Bill Harris posted a hilarious and surprisingly effective method of generating band names for EA’s game Rock Band among other things. I decided to slap together a script that automates the process. Go try it out!

Look at stupid me. Just look what I did in my discussion of my new toy, Rock Band for the Xbox 360.

If only there weren’t rumbles of less than reliable hardware. The guitars have strummers that seemingly inevitably screw up and the “overdrive” doesn’t kick in consistently. The bass drum pedal snaps in half. The drum heads start not responding. People that can’t sing use the mics. I admit to being a bit worried about the longevity of the hardware, but it certainly hits the right balance to provide a simply astounding level of happy happy.

See that? I summoned the hardware failure! I have no one to blame but myself. So there I am trying to get through the Hard difficulty on guitar and I’ve got a steady stream of 16th notes. No fret movements required, just hold ‘em down and strum. I can do that. Except the guitar wouldn’t let me. I could string together maybe 6 or 7 but I’d inevitably lose my run even though I know I’m strumming consistently and in-time.

I certainly will not be mentioning anything about my recently acquired Mass Effect game, nor will I so much as allude to my bass kick pedal.

I tried to fit in a little game of NHL08 this morning before work, but Julia was having none of it. She popped in and wanted to watch but watching soon became…

“Daddy, can you teach me how to play, please?”

I am not, contrary to common opinion, a heartless bastard and this certainly had its intended effect. So I loaded up a shootout, showed her that the left thumbstick made the little guy skate around and that if she wanted to shoot the puck she should push the right thumbstick up.

Away we go. She is quite entertained simply skating around for a while, occasionally sending poor Eric Staal repeatedly into the boards, then crosses the goal line and the whistle blows.

“You can’t cross the little line, sweetie.”

“Oh.”

Next skater comes and she skates around some more and crosses the goal line. Tweet.

“Don’t forget, you can’t cross the line.”

Next skater comes and she skates and pushes the right thumbstick forward and shoots, all by herself! This gets her excited but soon enough Daniel Alfredsson ends our run and the game ends. I set up a rematch and she skates in as Eric Staal again, wrists it from the slot and deflects one off the pads and scores!

“Yay Julia!” I’m pretty sure I scared her by yelling so loudly. “You scored!” She raises the controller over her head and bounces up and down in celebration.

Spezza skates in, toe drags and puts a nice one past Ward. Crap. I figured she might actually win it. Matt Cullen (allpraisehisname) skates in next and Julia skates past the goal line again. Ah well. Heatley takes his turn and boofs it so it’s Cory Stillman up next.

Julia skates in, wrists one which deflects off the glove and through Gerber’s legs for a goal! Winner, Julia! Her second NHL08 shootout ever and she wins it. At 4 and a half years old.

Almost brings a tear to my eye.

I figured I was immune to rhythm games after I sold off Guitar Hero 2. I reached a point in that game where the joy of rocking met the harsh reality of the difficulty curve and I realized in a flash of insight that I was done. I play so little anymore — even less these days now that Julia has The Cough That Time Cannot Dissipate and I’m in what I term “defensive mode” where all I want to do is sleep in the expectation that it will be an utterly miserable night — that when I do take the time to play I want to have fun. I don’t want drudgery, I don’t want to constantly bang my head against the brick wall of impossibility. I want simple enjoyment. So, once I hit the hard difficulty level in Guitar Hero 2 and started failing miserably I simply went on Craigslist and sold it.

I’d seen the runup in anticipation for the successor, Guitar Hero III and for the new kid on the block, Rock Band. I had witnessed from the virtual sidelines as the lined up across from each other with their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses, but I didn’t care. I was past that!

Until…

But then they get released and I start hearing rumblings:

“Rock Band is more approachable.”

“Rock Band + drums is almost pure, distilled joy.”

“Rock Band cures most transmittable diseases.”

So I caved. Early Christmas present for daddy. And it does indeed rock, and I haven’t even tried it with anyone else. Cat, of course, won’t touch it with a boat oar so that’s out of the question. I have some friends coming tonight and anticipation is high. The difficulty ramp is more approachable. I’m just on the cusp of hitting hard difficulty on the guitar — which is the first that actually uses all 5 frets — and I’m not dreading it. The drums on medium are doable for a total drum twit like me to approach, though whoever came up with “Green Grass & High Tides” and its 9 minutes worth of right-leg torture will roast long and slow in the deepest pits of hell. I’ve even done a couple of vocals on some Police songs and aced them… but I have the voice of a nightingale so this should shock no one.

Rock is meant to be rough

If only there weren’t rumbles of less than reliable hardware. The guitars have strummers that seemingly inevitably screw up and the “overdrive” doesn’t kick in consistently. The bass drum pedal snaps in half. The drum heads start not responding. People that can’t sing use the mics. I admit to being a bit worried about the longevity of the hardware, but it certainly hits the right balance to provide a simply astounding level of happy happy.

Is it time to rock yet?

Thanks to my buddy Dave giving me the Half-Life 2 Orange Box for the PC, I now have a free electronic copy of the original Half-Life 2 to giveaway. All you need is a Steam account and I’ll “gift” the game to you.

Perhaps at this point I should actually finish it as well. I never did. Though with Portal and Team Fortress 2, that’s a tough call. They’ve really put a lot of value into this package with 5 pieces of content. Admittedly, some of the content is old but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still valuable.