Mrs. Geek recently surprised me with a house-warming gift: Rockband. I’ve tried Guitar Hero, and not enjoyed it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the game. It’s just that my brain will not do guitar. As soon as I have to turn one of my hands around to push the buttons on the neck, everything gets flipped and I can’t find anything. I’ve tried laying it flat and using it like a keyboard (I took piano for a year). That got me up to a whopping 40% of the notes. But then I encountered Rockband. I was at a friend’s house, who had RB, and tried the drums. Cool! I know most people find the drums to be harder. I can see why. The sound of the sticks hitting the "drums" is louder than most of the game itself so it’s harder to tell when you’ve hit the wrong note. I plan on putting pads on my drumsticks to take care of that.
Mrs. Geek is actually a terrific singer. Her mother used to be a struggling rock and roll musician back in the 70s and 80s. The closest she got to stardom was being told no by a record label because they already had a female act that year. Anyway, Mrs. Geek got a lot of her chops from her mother, and the rest from singing in the church choir. The Pup goes for the axe, and is quite good. Thankfully no one likes the drums but me. What occurred to me as we played our first song together was that this was the first videogame we ever had where the three of us could play together as a family, as the TTJ Band (name comes from our collected first initials). This is to me the hidden value of the game.
