McWilliams’ World

My bud Jake is giving away a monster HP machine. Check it out below.

Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway

A few days ago the guys over at GamerScoreBlog.com posted a contest for a copy of Undertow; a new Xbox Arcade title. Being the contest and freebie loving guy that I am, quickly jumped over and entered the contest. As I logged on tonight and grabbed my email, I was pleasantly surprised by a notice to check my private messages over at the Chair Entertainment site. I won a copy. Yea me!

A few days ago Tracy told be about a Guitar Hero contest that a local bar, The Bar, was running. It had cash prized and two skill levels, $5 to enter. I thought about it and decided to give it a go.

Sign up started at 6pm, contest at 7pm. As I was parking my car I realized; I’m 34 years old, I’ll probably be the oldest guy playing. I kind of rolled my eyes and walked in. I signed up and noticed there weren’t too many signed up.

All in all 9 entries (including Parker-Jon) were in the “expert” group.

The idea was to do pro-face off against each other, with the winner advancing to the next round. Someone would call a coin toss and then roll a die to determine the song, from the top 6 in the set list. We started on Hard difficulty – I was happy about that.

The first two guys started to play and all of a sudden one guy is complaining about the guitar not hitting the notes and being all funky. I’m thinking “typical… you suck and you blame the guitar”. They try another guitar and give it another go.  Still no good so they end up just doing single player but still score against score. I’m thinking, “great… now this is going to take twice as long!”

My turns up, I win the coin toss and roll the die and get Slow Ride. LAME! The big screen TV’s positioned near the ceiling so you had to crank your neck to see what was going on; plus since we’re playing on a PS2 (blech! no HD) the screen looked like rhino dung. I was nervous as hell but I did pretty well. Now my opponent’s turn, he actually failed about 20% in. Not sure why. Slow Ride isn’t that hard of a song at all. I think he just gave up. So I sail through to the next round.

Parker has a shot but looses playing Story of My Life (wow…what a dud of a song!). He also lost in the second chance bracket. Must have been nerves. It’s a shame because I consider Parker to be almost on par with me in skill. I was watching him play the other night at home and my jaw dropped as he breezed through some solo sections of songs that I was sure to flub on. He’s got skillz!

A few more guys play and you instantly know who’s good and who isn’t.

My next round was against a 13 or 14 year old playing Sunshine of your Love (another song I could do without). I’m second so I get to see what I’m up against. He managed to score very well. I was worried. I started to play and before I missed a note I had over a 200 note streak going. I won by a few thousand points. The kid did great and I shook his hand.

They started a loser’s bracket so everyone got a second chance. This time on GH2. Parker played Killing In the Name Of but lost. But when we got done playing the whole bar was screaming and shouting and hollering’. I twas cool. Parker was probably the youngest player there and certainly the youngest in the Expert group. He did great and had a fun time!

The final two from the looser bracket and the final two from the expert bracket formed the final four. We played GH2 on Expert and started on the fifth and sixth tiers. The lower two went first and played John the Fisherman. My set, I called and rolled the die and ended up with YYZ. I shook my head. No way am I going to get this, the guy I’m against is too good. So I did my best but it wasn’t good enough.

We then had a face off for second place between myself and the third guy. Anther roll and we get Misirlou. A beast of a song. Tons of super fast strumming. The other guy goes and does pretty well. I know that I’m not going to beat him. I try my best and fell short – again, but hey! still managed to secure third place. I went around and shoot a few hands, said thanks for playing. I wound up winning my money back $10 (between Parker and I).

The guy running the contest stated that they’ll have more of these and may even have Rock Band in the future. A good time was had by all.

[update: Had to fix Parker's side of the story, he actually lost both rounds he was in... sad because he's extremely talented and sometimes can best me!]

A while back Jake Ludington posted a contest for a copy of Halo 3 Legendary Edition. All that was needed was a link to Jake on your web site and to let him know that it was there.

I just received an email from Jake stating that I’m the lucky winner! Saaaaaaaweeeet!

I’ll post pictures once I get it in my hands!

I love winning stuff and this is one hell of a thing to win. Thanks Jake!