McWilliams' World » Guitar Hero

Repaired: GH2 Xplorer

mcwilliams — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:55:32 +0000

One of our Xplorer guitars for Guitar Hero has been on-the-fritz for a while; wouldn’t stay connected – short in the cable. Finally getting sick of it, I found www.guitarheroparts.com and ordered a replacement USB cable for $13 + ship. I also discovered that there’s no simple "plug" for this as wires are soldered into a connector on a circuit board. This would require some soldering – of which I’ve never done before.

So I ran off to Menards and picked up a cheap soldering iron and some electric solder and started the repair.

After opening the guitar, I snipped off the old USB cable leaving about 2" of wire attached to the circuit board. I had to strip the wires back a bit so I could intertwine them and then solder them to the new cable; matching the colors. After everything cooled off, I tested the guitar and it seems to work just fine now. I reassembled and gave it a thorough testing. Works great.

Some drawbacks:

The cable is just a straight USB cable and doesn’t conform to the Xplorer’s attachment at the body. So some hot glue is in order to keep things in place
The cable is about a 12" shorter which may cause you to get a USB extension cable.
Could I have gotten away with just standard USB cable from MonoPrice.com for a fraction of the cost? I don’t know – probably.

It’s not ideal but it get’s our second controller back in-the-game. Ultimately, I’d be nice to get the GH3 Gibson Wireless – we’ll see. Maybe when my gift cards come in.

Won Third Place In Local Guitar Hero Contest

mcwilliams — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:38:30 +0000

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!]

Finished the Fight! And rocked the Devil’s socks off!

mcwilliams — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:39:47 +0000

I managed to beat Halo 3 on Heroic today. Quite the nail-biter of an escape. I’ll admit, I still don’t understand the story but I’m sure I’ll get it on other run through. What sucked about finishing it on Heroic was the even though I got an achievement for finishing, it was only for Normal mode because apparently it unlocks first if you never beat the game on Normal – even if you beat it on Heroic. GRRR!!!

I also beat Guitar Hero 3 on Hard. I initially started on Expert (getting to the 2nd last tier) but after hitting a wall I restarted on Hard. I had a rough time with the Slipnot and Slayer songs. Just brutal. Once getting to the final “boss battle”, the devil - The Devil Went Down to Georgia, I smoked it on the first try. During the credits you get to play Dragonforce’s crazy song Through the Fire and Flames. I’m glad they put it there; no chance of failing.

I also managed to play a bit of GH3 on-line and won two rounds. Even getting the elusive “Meet your maker” achievement when you beat one of the game’s developers. Fun stuff!

Guitar Hero 3 so far… meh.

mcwilliams — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:35:27 +0000

Man, I just breezed through the first four tiers in GH3 on expert and all I can say “It’s teh suck – so far.” (yes, I meant to spell “the” that way).

Wow. Just wow. What a bunch of underwhelming, no-name, blah, mundane bunch of songs. I think I 5 stared Paranoid on the first try – I know I at least got two achievements (250 note streak, 250k+ score). I’d say 90% of the songs are power-chords and simple strumming. No cool guitar licks or grooves. That Sonic Youth song and Story of My Life; what the heck are those?! Wow, they blow.

I remember reluctantly selecting the next song in the list knowing that it’s the only way I can move forward. I don’t know what Activision, Neversoft and Red Octane were thinking when these songs were selected. There’s absolutely nothing exciting about them nor is there much of a challenge.

That being said, I’ll plod through, but there better be a more than a handful of fun songs to play otherwise the replay value, for me, will be slim. Even with multi-player – if the songs suck… that wouldn’t even be fun.

Man, I was really looking forward to this. But it’s no fun when you just want the song to end.

Let’s just say I’m seriously looking at picking up Rock Band.