Saturday, January 12, 2008

Rock Band continues to grow on me...

I wrote in an earlier post about how, surprisingly, I enjoyed playing the drums on Rock Band. Well, tonight I met up with friends after some board gaming to chill out assuming that I'd either play some drums or (to everyone's horror) sing because I never got into the guitars in Guitar Hero.

However, I jumped in on bass (medium difficulty) and had a blast. I experienced bursts of the sense of flow that I had while I was drumming and I wonder if it has less to do with the kind of instruments that were available and more to do with the number of people who were able to play at once. This is mere speculation, but 2 player co-op in the original Guitar Hero never felt as electric to me as the 3-4 player modes of Rock Band. Of course, maybe it was just the addition of the drums or the mic. But I really do think it has more to do with the social pressure (and reward) of trying to gel with multiple people. You feel extra bad when you can't hold your own weight -- and you feel extra good when the 3 or 4 of you are in sync and rocking out.

I'll have to investigate this further.

Side note: We played board games at an awesome game store in Queen Anne called Blue Highway Games. The game was called Power Grid and it was quite fun. The only problem: No beer.

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