I didn’t know what to expect. The first four songs turned out to be difficult, but not too difficult — I managed to scrape through them all on the first try, albeit missing a lot of notes in the process. Then came the infamous “Bark at the Moon”.<\/p>\n

I had heard about this song. It recently made a list of the top 20 videogame bosses<\/a>. This seemed humorously incongruous when I read about it, but now I understand. It has that bosslike order-of-magnitude-harder-than-anything-else-you’ve-faced quality. The very first thing it throws at you is a rapid alternation between the lowest and highest notes you can play, which involves muscles I haven’t used in a long time. I assume it’s even worse on higher difficulty levels.<\/p>\n

It’s been two days since I got that far, and I haven’t successfully barked at the moon yet. Partly this is because I can’t try again immediately after a failed attempt. Not because the game won’t let me, but because each attempt is wearing enough on the hands that I need a break. The game in general is tiring, to the point that I wonder if I’m holding the controller wrong, but not to this degree. (I have experimented with alternate postures a little, such as holding the controller in my lap and playing the fret buttons like a piano keyboard, but these always prove to be more awkward than doing it the right way.)<\/p>\n

On my last attempt, I got all the way to the final solo, which, due to its unfamiliarity, I played badly enough to bring the audience all the way from the green zone on the rock-meter down to booing me off the stage. The end result: 99% completion. 99%<\/strong>. I think the final note was actually on the screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The songs in Guitar Hero are divided into six levels of increasing difficulty. The highest level is unavailable on Easy mode, so when I unlocked it on Medium, I didn’t know what to expect. The first four songs turned out to be difficult, but not too difficult — I managed to scrape through them all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-guitar-hero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2719,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/2719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}