zsjostrom35's Thread II (GH80sX: Fifteen new FCs!)

**zsjostrom35** · Joined: 17 Feb 2008 Posts: 2130 Location: Columbus, Ohio

zsjostrom35's Accomplishment Thread II

Before I get into any of the more administrative stuff concerning new FCs and a couple new things I've added to the thread this time around, I would like to take the time to thank everyone who made it necessary for me to have this second thread in the first place. 1500 posts regarding me and my accomplishments is a LOT, and it's a great honor to have received so much (perhaps undeserved

) attention from this great community and my friends within it. I will always remember that old thread as a great place and a great atmosphere for talking with you guys about many things (not all of them GH-related), and if this thread turns out anywhere near as well as that one did I'll regard it as a success. That said, I don't expect this thread to be a carbon copy of the old one; in fact I hope it's not. I've changed, you all have changed, and ScoreHero has changed since then, and it is my wish that this thread be whatever it needs to be for us to enjoy it. If that means more mega-posting, then great. If not, that's also great. All I know is that I'm looking forward to seeing where this thread goes, having some good discussion, and maybe (just maybe) having some accomplishments to go with it

.

Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/zsjostrom35-s-GH-Show (will appear in green when online; red when offline)

Stream Notification List:

Since I refuse to bump this thread with a double post, I've recently encountered the problem of people not knowing when my stream is online. This section is an attempt to remedy that; it will contain a list of people to whom I will send a message whenever I start streaming. Let me know (PM is preferable) if you would like to receive such notification and I'll add you to the list. You can specify whether you would like to receive an e-mail or a PM.

ace5993
alexhaz64
CristianHero
Davers
elitewarrior500
Fork1
fudrick
GlassDragon
GenericName
Guku416
JohnnyGrey
NfskMjmMal2
oddlyuneven
PiemanLK
shredinmadness
singertoad
SlasherManEXE
thatguy4893
TheLonging
thenewkidaw71
TheThirdDay
this1neguy
xboxpro57

Recent Accomplishments (Cleaned out for a fresh start):

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8/28/10: HUGE night of GH80s on stream: 15 new FCs! This was actually my first time playing any GH at all in several weeks, but apparently whatever rust I'd accumulated in that time was easily shaken off. Obviously I'm not going to talk about all of them here, but I did get videos of a few of the tougher ones:

Wrathchild
Holy Diver
Bang Your Head (Metal Health)
Ain't Nothin' But a Good Time

Anyway, in honor of this occasion I've finally added a section to this post for 80s accomplishments, so you can go check out the rest of the FCs there (numbers 6-20), as well as read my impressions of the game and an FC goals list. Also, I've finally updated my Best Of lists to reflect recent events (by which I mean leagues, mostly).

8/27/10: Yeah...so I guess I'm back again

. To be honest, I never really intended to leave, but apparently leagues burned me out on GH a lot more than I thought they would. That, combined with the fact that I overhauled my sleep schedule several weeks ago to start going to bed and getting up at so-called "normal" times (meaning I miss almost all the streams) and that I hadn't been posting on SH for a while anyway, basically resulted in me losing all contact with you guys and led me to question whether I was done with GH permanently. While I was away, I spent a fair amount of time playing other games, starting with Super Smash Brothers Brawl, although that ended when I pretty much beat everything there was to beat in the game (not an exaggeration--I completed the Subspace Emissary adventure mode on Intense difficulty, went back and 100%ed it by collecting every item box and going through every door, and earned/found all 544 trophies in the game, which involved (among quite a lot else) beating the Boss Battles on Intense difficulty). Needless to say, this kept me busy for quite a while, but when it was done I wasn't terribly interested in Brawl anymore. In its place, I started playing the free online strategy game League of Legends. This was quite fun for a time, but the nature of the game also made for quite a lot of frustration, and eventually I got fed up with it and came to a very simple realization: I missed you guys

. I didn't have a whole bunch of people in League of Legends that I could share my successes, failures, and just plain crazy stories with, and I guess it took an absence from Guitar Hero to appreciate just how much that meant to me. So here I am again...let's rock!

I guess while I'm aound I should also probably stick in an update on leagues and stuff (which I really should have written almost a month ago). Without further ado:

Season 11 GH2 Expert League:

My expectations entering this league were pretty much that I should just improve a lot of scores, place fairly high in the regular season (where squeezing abilities are the most important measure of skill), and try not to embarrass myself in the playoffs. I think I did a pretty good job, all things considered. I improved 15 scores, placed third in a loaded field for the regular season (beating the likes of ShonSuperStar), and made it to the semifinals in the playoffs. Some specifics:

Best Moment: Without a doubt, getting 419,888 to win Carry Me Home in Week 3 and take first place on SH for the song.
Worst Moment: Flaming out in the semis of the playoffs. I knew I wasn't going to win since THABEAST had gotten a score on Psychobilly Freakout that I really had no chance of beating, but I never even managed to reFC the song. I had several close calls, including a choke seven notes from the end that would have been top 5 on SH easy, but I never quite got it.
Seriously? Moment: After failing a lot at War Pigs in Week 2, I eventually started playing out every run regardless of how bad my intro ticks were. Of course, the only time I managed to FC it was on a run with over 20 points fewer coming out than I like to have, and I missed first place overall on the song by 19. Ugh.
WOW This League is Loaded Moment: Got a score that would have tied for fourth on the overall leaderboards for Raw Dog in Week 2...and wound up fifth for the song that week :P.

Season 11 GH3 Co-op League:

From the moment I managed to talk Josh into unretiring from Guitar Hero to enter this league, our expectations were to win it. We were helped a lot in this regard by the fact that none of the other teams on the co-op leaderboards were entered, but even so I still think it went very well. By the time it was over, we'd won nine out of ten songs (we were beaten on In the Belly of a Shark by a team that almost certainly made use of an Xbox Live SP glitch), beaten seven of ten first places scores on the leaderboards (most of them were already ours, but still), and even gotten a new FC en route to a decisive victory. More superlatives:

Best Moment: By a large margin, getting a double FC of The Number of the Beast to win the league and take a first place score from Plesant Burning Sensation (one that they actually care about too, if their comment is any indication

)
Worst Moment: Probably In the Belly of a Shark Week 1; we're pretty sure we could have won it even despite the glitch if we'd been able to get all the squeezes we were going for. It's a hard song though.
Man, We're Pretty Good at This (

) Moment: Our Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll score was sick; the path involves a ton of split squeezes including a split double squeeze on the front end of one activation and we did a really good job with it to beat our old first place score (which was already up by about 4k) by nearly a thousand points.

Anyway, moving on from leagues. I think most of you already know this, but I managed to acquire a copy of GH80s from one of my housemates, and I did my sightreads of the entire setlist on stream a several weeks back. My impressions basically echo what pretty much everybody else says about that game; it's really fun, but too short. I got five sightread FCs, the most impressive of which was undoubtedly Synchronicity II (although I choked Wrathchild, which might have been better as a sightread FC since the solo is so confusing). I doubt I'll ever grind this game for score, but I'll probably go for FCs at least semi-seriously since it's so much fun. I figure I ought to be able to get to the mid-20s at least on the breakdown.

Speaking of FCs, I got a bunch more in GHVH the last time I streamed, although I can't remember which ones they were exactly or even how many. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure why I brought it up; I guess I'll have to go look them up the next time I put in the game. I do remember getting Best of You and So This Is Love? though, which were pretty good.

6/12/10: And the Jordan improvements just keep coming

. I think it's safe to say that I've never improved at anything so fast as I have on Jordan B1 of late; over the last couple days I've literally been FCing it about half the time. Honestly, I should have had this sooner except for idiotic struggles with the Guitar Break and the Bridge. Finally got an FC of those two in the same run tonight (as well as an FC of my activation and transition to tapping on the first three notes of B1, which is honestly the hardest part of it for me at this point

), and coupled with a single miss in F I cleared the cutoff quite comfortably. Got a pic because I'm REALLY happy about this

Also, in case you're wondering, this was my last available seven-star in GH2, so this marks my first FG7* in any game!

6/1/10: Man, it has been a LONG time since I had any significant improvements in GH2. However, the wait was worth it tonight, as I finally picked up two of the last three seven-stars in the game: Hangar 18 and Six! Of the two, Hangar 18 definitely represented a more significant investment of effort; I'd been working on the solos (especially Solo 5 and Solo 7!) quite extensively for some time before I pulled it off. Despite all that work, however, it took me a LONG time to put together a decent run of both halves of the song, and in fact this run came dangerously close to not qualifying. I was strongly considering restarting after a miss in Solo 2a (seriously?) and a couple really costly misses in Solo 5 (I also missed in Solo 4b, but that's unavoidable for me at this point), but on a whim I decided to play it out. I then proceeded to FC Solo 6 (not a huge deal, but I had been having some consistency problems there so it was nice), Solo 7! (previously one of the hardest sections of the song for me; the practice here has paid off a TON and I'm actually pretty good at it now) and Solo 8!! (fairly easy), which certainly got my attention. I figured a good Solo 9!!! would be enough for seven stars at that point, so of course I immediately missed twice in the first two streaks. However, I managed to regroup and FCed my entire activation (pretty sure it's the first time I've ever done that) to squeak over the cutoff by about 900 points. It's rare that I get a run that clutch

Six may not have involved nearly as much effort and is probably easier from an objective standpoint, but honestly I'm just as proud of it for the simple fact that I have been awful at that song for a very long time and so it feels amazing to break 400k at long last. For whatever reason, I was doing MUCH better on the verses tonight than I'd ever done before, so with a little Solo practice I figured I could get it. This I did, and then proceeded to take real runs. Interestingly enough, the run that did it was curiously similar to the Hangar 18 run in that I was bombing early on (I had two separate misses under SP in the first chorus and misses in both verses as well); in fact if it hadn't been for the fact that I'd FCed the intro for the first time ever (I didn't say the runs were EXACTLY the same

) I would definitely have restarted. However, in a similar display of clutchness I managed to FC the solo under star power and then hammered the outro to the tune of a single miss, which was enough points to get over the cutoff by about 3k.

In other news, I've been working on the Jordan solo a fair amount recently, and I must say I've been pleased with my progress on it (in Practice Mode, anyway; I haven't been able to improve my score yet). Even without a tremendous amount of focus on Solo C I've picked up Full Speed FCs of C1 and C3, and I feel like I'm close to C2. C4 is still crazy, however; I need a LOT more work there (I don't think I've even hit it on Slow yet). Solo B is where I've put in the most time, and I'll let YouTube show you the results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWKvopFOvL8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIhjPKkIgk

Needless to say, I'm quite pleased with this

On a less serious note, I did some messing around with GH:SH Vocals a few weeks ago and I made a few videos. I don't think they turned out too badly considering I don't really have a high enough voice to be singing most of these songs

More than a Feeling Death Scream (Good times in falsettoville

)
Godzilla -2 (Blew my FC on a talky :P)
Hey You 99% (Probably the easiest to sing out of the ones I did, but still a great song)
Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart 99% (Without question the hardest. Scott Weiland is a beast)
Heart Shaped Box FC (Easy, but a fun FC)

4/18/10: Been a while since I had two significant updates in one day, but I did it today: Holiday in Cambodia FCed! This was nothing short of absurd; I just decided to play the song on stream more or less at random, figuring I'd probably fail massively a couple times and then take it into practice. I was so sure of this that I didn't even bother recording it, and of course that meant I FCed the entire thing first try

. I did manage to get the camera on during one of the long breaks post-strumming, but naturally that vid isn't very exciting. I may upload it anyway, but meh.

Score was better than I was expecting (504,450; good for 29th place); FC #59 in GH3X!

4/18/10: I doubt this is going to become any permanent sort of co-op reuinion, but Josh and I teamed up once more today to retake our first on The Seeker! To be honest, I'm not sure why he was excited enough about our prospects on this one to come out of GH retirement for one song, but whatever; it was nice to play with him again and apparently we did a pretty good job

. This is a hard path (courtesy of Plesant Burning Sensation, whose score we beat to get this first) with a lot of immediate activations and a couple tough squeezes in bass, and it took us a while to get it down. The score was worth it though, as we're the first team to break 600k on the song (6.189 average multiplier, for the record)

We also got a vid, if you're interested.

3/26/10: Second thread up and running! In case you weren't around at the end of my last thread and haven't seen me in streams, I've been taking a leave of absence from ScoreHero for the past couple months because I was basically burnt out on posting and I needed some time off. In addition to that, this break also afforded me more time to stream and to attend other players' streams, which was very nice. However, I'm ready to return now, as you can see, and with any luck I'll be having a very enjoyable time here like I used to.

Of course, a new accomplishments thread isn't much without new accomplishments, and in addition to the extra streaming and viewing of streams I also had more time for Guitar Hero. Here's a quick rundown of what I managed to do while I was gone, in case you missed it:

GH1: FCs of Infected, Ace of Spades, Even Rats, Iron Man, Guitar Hero, Godzilla, No One Knows
GH2: Tech FC of and a new high score on Institutionalized
GH3: Don't Hold Back FC
GHWT: Weapon of Choice FC

Obviously, I was focusing mainly on GH1 during this time, and I'm actually playing it seriously for score now. As such, I've added a goals section for that game to this thread, which you can see if you scroll on down to the table of contents.

Oh and by the way, I'm aware that my Best-of lists are in need of some serious updating. I may get around to that later today.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents:

Recent Accomplishments (Since the start of the new thread)

Guitar Hero I

Random Thoughts/Observations

Goals

FC Goals
Non-FC Goals

Full Combo/100% List

Guitar Hero II

Goals

FC Goals
Non-FC Goals

Past Accomplishments

Full Combo/100% List
Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero II Journey
Notable Chokes

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s

Random Thoughts/Observations

Goals

Full Combo/100% List

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Goals

FC Goals
Non-FC Song Goals
Other Goals (Skill/Ranking)

Past Accomplishments

Full Combo/100% List
Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero III Journey
Notable Chokes
Five-Starred Through the Fire and Flames

Guitar Hero III Co-op

Goals

FC Goals
Non-FC Goals

Past Accomplishments

Full Combo/100% List
Timeline of Notable Events in our Guitar Hero III Co-op Journey

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

Goals

FC Mercy
(Other) FC Goals
Non-FC Goals

Past Accomplishments

Full Combo/100% List
Notable Chokes

Guitar Hero: World Tour

Random Thoughts/Observations

Goals

Full Combo/100% List

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

Random Thoughts/Observations

Goals

Full Combo/100% List

Guitar Hero 5

Random Thoughts/Observations

Goals

Full Combo/100% List

Guitar Hero: Van Halen

Random Thoughts/Observations

Goals

Full Combo/100% List

My "Best" Accomplishments

Top Five Best FCs

Top Five Best FC Scores

Top Five Best Non-FC Scores

Top Five Best Sightread Runs

Top Five Best Runs of Any Song, Period

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Guitar Hero I:

Random Thoughts/Observations:
I actually got World Tour for my Wii last weekend, but while my roommate was picking it up for me (our agreement was that he could play it as much as he wanted if he actually got it from the Gamestop) he decided to buy the GHI/GHII combo pack for his PS2. So although I now have available to me all this newfangled stuff like touch-strip solos and notes over anchored sustains, for the past few days I've played nothing but the old-school, strumming-arm-busting, hyperspeed-and-HO/POs-are-for-wimps Guitar Hero. And I've been having a blast! Some thoughts/stories:

First and foremost, this setlist is freaking awesome. Even though all the non-bonus songs are covers, very few of them lost much from the original versions (with the exception of Sharp Dressed Man. Whoever did those vocals had absolutely no concept of the proper Southern accent for a ZZ Top song. For shame...). Tier 6 alone would make this game worth buying, but Tier 5 is also really solid, Get Ready 2 Rokk is Freezepop at their absolute best; the list just keeps going.
The engine does take some getting used to. I was rushing everything when I first started because of the lack of hyperspeed, and you absolutely cannot go too fast in this game without breaking combo. The towel trick (or sweatshirt trick ) helped a lot with that.
Passing the harder songs in this game was really difficult if I didn't save star power; my legendary flailing skills are all for naught on an engine this precise. The only Tier 6 song I passed on the first try was Bark at the Moon (because I knew I'd need SP for that solo). For comparison, I passed Satch Boogie and Hot for Teacher on sightread.
I actually got pretty good at using HO/POs on the little grace notes (single strum hammered to a single higher note), but for the most part I went the "strum everything" route. For the few occasions where I did attempt to muster up some fretting precision, I will say this: there are few things in Guitar Hero that are more satisfying than hitting two consecutive notes in GHI without strumming
I am an epic downstrummer. On my five-star run of Texas Flood, for example, I downstrummed absolutely everything but the Orange Star Streak of Death (which I obviously missed anyway), and was actually able to hold combo through some of those descending quads which I think are over 10 NPS. On the rare occasions when I was forced to alt-strum, it did not go so well; Cowboys from Hell took me at least seven or eight tries to pass and The Breaking Wheel took more tries to five star than any other bonus song.
This game brought me my first two sightread FCs ever. Well, it's actually more like one and a half, because Hey almost doesn't count (it's basically as easy as Closer, but with no chords). Behind the Mask was none too shabby, though.
Finally, this game was the first real game (Aerosmith doesn't count), in which I was able to claim Guitar God status. I actually didn't find this too difficult once I got the hang of the engine; it only took me two sittings. On my first pass through the main setlist I five-starred most of the first four tiers (exceptions were Take Me Out, Killer Queen, Symphony of Destruction (which I failed on sightread ), and Fat Lip), as well as Spanish Castle Magic and Higher Ground. The next day I went through the bonus songs, most of which presented little difficulty for five-starring (I think only The Breaking Wheel and Decontrol took more than two or three tries). After that I went back to the main setlist, picking up the rest of the first five tiers, Godzilla, Frankenstein, and Bark at the Moon within two runs of each. Texas Flood fell within about five more runs or so (towel trick was a lifesaver; I probably had not more than about 30% of the TV screen showing), but Cowboys from Hell was really rough. Alt-strumming combined with fret changes has never been my strong point (it actually took me at least seven or eight runs even to pass this sucker), but I eventually figured out the main riff, got lucky on a couple of those quick quads under star power, and squeaked over the cutoff to claim Guitar God status for the first time in any game!

Goals:

Full Combo/100% List:

Key:
Green: Achieved
Blue: Overstrummed or missed only one note; just need a good run
Red: Overstrummed or missed only one note on a freak run; FC may take a long time
Purple: Fewer than five misses; should FC soon
Dark Red: Fewer than five misses; FC will still take a pretty lucky run
Black: Lots of misses, but theoretically possible given that I've FCed every section at one point or another

Songs:
Smoke on the Water—I've hit every HO/PO line here many times; this is ridiculously overdue now that I've got almost 30 FCs
Ziggy Stardust—I've come pretty close to this on one or two occasions, but they felt like fluke runs
Take it Off—I don't think I've ever hit the triplets in their entirety, but I know I've been close and as I recall there's not much else hard in the song
Crossroads—I've choked this once or twice past all the hard stuff, but at this point I'd still have to consider an FC a lucky run
Frankenstein—Still never hit the solo in its entirety, but I've gotten both halves before. Up to the solo isn't too hard
Cheat on the Church—Got fluke FCs of all the hard parts, but this isn't really close
Fly on the Wall—Same as above

Non-FC Goals:

I only recently started playing GH1 seriously so I don't have many specific goals yet. I'll most likely have much more to add after I finish my playthrough and get a better idea of what's reasonable for me to try to achieve here.

[_] Play through the setlist and enter a score for every song
[_] Redux all FCs that I originally did without paths

[_] Infected
[_] More Than a Feeling
[_] Take Me Out
[_] Sharp Dressed Man
[_] Killer Queen
[_] Stellar
[_] Heart Full of Black
[_] Fat Lip
[_] Cochise
[_] Higher Ground
[_] Caveman Rejoice
[_] Eureka, I've Found Love
[_] The Breaking Wheel
[_] Callout
[_] Farewell Myth
[_] Hey
[_] Sail Your Ship By
[_] Story of My Love

Full Combo/100% List:

Behind the Mask (First-ever sightread FC in any game on any difficulty. Not one of the pitifully easy ones, either )
Hey (Second-ever sightread FC in any game on any difficulty. One of the pitifully easy ones )
Take Me Out (That part where it slows down after the intro is awesome)
Killer Queen (Fun fact: this and Take Me Out were the only two songs in the first three tiers I four-starred on sightread, and they're the first two FCs I got in those tiers)
Higher Ground (I LOVE this song. Not a bad FC either; the breakdown tells me it's #18)
I Love Rock and Roll (I am slightly ashamed to say that this took me four tries)
I Wanna Be Sedated (Probably would have been better practice to alt-strum this, but whatever)
More than a Feeling (Those solo hooks are WAY slower than they look when you try to alt-strum them)
Fat Lip (Dangerously catchy riff)
Hey You (Not sure why, but I really like this one. Downstrummed the solo)
Stellar (Essentially sightread, I didn't remember this chart at all from my first playthrough)
Sail Your Ship By (Count Zero is a weird band at best, but they've created two of the catchiest songs in the history of Guitar Hero)
Story of My Love (Not to be confused with Story of My Life, which is much longer and more boring. That's not really saying much though; this song is still kinda long and boring)
Eureka, I've Found Love (Weird solo strumming patterns cost me a few runs)
Caveman Rejoice (Not bad at all; this one has a moderate solo and a serious choke hazard in the trips near the end)
Callout (I haven't played Farewell Myth recently so I can't say for sure just how bad this one is, but it's definitely worse than any song I remember)
Unsung
Sharp Dressed Man (Should have had this a while ago, but no outro chokes tonight )
Heart Full of Black (Nailed the orange streak on my second try and FCed out)
Cochise (I love this song; makes for a pretty sweet 20th if I do say so myself )
Infected 100% (FC should come fairly soon; I nailed the zig-zag on this run before overstrumming in the slow HO/POs after)
The Breaking Wheel (This sucker is really rough with the tight timing window and the incessant tempo changes, and it took a bit of grinding. I like the song though, so I didn't mind)
Farewell Myth (This wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it being. Perhaps reduxing Yes We Can softened me toward every other song in the universe)
Infected (Didn't take very long, but the score was pretty crappy since my internet died and I couldn't look up the path)
Ace of Spades (First FC in the game with a good path; fun song too)
Even Rats (Turned out I was just starting too early on the gallops; not very hard once I figured that out)
Iron Man (Pretty difficult solo in spots; I was a little surprised that I didn't have more trouble with this one)
Guitar Hero (To be quite honest, I think this is a bit overrated. Would have gotten it earlier if I hadn't thought it was going to be hard)
Godzilla (First GH1 FC I'm truly proud of; this is a great song and it's got some pretty nasty solo fills)
No One Knows (Took WAY too long, but I suppose it's a decent FC and I do like the song)

Back to Table of Contents
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Guitar Hero II:

Current Scores

Goals:

FC Goals:

Key:
Green: Achieved
Blue: Overstrummed or missed only one note; just need a good run
Red: Overstrummed or missed only one note on a freak run; FC may take a long time
Purple: Fewer than five misses; should FC soon
Dark Red: Fewer than five misses; FC will still take a pretty lucky run
Black: Lots of misses, but theoretically possible given that I've FCed every section at one point or another

Songs:
Them Bones—I've fluked the outro solo a couple times in practice and I have two single-miss real runs, but this isn't really very close
Search and Destroy
Freya
Crazy on You—Random miss in one of the verses
Carry Me Home—I'm actually pretty good at Verse 2, but the chord switch is still giving me problems
Psychobilly Freakout—Went from no prospects to -1 in a single night. This may take a while, but I know I can get it
Misirlou—Technically this is supposed to be here...but yeah, it's not happening anytime soon
Free Bird—I pretty much had no choice but to put this here when I first hit Solo C and Solo J in the same run

Arterial Black—Blown ~~two~~ three runs in the outro chords so far, but Solo F is still the hardest part for me
Gemini—Major consistency issues throughout, but I've gotta like my chances of picking this up at some point since I've hit the X and Solo 2b several times in a row now
Less Talk More Rokk—There's only about four patterns in the entire song; all I need is more fretting endurance
The Light That Blinds—Got a couple minus-twos with solo FCs, but the solo is still VERY shaky and I've only FCed the doublets a few times

Non-FC Goals:

[X] Redux all FCs (except Yes We Can) that aren’t in the top 100 overall

[X] Woman (21st. I'm satisfied with this, not least of all because the blasted solo took FOREVER to get)
[X] You Really Got Me (26th. Missed a couple squeezes I usually get but I'll take it)
[X] Cherry Pie (12th! Wimped out a bit on last-activation ticks, but I was really happy just to FC the thing with the tough second activation squeeze)
[X] Girlfriend (9th! This has got to be the easiest 60/60 path ever)
[X] Bad Reputation (10th! I actually had to elbow strum the start of the 2d trips, but with all the time this took I had the path down pretty solid )
[X] Jessica (26th. Missed a 200 point back end and wimped out on the last activation because I wasn't getting good whammy, but I'm okay with this score)
[X] Stop (22nd. Surprisingly easy redux considering how much trouble the first FC gave me)
[X] Laid to Rest (7th! This was insanely good...got a tough early whammy squeeze in the bridge thing and the HO/PO squeeze in the outro)
[X] YYZ (28th. I thought I had about 600 more, but I guess this is okay)
[X] Laughtrack (39th. Not really a great score, but this is a very hard path)
[X] Mr. Fix It (36th. Bleh; that optimal squeeze is impossible)
[X] One for the Road (10th! First squeeze was tough enough that I wasn't restarting after missing it, but I got it on this run )
[X] Red Lottery (7th! You know, it says something about Neversoft's recent setlists that I don't even think this is in the bottom 10 GH songs anymore...)
[X] Soy Bomb (16th. Missed a front end that would have made this a few spots better)

[X] Re-FC Strutter with all the squeezes I can hit (How convenient that this showed up in leagues

)
[X] Get seven stars on 60 songs (YAY MISIRLOU!)
[X] Get all possible seven stars (I thought I'd exhausted my ability to amaze myself in this game. Guess not

)

[X] Hangar 18 (WOW . Tankage early before miraculously pulling it out with FCs of Solo 7! and the activation in Solo 9!!!)
[X] Jordan (Getting ~~better~~ awesome at B1, ~~although no~~ HUGE score increase! ~~yet~~)
[X] Six (Only missed one note in the intro and outro combined, plus I FCed the solo. Should have been a lot better, really, but I'm still happy )

[X] FC Beast and the Harlot outside Solo D (Took long enough, but I got a pretty good score with a modified path)
[X] Get really good at Psychobilly Freakout

[X] Learn the outro cold
[X] Consistently hit the main HO/PO riff
[X] Consistently hit the Verse 1a SP phrase
[X] Consistently FC Solo 1 (I'll mark this as completed for now; I hit it in I think five out of six runs last time I played it)
[X] Consistently FC Solo 2 (I can hit any individual part pretty consistently, but stringing it all together is tough)
[X] 300k
[X] FC (OH YEAH)

[X] Not suck at Six

[X] Learn the Verse
[/] Verse consistency (Getting better, but not there yet)
[X] Chorus consistency (Finally got this by sheer volume of attempts)
[X] Six stars (BOOM!)
[X] 350k (Whoa )
[X] Seven stars (WHOA )

[X] 21 Million total score (UNBELIEVABLE)
[X] Top 150 overall (Wow...I never thought I'd be this good at this game)
[X] Top 100 overall (Holy...

)
[X] Top 75 overall (Okay, this is getting ridiculous

)
[_] Top 50 overall (51st. ALEX, I'M COMIN' FOR YA

)

Past Accomplishments:

Full Combo/100% List:

Radium Eyes (There is no way a two-note riff should ever be that catchy)
Parasite (Loleasy. I actually FCed this on the very next run after Radium Eyes; I'm pretty sure that's the only time I've ever gotten two new FCs consecutively)
Heart-Shaped Box
Monkey Wrench (The comment on my scores page is wrong; I got this before Cherry Pie)
Cherry Pie (See above)
Strutter (Actually has a moderate solo; showed my progress with GHII HO/POs)
Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart (GREAT song and not a bad cover, although the Stone Temple Pilots' original is better)
John the Fisherman (Randomly FCed both the hard parts on my first try in several months)
Laughtrack
Mr. Fix It
Soy Bomb (Those outro chords are really stupid)
X-Stream (Pretty long song and not very interesting chartwise, but I kinda like it)
Yes We Can (Harmonix, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?)
Red Lottery (Fact: I cannot hit the GR part of the trill without index sliding)
Surrender
Can't You Hear Me Knockin'
Shout at the Devil (I FCed the trill probably seven or eight runs in a row before I finally got the whole thing)
Message in a Bottle (Turned out that with a little practice Solo D wasn't as hard as it looked)
Elephant Bones (Stupid song...)
Collide (I kinda like this one)
Killing in the Name (Fast triplet strumming is really rough when you suck at alt-strumming as much as I do; this took a LOT of work)
Jessica 100% (Ugh. That was the guitar's fault, not mine)
Last Child (Fun song)
Jessica (REALLY fun song; first instrumental FC in any game! This came one run after I inexplicably fretted blue for a yellow sustain in the really slow part of the outro)
The New Black ( is the bane of the second position addict)
Search and Destroy 100% (This was the strangest overstrum in the history of the world. I overstrummed in an SP phrase, but still got the SP. See this post for a more detailed explanation)
Rock This Town (GREAT song; first GH2 FC I'm truly proud of)
Who Was in My Room Last Night? (Second run of the night without any practice)
Carry on Wayward Son (Second run of the night without any practice...weird )
You Really Got Me (Probably the twentieth run of the afternoon after a crapload of practice . GREAT FC though, I love the song and I'm really happy that I managed to learn to tap it)
Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight (Fluke FC FTW! I had never hit the second trill before this run )
Girlfriend (Overdue, but I had so much trouble with those hooks that I don't really care)
Raw Dog (One of the most fun charts in the history of Guitar Hero, and consequently one of my favorite FCs)
Laid to Rest (Was pretty solid on the goofy HO/PO fills for the most part, but I choked the outro a couple times before I got this)
Tattooed Love Boys (Learned the bridge strumming in about fifteen minutes; FCed the entire thing three or four runs later)
War Pigs (I've been at least decent at the crazy parts in the solo for a while now, but putting together a run where I managed to get everything was difficult. Great song, too)
One for the Road (Got the fast strumming on my first try of the night)
Bad Reputation (FIRST TRY after a fair amount of practice on multiple parts of Solo 2. The 2d trips were actually really solid with the tapping method I was using; it was the quads that gave me the most trouble)
YYZ (Solo was solid; just took some grinding. I tapped the double oranges in the chorus )
Woman (Downstrumming the HO/PO riff was the only way I could hit it reliably)
Madhouse (Goofy HO/PO fills took far too long to learn, but it wasn't too bad once I got them down)
Stop (I definitely owe this FC to GlassDragon; I probably never would have gotten it without his Solo B tapping method. Great song, by the way)
Thunderhorse (Epic song FTW )
Push Push (Lady Lightning) (Funny how you never seem to miss the Big Endings until it actually matters...)
Mother (MAN, that solo is rough. I was pretty lucky to get this)
Fall of Pangea (Broke a long FC drought in this game (about a month and a half) and an ENORMOUSLY satisfying FC to get. After 22 runs blown past Solo 1d)
1. Possum Kingdom (Long and not a very exciting chart, but I like the song)
Them Bones 100% (I'm actually fairly happy with an overstrum here, I still suck at the outro solo)
Less Talk More Rokk 100% (...)
Free Bird (I have never experienced anything like hitting note #1982 of this song to complete this FC. Simply amazing )
Less Talk More Rokk (This felt SO GOOD; I have been unbelievably bad at this song for such a long time)
Freya (Good Solo 1 method + Practice on post-bridge fills = No (more) chokes FTW)
FTK (Had a couple chokes past Kick It!, but given that I managed to get this within an hour of grinding I'm pretty happy with my performance)
Arterial Black (Outro chords cost me three runs, but I finally took this sucker down. Solo B HO/POs FTW )
Psychobilly Freakout (Path execution was sub-par, but I'm still happy to get a song this hard and this awesome)
Sweet Child O' Mine (VERY underrated; I'm quite proud of this one)
Search and Destroy (Probably the most overdue an FC has ever been for me (I got 100% on it last January), but this score is almost worth the wait)
Crazy on You (Perhaps the second-most overdue FC I had, but this score is DEFINITELY worth the wait )
Them Bones (This and SCOM in consecutive days? When the heck did I learn how to strum?)
Carry Me Home (FOURTH FC in a single stream; awesome in every sense of the word)
The Light That Blinds (This took a lot of work, but it was definitely worth it. Thanks to Fug for telling me to use the HO/POs in those weird verse gallops)

Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero II Journey:

July '07: Played Guitar Hero II for the first time. I meant to play a song on Easy, but I hit green by accident and wound up on Medium (I actually don't remember what song it was). Somehow passed and never looked back.
August '07: Brother bought a 360 and GHII. I started a career on Medium and did pretty well, the only song I failed was Free Bird. Rather than keep at it, I moved up to Hard, making Free Bird on Medium the only song to date that I've played but have never passed
September '07: Pulled my first GH all-nighter; one of my friends and I started a career on Hard and managed to make it to Psychobilly Freakout before spending the last hour (7:00-8:00 AM) trading 25% failures back and forth. This still might be the most fun I've ever had playing Guitar Hero.
December '07: Beat my first Expert GHII career (this actually happened after I beat GH3X career). I didn't really find anything outside of the eighth tier to be very hard, but Tier 8 itself took a while. My burst strumming was abysmal back then (as opposed to now, where it's just bad), so Beast and the Harlot took forever to pass. Hangar 18 and Misirlou weren't much better. I did, however, pass Free Bird on my third try.
March '08: Passed Jordan for the first time (on a friend's PS2).
June '08: Returned home from my sophomore year of college, once again regaining access to my brother's 360 and thus GHII. I went through the entire setlist, mainly just for fun but I did upload all my scores. Most of them sucked because I wasn't used to the engine, plus I wasn't using paths. While my main focus over the summer was GHIII, I did get around to improving a lot of these scores at some point.
June 24, 2008: First FC of any GHII song on any difficulty.
August 11, 2008: Five-starred Misirlou and Jordan. Apparently, I was having a pretty good night for both fretting and strumming.
September 4, 2008: Five-starred Psychobilly Freakout to obtain The Log. I have no idea how I got Misirlou before this; I've now broken 200k on PbFo, but have never been able even to break 190k again on Misirlou.
November 1, 2008: Roommate obtained GHII for his PS2, so I currently have access to GHII while at school in addition to when I'm at home.
November 12, 2008: Hit 5 FCs
November 17, 2008: Hit 10 FCs
November 24, 2008: Broke into the top 900 across all platforms with three new FCs and a 40k improvement on Six
November 25, 2008: Hit 15 FCs
November 25, 2008: Picked up 210k in one fantastic day of playing to break into the top 800 across all platforms. I improved three different songs by more than 40k.
December 1, 2008: Picked up 207k in one (different) fantastic day of playing to break into the top 700 across all platforms.
January 6, 2009: Claimed Guitar God status after five-starring Six.
January 7, 2009: Hit 20 FCs
January 20, 2009: Sizeable increases on The New Black and One for the Road push me into the top 500 across all platforms.
January 24, 2009: FC of Rock This Town put me into the top 400 across all platforms. It was also my 25th FC.
February 10, 2009: Broke into the top 300 across all platforms; no really spectacular runs leading up to it, but five solid improvements in one day did the trick.
February 11, 2009: Hit 30 FCs
February 15, 2009: Hit 35 FCs (that was quick ). Also, a huge increase on Push Push (Lady Lightning) pushed (pushed?) me over 20 million total score.
February 23, 2009: FC of Madhouse put me into the top 200 across all platforms.
April 1, 2009: Hit 40 FCs
September 17, 2009: Hit 45 FCs
October 27, 2009: A 14k improvement on Jordan propels me into the top 150 across all platforms
November 7, 2009: Hit 50 FCs
November 19, 2009: Hit 55 FCs. A subsequent improvement of about 20k on Six ends a MONSTER night of new FCs and score increases and puts me into the top 100 across all platforms
December 14, 2009: A 19k improvement on Six puts me into the top 75 across all platforms
December 16, 2009: A 700-point redux of Stop provides the necessary score increase to nudge me over 21 million total score
June 12, 2010: A seven-star run of Jordan completes a full game seven-star of GH2X, my first time achieving this on any Guitar Hero release

Notable Chokes:

Green: I've since FCed the song
Red: I'm still angry

Shout at the Devil: Reverse choke; I actually FCed the trills once and had some stupid misses elsewhere. Obviously I've never even come close to hitting those trills since.
Surrender: Another reverse choke; had some retarded miss early on then FCed out.
Strutter: Reverse choke #3 (apparently solos are easy for me in this game…); I had some -2 run where I FCed both solos. Later I had a more conventional -1, with the miss being in the first trill. I suppose that's not really a choke though, so I don't know why I brought it up.
Carry on Wayward Son: Terrible miss on the last note of the trill. What made this even worse was that I FCed a bunch of stuff to get there that I'd never hit before. I have no reason to expect that I'll get this anytime soon.
War Pigs: A miss in Solo 2a doesn't sound like a choke...until I tell you that I missed BEFORE the crazy part. TWICE.
Search and Destroy: Question: How do you overstrum in an SP phrase yet still get the SP? Answer: I have no idea. But it happened; see this post for a more detailed explanation
Who Was in My Room Last Night?: Pretty standard (although terrible) reverse choke. I had some stupid miss in the first verse and then decided to keep playing to make sure I remembered the path...I think you know how the rest of that story goes.
Girlfriend: Three -1 runs in a single day. The first was a miss on one of those stupid hooks in the outro.
Sweet Child O' Mine: My first time ever FCing through Solo 2b (also my first time hitting 2b in a real run period) I blew it in that slow trill in the bridge. I'd already tanked the path so I wasn't too bummed about it, but I was still pretty surprised that I'd missed there
Killing in the Name: Couple reverse chokes and one horrible miss after the Noise Build
Freya: Last note of the fast HO/PO bit in Solo 2...UGH. First time I ever hit Solo 1 in a real run, too.
Jessica: I have FCed the outro trills. I have not FCed the song. Therefore, a choke must have occurred. Q.E.D.
Last Child: I can't remember where exactly I missed, but I know it was very slow.
Carry Me Home: I hate the chorus riff of this song with a passion
Laid to Rest: There isn't too much in this song that is significantly harder or easier than anything else, but given that I usually hit that outro HO/PO riff (the one that appears earlier in the song) I'm calling it a choke
YYZ: I'm not too hacked about this since I'd already screwed my score with an SP overrun in this attempt, but missing in the main riff after the solo is never fun
Collide: See Last Child
Elephant Bones: This isn't really a choke because the strumming streaks are the hardest part of the song, but I need someplace to complain about how stupid I think this song is.
Fall of Pangea: Two runs before I FCed the song I missed 50 notes from the end, in one of the rhythmic hiccups in the outro. It is so hard to keep concentration there...
Gemini: Reverse chokes are not fun at all...I had an overstrum in Chorus 3 and a miss early in Bridge before FCing out
Push Push (Lady Lightning): Have a gander at measure 103 and see if you can figure out how the heck I missed there after FCing the trips
Soy Bomb: Those outro chords are so stupid...
Thunderhorse: Lovely little reverse choke coming out of the reverse reverse Thunderhorse (as I like to call it

); FCed the long solo for the second time ever in a real run. A while later I had another reverse choke that was even worse: missed one of those descending trips in the verses, then proceeded to FC out with path execution so good that the miss ended up costing me eight stars...

Back to Table of Contents
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s

Random Thoughts/Observations:

After my initial playthrough, my first impression of this game was pretty much the same as what I've heard the majority of people expound; namely that it's really fun but too short. Most every song has at least some sort of solo (which is how it should be in a Guitar Hero game) and few of them are truly boring. I was quite sad when I got to the end of the setlist.
It was an interesting experience doing sightreads on an engine that I was already very familiar with for the first time. As you would expect, this resulted in several very impressive moments, although I also had my share of gaffes as well (I've never been a tremendously solid sightreader ). The best part was definitely my Synchronicity II FC; worst would probably be getting 98% on We Got the Beat .
While the engine is all but identical to GH2's (only difference being that they fixed the HO/PO glitch for 80s), I did notice that I was being challenged on sightreads by the charting of the songs. I think Harmonix decided to go with more irregular solo constructions in a lot of cases (as opposed to GH2, in which I feel they may have sacrificed some accuracy in favor of charting regular patterns on some songs), which is a lot harder but a lot more interesting. Stuff like the I Wanna Rock outro solo, for example, contains a lot of irregular HO/PO lines unlike anything in GH2. It can be frustrating, but I think it'll make me a better player in the long run.
Once I got a decent number of FCs in this game, I was surprised to discover that I actually cared about having a good 211 FC number. I'm at 164/211 now, and I intend to see if I can get to 175 in the somewhat-near future.

Goals:

I don't think I want to play this game for score, but as a result of my newfound interest in getting FCs across the first four games I will employ my usual serious FC goals list:

Key:
Green: Achieved
Blue: Overstrummed or missed only one note; just need a good run
Red: Overstrummed or missed only one note on a freak run; FC may take a long time
Purple: Fewer than five misses; should FC soon
Dark Red: Fewer than five misses; FC will still take a pretty lucky run
Black: Lots of misses, but theoretically possible given that I've FCed every section at one point or another

Songs:
No One Like You—Crazy YB fill is the only real hard part, but I'm nowhere near consistent on that yet
Radar Love—I have several FCs of the full solo in practice and I've already got 100% on the song
I Wanna Rock—Tech FC wasn't too bad, but stringing it all together is going to be tough
Caught in a Mosh—Just need some more consistency with the strumming patterns; the solo is easy

Full Combo/100% List:

18 and Life (Sightread; easy)
Shakin' (See above)
The Warrior (See above)
Synchronicity II (Very impressive for a sightread; one of my best ever I'd say)
Bathroom Wall (Sightread; I have almost no memory of this song)
Radar Love 100% (Pretty easy, but for some reason I've been unable to come up with the FC so far)
We Got the Beat (I really don't want to talk about how many tries this took )
Only a Lad (Goofy as heck)
I Ran (So Far Away)
Lonely Is the Night (Great song, but the original version in GH5 is a lot better than this cover)
Turning Japanese (Both the song and the chart are really annoying)
Heat of the Moment
Balls to the Wall (Quite possibly the worst song in the game)
Police Truck (I'm ordinarily not a big fan of the Dead Kennedys, but this has a really fun chart)
Los Angeles (Wacky chart; I was quite surprised to get it easily)
Hold on Loosely (Fun riff)
What I Like about You (I was really impressed with myself for getting this on my first try after the sightread )
Wrathchild (FCed the solo and nearly got this on sightread)
Holy Diver
Bang Your Head (Metal Health) (Very intense solo for a first tier song. Outro strumming is a lot more regular than it first appears)
Ain't Nothin' But a Good Time (Only one try after a bit of practice )

Back to Table of Contents
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Guitar Hero III:

Current Scores

Goals:

FC Goals:

Key:
Green: Achieved
Blue: Overstrummed or missed only one note; just need a good run
Red: Overstrummed or missed only one note on a freak run; FC may take a long time
Purple: Fewer than five misses; should FC soon
Dark Red: Fewer than five misses; FC will still take a pretty lucky run
Black: Lots of misses, but theoretically possible given that I've FCed every section at one point or another

Songs:
Black Sunsine—Just needs some grinding. I've hit the Breakdown several times in practice
Before I Forget—Just recently had a -5 run with an overstrum; I've impressed myself with how far I've come on this song
Knights of Cydonia—This is WAY overdue
Cult of Personality—Feels much better of late, but I'm not yet ready to call that single-miss run with a SS! FC anything but a fluke
Cliffs of Dover—UGLY One Last Solo choke
The Number of the Beast—Tech FCed; but I'm still having major problems with the verses
Don't Hold Back—Phazers are annoying, but I’ve hit both of them many times
F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.—Never thought I'd be putting this in here, but I've hit both Aggro and End Lead in real runs now
Impulse

Non-FC Song Goals:

[_] Get seven stars on 65 songs (63; need two of the seven remaining songs)

[_] Rock You Like a Hurricane (6.9. I'm pretty sure this is impossible without an FC, or at least a choke)
[_] Raining Blood (5.5, heh . Still more likely for me than TtFaF, though)
[_] One (6.9. Avoiding stupid misses on this is very hard)
[_] F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. (6.8. I just need to hit all the SP...)
[X] Nothing for Me Here (7.4! I was right about the chorus consistency . That clicked, and I FCed the song less than an hour later)
[_] Take This Life (6.6. The verse ending pattern is one of the most ridiculously annoying sequences of notes in the history of Guitar Hero)
[_] The Way it Ends (6.6. My arm hurts just thinking about it)
[_] Through the Fire and Flames (5.1. Yeah…)

[X] Redux all FCs not in the top 200 overall

[X] Slow Ride (40th. This was upper-bound minus two ticks; it's unbelievable how competitive the scores are here)
[X] School’s Out (71st. Screw it. I hate that last squeeze)
[X] Sunshine of Your Love (6th, and a platform 1st! Front-end HO/PO squeeze during the solo and a HUGE back end)
[X] Miss Murder (40th. Optimal path is BRUTAL, but 80% isn't bad, which is what I ended up doing)
[X] The Seeker (23rd. Pretty nice, but after the Sunshine score I couldn't get all that excited about it )
[X] Lay Down (51st. I can't believe how many people are hitting double squeezes on this song)
[X] Kool Thing (10th! To be quite honest, this was pretty sick )
[X] La Grange (89th. Bleh, I may continue to redux this)
[X] Cherub Rock (25th. This was very frustrating, but none of the squeezes were that difficult)
[X] The Metal (40th. Knew I shouldn't have played it out after missing the first squeeze )
[X] 3’s & 7’s (18th! Hit a couple really solid squeezes to get this, but nothing spectacular)
[X] Reptilia (28th. Not too bad; only squeeze I missed was the absurd 100% one on the first activation)
[X] Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (1ST!!!!! This took longer than it should have since I kept going for optimal, but I'd say it was worth it )
[X] Helicopter (19th! Not too hard, really)
[X] Monsters (54th. Surprisingly easy re-FC, although I didn't go for any of the doubles)
[X] In the Belly of a Shark (91st. Goal accomplished, but YUCK. I hate trying to whammy this)
[X] Down N’ Dirty (31st. It's incredible how little people care about this song; there are only two squeezes on the path I used and I missed one of them)
[X] Go That Far (47th. I didn't even bother trying squeezing in that BBGG crap)
[X] Hier Kommt Alex (40th. Nothing of note here; just an average redux)
[X] In Love (17th! Ticks are quite annoying on this, but not nearly as annoying as the song itself. 283k, however, is not annoying )
[X] Mauvais Garçon (5th! Pro tip for enjoying this song: do In Love first . Also, this was a pretty sweet run; that 60% squeeze is rather hard)
[X] Minus Celsius (18th. I was forced to abandon the UB squeeze on the first because I just wasn't hitting it enough; getting this score took long enough as it was)
[X] My Curse (30th! This was REALLY rough; makes me appreciate just how much of a fluke my original FC was nearly a YEAR ago )
[X] She Bangs the Drums (28th. Pretty good; I think just ticks off of optimal)

Other Goals (Skill/Ranking):

[X] Learn to squeeze (Keeping this for the lulz; how far I’ve come

)

[X] Break 306k on Sabotage (Along with it, my highest-ranked score ever!)
[X] Get within ticks of optimal on Closer (-20 from first place; beat the 100% squeeze score by 2 ticks, although I think that's off)
[X] Beat the No-Squeeze Best score on five songs (And as an added bonus, I never have to play My Name Is Jonas again!)

[X] Get into the top 300 players across all platforms (Oh yeah! Nothing for Me Here FC gets this in style

)
[_] Get into the top 250 players across all platforms (276th. I need to get on this again)
[_] Break 24 million total score (23.929. I'm starting to believe...)

Past Accomplishments:

Full Combo/100% List (In order as best I can remember):

Slow Ride (I wanted this to be my first because it was my favorite among the easy songs. I was so happy when I got it; first FC on any difficulty in any game!)
Mississippi Queen
Sunshine of Your Love (Another one I got earlier than most people probably did; it also was one of my favorite easy songs. The score still stands because to this day I refuse to whammy the song, I think it sounds bad)
When You Were Young
Miss Murder (I have no idea how I got this so early; it took me a LONG time to re-FC after I learned what a path was)
Bulls on Parade (Ditto)
Closer (I actually never played any of the Bonus Songs until I'd already passed Expert career and gotten those first six FCs)
Radio Song
Metal Heavy Lady
My Name Is Jonas 100% (Overstrum in the three-note chords under SP; I beat the score I got here long before I FCed it)
Talk Dirty to Me
Hit Me with Your Best Shot
Generation Rock
Sabotage (This took way longer than it should have. Chokes FTL...)
School's Out (I had no business getting this so early, and I somehow used a pretty dang good path by accident)
My Name is Jonas (See comment on Sabotage)
Anarchy in the U.K.
Paranoid
Reptilia (I REALLY sucked at fast downstrumming with constant fret changes; took me forever not to choke the last chorus)
Even Flow (I felt like I'd hit the big time when I got this; one of the first GHIII vids I ever watched was Priest's FC of this song. I remember thinking to myself how awesome it would be to FC a song this good and this hard. Now I knew)
Lay Down (Finally stopped choking and reached my goal of 20 FCs. This was one of the goals in my first sig, so it felt really good)
Can't Be Saved
Ruby (Neither of these last two songs were from lack of trying, I just couldn't get them for some reason)
Story of My Life (I was so happy when I got this. Perhaps the comment on my scores page will explain why: "Screw the path. I am never playing this song again.")
Barracuda 100%
Paint it Black (broke a LONG drought of over a month and a half without any new FCs)
Go that Far (I love this song; I was very happy when I didn't choke the last BBGG riff)
La Grange
The Seeker (The Seeker Bridge 1 Strumming. I seriously spent ten minutes practicing that method and FCed the song on my first try)
Avalancha (First time ever hitting the last star power phrase)
Same Old Song and Dance (I love Aerosmith, so I was really happy to get this. Plus, this was my first FC of a song I'd failed on sightread, which was a cool little reminder of how far I've come as a player)
Barracuda
Minus Celsius
Don't Hold Back 100% (I had NO idea that I hadn't actually missed any notes, for obvious reasons. Overstrummed at least twice, but I got the SP in Phazer I)
3's & 7's
Helicopter
My Curse (This was so unexpected it wasn't even on my goals list)
Cherub Rock 100% (I'm not as mad as I would have been because I botched the path anyway)--EDIT: This is no longer correct. Three more 100% chokes with the corrected path have restored any animosity I may have lost toward this song
Hier Kommt Alex
She Bangs the Drums (I probably didn't do myself any favors by playing this one as much as I did, but FC in the end)
Kool Thing (Finally eradicated a two-month old choke)
Cherub Rock (After FOUR 100% runs with overstrums after the solo)
Welcome to the Jungle (FCed the Jungle Breakdown about five runs in a row before I actually got the whole thing; of course the run where I hit everything else I completely botch the SP path)
Rock and Roll All Nite (Turned a night of chokes into a night of awesome)
Prayer of the Refugee (I probably should have gotten this sooner, but I heartily disagree with the breakdowns that say it's among the 25 easiest in the game)
The Metal (LONG overdue; eradicated a choke that was about seven months old)
In Love (Another one that I am quite pleased never to have to play again)
Mauvais Garçon (See above)
In the Belly of a Shark
Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (This was not for lack of trying; I very much disagree with breakdowns that say it's in the 30 easiest. Also, I overran star power in Solo 2A and got a terrible score)
Suck My Kiss 100% (Pretty standard overstrum; I accidentally ended the chord solo on a downstrum )
Suck My Kiss (If you have never listened to this song with a subwoofer, you are missing out. Also, try this Suck My Riff Method (Expert) if you're having trouble with the hook)
Black Magic Woman 100% (I have no expectations of FCing this in the near future; that I nailed the first set of orange crap before overstrumming in the second was fluke enough as it was)
Monsters (FCed the solo at least six times in real runs before I finally got the whole thing)
Down N' Dirty (Random FC FTW)
I'm in the Band (Ending the Major Riffage streak on an upstrum to avoid overstrumming is one of the ugliest fixes I have ever done, but it worked )
Stricken (Solo tapping was pretty solid after some practice tonight, but I'm SHOCKED that I didn't choke the outro)
Black Magic Woman (I think I like this song more than most people; even with the random strums I think it's great fun to play. Also, those orange streaks were surprisingly easy tonight )
Pride and Joy (Little Verse 3 hiccup didn't give me any trouble and I got the whole solo on my first try. Almost as surprising as those was the fact that I didn't choke post-solo; this was my first time playing that section in about six months )
Impulse (AWESOME song and awesome FC)
Halo Theme MJOLNIR Mix (Possibly the most epic song in the history of Guitar Hero. Nice squeezing too; ninth place when I entered it)
Top Gun Anthem (Also quite epic, although not as much)
Nothing for Me Here (This was unbelievable; I went from having no FC prospects to getting ALL of it in less than an hour)
Knights of Cydonia (I knew this was overdue, but I certainly didn't expect the outro to go down without a fight tonight )
Black Sunshine (Seriously, first time getting to Break Down! after I got my tech FC? Wow )
Don't Hold Back (Some nights, the Phazers are just kinda easy; it's very strange)
Holiday in Cambodia (WAT . First try in like a month...)

Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero III Journey:

There are also some random guide-related events in here, but they're left over from my old organizational scheme and I couldn't find anywhere else to put them. Deal with it

.

November '07: Played GHIII for the first time. One of my floormates at OSU got it for his 360 and he was stuck on Tier 7 on Hard. I helped him out, and 3's & 7's became the first GHIII song I passed. I also passed The Number of the Beast that night. We got stuck on One and Raining Blood, but it was fun anyway. On a different day, I got my first taste of Expert on his 360, passing Slow Ride on sightread.
December '07: My brother had gotten GHIII for his 360, so when we went home for winter break I started my first Expert career. It took me several weeks (Tiers 7 and 8 were really rough), but I eventually managed to beat it all the way through. This was when I really got hooked on the game. Also got my first FC that month.
February '08: I managed to obtain a copy of GHIII for the Wii that my brother and I had received for Christmas. Now that I could play whenever I wanted, my skills really started to improve. I joined ScoreHero on February 17, which is why all the accomplishments from here on out have specific dates. I also started paying more attention to scores and stuff at that point, for obvious reasons.
February 19, 2008: Hit 10 FCs.
February 28, 2008: Passed Through the Fire and Flames on Expert.
March 18, 2008: Hit 15 FCs.
April 5, 2008: Hit 20 FCs.
April 15, 2008: An improvement of about 44k on Monsters pushed me over the 20 million mark for total score.
May 8, 2008: Five-starred Raining Blood for the first time to obtain El Jefe.
May 30, 2008: Released my first guide, the Before I Forget Expert Five-Star Guide. Not technically score-related, but I figure it's a milestone because guide-writing is what I'm most known for around here.
June 17, 2008: Improved my score on One by about 84k in a single run to hit 21 million total score. This run also vaulted me into the top 1000 players across all systems.
June 30, 2008: Released my second guide, the Most Impulsive Expert Guide Ever. I think this was when I really started to hit my stride as a guide-writer, developing most of the techniques that I've used ever since.
July 9, 2008: Hit 25 FCs.
July 13, 2008: Released my third guide, the Guide to Writing Guides. This eleven-thousand-word monstrosity further cemented my reputation on the forums as "The Guide Nerd" and also confirmed that I have way too much time on my hands.
July 25, 2008: Five-starred Nothing for Me Here for #69. Only one left...but that's going to take a while.
July 27, 2008: Released my fourth guide, Five Stars for You Here (NfMH Expert Guide). This represented the first time I'd ever worked on a song with the express purpose of writing a guide for it. I must say it worked out rather well for me, if only because I managed to pick up five stars on the song. The Practice Mode technique I developed in the course of this work also ended up being very useful.
August 9, 2008: Picked up 120k in one fantastic night of playing. The last run, an improvement of about 40k on Before I Forget, finally got my total score over 22 million points. This night also included my 30th FC.
August 14, 2008: Released my fifth guide, the Guide to Using Practice Mode Effectively. This was a new direction for me, as it was the first time I'd written a general technique guide for the game rather than a guide on a specific song. It mainly involved expanding the method I'd developed in the course of working on Nothing for Me Here into something that could be applied to many different songs.
August 28, 2008: Broke into the top 500 players across all platforms. This was a pretty good night all around; the run that finally put me over was a 15k improvement on Holiday in Cambodia
September 4, 2008: Released my sixth guide, the My Curse Expert FC Guide. This again broke some new ground, as it was the first FC guide I'd written. It was also something of a symbolic release, as I kind of restricted my forum activity while I was writing the guide to make sure that it was my 1000th post.
September 6, 2008: Hit 35 FCs. I will admit, it is very cool to be able to say I've FCed half the game
September 29, 2008: Obtained my first-ever optimal score on a song; hitting a 100% double squeeze to join the 20-something other people tied for first on Sabotage.
October 8, 2008: Hit 40 FCs.
October 22, 2008: One MONSTER run of Nothing for Me Here yields 32 thousand points, pushing my total score over 23 million. A later re-FC of Story of My Life brought an additional 14 thousand, breaking me into the top 400 players across all platforms.
December 3, 2008: Hit 45 FCs.
March 27, 2009: Hit 50 FCs.
April 21, 2009: Five-starred Through the Fire and Flames to claim Guitar God status on the game which matters most to me.
April 30, 2009: A seven-star run of The Number of the Beast gives me my first 600k+ score on any song, and puts me into the top 300 players across all platforms.
August 20, 2009: Hit 55 FCs. The Nothing for Me Here FC also provides enough points to re-enter the top 300 after falling out.
September 1, 2009: Knights of Cydonia marks my 100th FC across GH2 and GH3.

Notable Chokes:

Green: I've since FCed the song
Red: The choke is still my best run

Rock and Roll All Nite: Final Chorus twice. Outro once. Yuck.
Sunshine of Your Love: BRUTAL score choke on this run; I hit a squeeze on the third activation that I believe only about four other people have ever hit. I followed that up with a nice squeeze on the last activation, and then MISSED A NOTE IN THE OUTRO. I would have been a WORST tied for third with this run, but instead I get nothing...
Barracuda: No fewer than FOUR runs ruined by misses after the trill
Lay Down: Removing very old weaksauce choke to make room for the run where I would have had OPTIMAL except I MISSED THE LAST NOTE!
Kool Thing: There are 1032 notes in this song. My streak was 1029. If I had put my ring finger down on the blue fret .09 seconds later than I actually did, this would have been FC #26. As it was, I missed the last yellow note and along with it a chance at never having to play this hated song again. At the time it was the best non-FC run of the song on ScoreHero.
Even Flow: I missed in the last CHORUS. There are NO hard parts in the chorus.
Cherub Rock: Final post-solo-overstrum count was four, and the last one WASN'T EVEN IN THE FAST STRUMMING
The Metal: I blew EIGHT runs past the quiet bridge. The next-to-last one of these was such a late miss that I was still at 2X when the song ended.
Pride and Joy: Reverse choke; I had some stupid miss under SP in Verse 2, then proceeded to FC out. I didn't hit Verse 3 in a real run for a LONG time after that.
3's & 7's: Another reverse choke. This song is well-known for being trip-chord happy, but I bet you can't think of a spot where there's a RYB chord! I couldn't have either...until this run. Now I know exactly where one is.
Knights of Cydonia: Taking out these pseudo-chokes to make room for the big one: 1878 streak; FC blown past all the hard fretting in the outro. I was literally shaking after this run.
Cliffs of Dover: Reverse choke; how the HECK did I FC Intro Solo B and Solo (both for the first time ever) in the same run as a One Last Solo FC and still fail to FC the song? Missing in the Chorus, that's how

. Also, real choke; eight notes from the end in One Last Solo. I realize that this might not technically qualify as a choke in the strictest sense, but I did FC the section three or four times in a row in practice prior to this run.
Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll: I somehow missed the first chord coming out of the trips in Solo 2. I spent three days trying to figure out how to hit Solo 1 (eventually got it from third position), and now this. To make matters worse, I blew two more possible FC runs in Solo 2B a couple days later. And two days after that I blew another in Solo 2B. New update: Reverse choke in some PFO match online. I missed a random green note in Verse 3, then proceeded to nail every other hard part in the song (including those nasty yellow strums in the first part of Solo 2B, which have already claimed at least three potential FCs of mine)
Monsters: Missed in the last set of RO chords in the final chorus. Blehhhh...
Can't Be Saved: Not an FC choke, but a score choke. I came out of the first activation with xxx,x86 in this run, which would have been enough ticks to tie Bj0rn in third place if I'd FCed out hitting the rest of the squeezes. The second activation is really easy for me so I got that, then I hit the third really well (that's usually the hardest one), and then nailed the front end of the last activation. And just when I thought I was getting third...overstrum

. Yuck.
Down N' Dirty: Stupid main riff. I FCed the entire solo twice in real runs in one night without coming up with an FC
Hier Kommt Alex: I finally got some consistency on the Chugging Riffs, but I then proceeded to blow three runs past all the fast strumming
In Love: Choked in the outro three times in the span of two days. Two of those chokes were on the EXACT SAME NOTE; namely, the last yellow HO/PO leading up to the final BO chord.
I'm in the Band: Overstrummed in the outro chords. Guess that's what I get for calling them easy...
Minus Celsius: Another 3-note chordfest, but there's only one GRY chord in the entire song. And it's five notes from the end. Guess where I missed.
Prayer of the Refugee: Reverse choke #3. Did you know that the eighth note in measure 101 is not a chord, unlike the seven that precede it? I didn't

. Also, you'd think that after playing that chord switch on the chorus twenty times I would be able to hit the twenty-first one. But you would be wrong, because that's where my second choke on this song occurred; twenty notes from the end...
She Bangs the Drums: I missed in MEASURE 101. Those are straight eighth-note chords, and they've been going on for a measure already.

Five-Starred Through the Fire and Flames

This was single most unexpected thing that has ever happened to me. Three runs before the one that mattered, I had turned in a run of under 450k for the song, in which I believe I hit exactly two SP phrases after Synth Death. My fretting arm was tired, my strumming arm couldn't hold a constant speed, and above all my confidence was completely shot. I decided to play it again, though; I figured I had nothing left to lose. You have to understand, though, at that point I was honestly thinking that I was never going to get this and that this run would probably just be the final nail in my TtFaF coffin. Instead...

I FCed the intro tapping after a couple restarts (no matter how low I sunk, I never did lose this section

) and missed in the sweeps as usual. Then I hit Post Insanity, and something felt different. It felt GOOD. I don't know what changed (it could have been either my fretting or my strumming); all I know is that I was holding HUGE combos there. I actually hit the SP phrase as well, and left PI2 with 97k and a quarter bar of star power (my previous best of the night had been 82k, and I hadn't hit the SP even once). The rest of the pre-Synth Death stuff was less than stellar, but it was solid, and I had around 300k heading in. Did pretty well with my activation in Synth Death and very well in Grinding Scales, but blew chunks on the pre-solo SP and didn't get much at all with my activation in the solo. I left the solo with about 440k and finished with 521k after again being pretty solid on the Rampaging Dragons activation.

Obviously, that got my attention. That was a 70k+ improvement in a single run, and all of a sudden I was hopeful. This was the best I'd ever felt in the parts that mattered, and if not for a bunch of mistakes between Synth Death and the solos I would have been very close. So I took another run, and although I again did pretty well in the early sections (left PI2 with 90-something thousand) the rest of the run was almost a complete opposite of the one before. I had fewer points heading into Synth Death, but I did much better on everything else through the solo, and finished this run with 537k.

That was really the best thing that could have happened to me on a non-five-star run at that point. I didn't just improve a few areas to get that extra 16k, I hit a LOT more stuff and missed some stuff that I knew I could hit from the run before. All I needed then, was one good run. And I got it

. Not as great in the Post Insanity strumming (left PI2 with about 89k), but I got the star power phrase, and (more importantly), hit both Cold Winter Morning phrases for a huge activation there. Cruised to Synth Death without any major mistakes and even picked up a couple lucky FCs of the split trills in both bridges (tapping, of course

). Hit Synth Death with 311k (my best run ever), and then I pretty much locked up the five-star in the next few sections:

—Almost FCed Synth Death under star power
—Hit both the Synth Death trills and the Solo Fill 1 SP and got a good activation in Grinding Scales II
—Got two of the next three star powers and nearly FCed my activation in Herman's Solo

At that point it was really just a matter of not failing

. I left the solo with nearly 500k and two SP phrases, hit the SP phrases in Here We Stand and first Rampaging Dragons for good measure, and got a full bar in Rampaging Dragons. I actually didn't do all that well during the activation, but it didn't matter as I already had the five-star by the time I hit Almost There... I finished it off with FC of the You Rock!!! HO/POs (one-handed

) for icing on the cake; 589,278 was the final score

.

That takes care of the technical stuff, but I do want to say a few words (okay, knowing me, a LOT of words

) about just how much this means. First of all, I want to thank everybody who in any way had a hand in my getting this. That includes any technique advice posted, any encouragement given, or even derogatory remarks at my TtFaF skill compared to absolutely everything else in the game

. I love being a part of this community, and one of my favorite things about it is how we all make each other better. I don't know if I ever would have done this without you guys

On a related note, I do want to thank NfskMjmMal2 and GlassDragon in particular. Back when I first started going for this last fall, they were the two who posted extensively to help me with specific problems. For starters, the path I used was based on Nfsk's; the differences between his and mine might have actually played a part in the score I got. Both of them were always ready with technique advice, of course, but it was the psychological advice more than anything that really helped. Even though I didn't get the five-star back then, they helped me develop some very successful mindsets that not only enabled me to get the five-star tonight (I was very close to quitting the song), but also improved my attitude toward the game in general. You guys rock!

I feel like I should write more, but I really don't know what to say. This is something that I felt was impossible for a LONG time (obviously back when I couldn't pass it, but then also when I was stuck at three stars). Then I got close to getting it, and then it slipped away. Prior to tonight, it was the farthest it's been in a long time, but in one magnificent run everything came together and I completed what I believe is my oldest goal in any game. And this is a landmark goal to complete; this is something that nobody can take away. Whatever else I may fail to achieve; whatever songs I may suck at or FCs I may choke, I'VE FIVE-STARRED THROUGH THE FIRE AND FLAMES! \m/

Back to Table of Contents
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Guitar Hero III Co-op:

In this section you will find full documentation of the past exploits and (hopefully) future exploits of the current #1 team in GH3 co-op, For Good or for Awesome. For Good or for Awesome consists of my good friend and roommate Josh (acatisfinetoo here), who plays lead, paths songs, executes paths, and records videos; and me, who plays bass (except when bass is actually hard), pre-tilts the entire song so Josh can do the path, and brags about how good “we” are on the Internet. Also sometimes I miss notes from oversqueezing.

Current Scores

Goals:

FC Goals:

Everything in here is technically possible since Josh has FCed the lead part and I’ve FCed the bass:

Knights of Cydonia—The only hard part in the bass is Metal Battleground, which is exactly the same as lead. Seeing as I just FCed lead…
The Number of the Beast—I’m getting pretty good at bass, so it basically should just come down to Josh FCing the solo and both of us not choking
Rock You Like a Hurricane—All up to Josh; bass is so slow it’s not even funny
Cliffs of Dover—Josh is pretty good at the hard sections; but choke points are prevalent in both lead and bass
Take This Life—Just plain hard in both parts, although lead is significantly tougher

Non-FC Goals:

[X] Defend any and all of our first place scores that are beaten in the future (Plesant Burning Sensation (PBS), our squeezing archrivals, clearly intend to make this difficult, but so far we’ve held up)
[X] Defend our first place global rank (current spread between us and 2nd place: 719,679)
[X] 50/69 first place scores
[_] 55/69 first place scores (53)
[_] 60/69 first place scores

Past Accomplishments:

Full Combo/100% List:

Key:
Green: First place score (number of asterisks denotes number of times successfully defended)
Red: Former first place score that we’re trying to retake
Black: Has never been first place

Songs:

Bulls On Parade
Slow Ride (Wish Josh would have let me play that awesome bass outro :P)
Barracuda*** (Re-re-re-first FTW...)
When You Were Young* (The redux score here is one of our best ever)
The Seeker (Nine stars, obviously, but I think we’re the first to get a 6.1 average multiplier on any song EVER)
Sabotage (Rough path, but we got it)
School's Out* (The first deliberate shot fired in our squeeze war with PBS)
Kool Thing (The initial FC was one of the worst scores we’ve ever gotten, but the redux was pretty good)
Miss Murder* (It’s going to take some insane squeezing to beat this)
Reptilia
Lay Down (I'm pretty happy that I got enough of the bass whammy for this first)
Anarchy in the U.K.* (Bleh. PBS did not win any friends on our team when they forced us to redux this )
Same Old Song And Dance (We might be the only ones with a path for this song…)
Cherub Rock
Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (Possibly our best score ever)
Paranoid (It was our taking this from PBS that unwittingly launched the squeeze war)
My Name Is Jonas (Split squeezes are fun)
3's & 7's (Josh thinks this is one of our better co-op FCs; not sure why)
The Metal
Black Sunshine (We got this on our third try . So of course the path is awful )
Helicopter* (Unless our path is off, this is dang near optimal)
Monsters (Upon reduxing, this song brought us our first Tier 6 first)
Talk Dirty to Me
Hit Me With Your Best Shot (First by a mere 20 points over the Nesquik Fanatics)
Mississippi Queen
Suck My Kiss (PBS's oldest first falls )
Welcome to the Jungle (Kinda backed into this since the first place score got deleted as fake, but ours is still pretty good)
Even Flow (Josh pathed this himself, and what a path it was!)
Generation Rock (More split squeezing)
La Grange (Bass is really annoying here)
She Bangs the Drums (Some excellent squeezing on this run)
Radio Song
Ruby (Bass is a lot harder than you might think)
Closer (First by ONE TICK )
Rock and Roll All Nite*
Before I Forget (With Josh's path, first was pretty easy once we actually managed to reFC it)
Story of My Life (Despite the extra star power, this path really isn’t much worse than in single player)
Sunshine of Your Love
Stricken (Boo bad path. Hooray FC!)
Pride and Joy (Closer shave than our firsts usually are)
Go That Far (I LOVE rhythm here. And no, not just because of the four-note chords )
Black Magic Woman** (Redux with excellent execution)
Can't Be Saved (My playing lead here was not one of my more positive contributions to the team)
In Love (Out of respect for Josh, I will refrain from making a disparaging comment about this song in the co-op section)
Avalancha
Prayer of the Refugee (First activation was a nice split squeeze)
Down 'N Dirty (Kinda tough on both parts, but I don’t know why it took so long to be double FCed)
Nothing for Me Here (First by 23k. Just wow)
Minus Celsius
Mauvais Garcon (Not retelling that huge story from our comment)
In the Belly of a Shark
Impulse (Bass is tricky, but nowhere near tricky enough to warrant missing as many times as I did)
I'm in the Band (This took a while. Getting all the whammy on my crappy LP made Josh’s job a LOT harder)
Don't Hold Back (SICK. SICK. SICK. We did not think we’d get this FC)
Hier Kommt Alex
My Curse
Metal Heavy Lady
F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. (I take some small satisfaction from being able to help Josh with End Lead. His Aggro H4X, however, was all him )
Holiday in Cambodia (Likewise Intro H4X)

Timeline of Notable Events in our Guitar Hero III Co-op Journey:

December 14, 2008: Josh and I begin our co-op journey, mainly just because we thought it would be fun to do. We had no plans for anything besides just getting some FCs at that point, and we did get our first one. I guess you could say that it was a sign that we were destined to achieve the goals we would set for ourselves here .
December 22, 2008: When You Were Young becomes the first song on which we obtain a first place score. At that point we were starting to figure out certain nuances of co-op squeezing (although we were nowhere near being able to perform those techniques at the level we can now), and began to have an idea that maybe we could get pretty good at this. This night’s marathon session also contains our fifth double FC.
December 29, 2008: With a double FC of Sabotage, we claim first place for Tier 1. It was at this point that we first realized that we had a shot at taking first place overall. Our squeezing skills were, we felt, more than adequate to make up for the points we’d be losing on some of the harder songs due to my lack of skill compared to other teams, and we knew we’d have the dedication to use paths on every single song. Apparently this was yet another marathon session as well, because later in the day we hit 10 FCs and also took first place on Tier 2.
February 25, 2009: We take first place on Tier 3 despite missing two FCs. This further corroborates our belief that first place overall is possible with squeezing skill alone.
February 27, 2009: We hit 15 FCs and take first place on Tier 4.
March 1, 2009: One HUGE day sees us FC the entirety of Tier 5 (including our 20th FC) and take first on it.
March 11, 2009: A double FC of Monsters gives us the points for first place on Tier 6, and thus first on every tier in the career.
March 17, 2009: We hit 25 FCs.
March 25, 2009: MONSTER day of eight new FCs, including both our 30th and 35th.
June 16, 2008: FGofA reunites after a long hiatus and we record our 40th FC (among others)
July 24, 2009: With our double FC of Black Magic Woman, we reclaim first place on Tier 4 from the Nesquik Fanatics. This is the first and only time we’ve had to defend a tier rank. We also finish off beating the Nesquik Fanatics on the Unlockables Tier.
July 26, 2009: We hit 45 FCs.
July 31, 2009: We hit 50 FCs.
August 9, 2009: We hit 55 FCs. This was done as a part of the momentous stream that eventually led into…
August 10, 2009: …where we enter our Take This Life score to claim first on the Bonus Songs and, more importantly, FIRST OVERALL.
September 8, 2009: An intense day of reduxes brings our fitieth first place score.

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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith:

Current Scores

Goals:

[_] FC Mercy

Current Best: -3; score of 393,474

This is my favorite song in any Guitar Hero game to date, period. I know it's one of the hardest in the game to FC, but I don't think it's out of reach. I need to get a LOT more consistent with some of the solos and the main riff still needs a bit of work; however, I'm going to be much more willing to put in that effort on this song than I would be on pretty much any other one.

Section FC Goals:

The colors indicate how good I am at the various sections based on the descriptions below. If there's a check in the box by the section, it means I think I'm good enough at it for real runs (I'll obviously have a reasonable shot at FCing this song long before I can FC some of these solos every time)

Key:
Black: Never hit
Dark Red: Hit once or twice ever
Red: Hit "some" of the time
Indigo: Hit about half the time
Blue: Hit most of the time
Green: Easy FC

[_] Clean Riff 1A
[X] Clean Riff 1B
[_] Dirty Riff 1A
[X] Dirty Riff 1B
[_] Go Joe! 1
[X] Go Joe! 2
[_] Clean Riff 2A
[X] Clean Riff 2B
[_] Dirty Riff 2A
[X] Go Joe! 3
[_] Slip Slidin' Away
[X] Go Joe! 4
[X] Tractor Beam
[_] Go Joe! 5

Obviously the most glaring weaknesses are my inconsistency at the "A" riffs and my complete inability to hit that insane final solo (I can't even get the blasted thing on Slow). I've got quite a bit of work to do, but as I said, I love this song!

(Other) FC Goals:

Key:
Green: Achieved
Blue: Overstrummed or missed only one note; just need a good run
Red: Overstrummed or missed only one note on a freak run; FC may take a long time
Purple: Fewer than five misses; should FC soon
Dark Red: Fewer than five misses; FC will still take a pretty lucky run
Black: Lots of misses, but theoretically possible given that I've FCed every section at one point or another

Songs:
Walk This Way (Run DMC)—Shouldn’t need much more than a bit of grinding
Beyond Beautiful—First solo is ROUGH, and the rest of it isn’t exactly a cakewalk when you factor in nerves
Toys in the Attic
Rats in the Cellar—This song is a consistency nightmare, but nothing in it is THAT hard
Combination—Also a consistency nightmare, but actually has hard parts as well

Non-FC Goals:

[_] Get seven stars on the entire game

[_] Back in the Saddle (6.7. Getting better at the trills, but it's going to take a near-FC to get this one)
[_] Train Kept a' Rollin' (6.9. I think I’ll get this if I can FC up to the break)
[X] Rats in the Cellar (7.2! Within striking distance of an FC, but this’ll do for now)
[X] Combination (7.2! Enormous outro improvements)
[_] Joe Perry Guitar Battle (6.8. No tricks here; just need to improve at massive solos )

[X] Re-FC Dream Police with path (Top 20 overall when I got it)
[_] Redux all FCs until they're top 10 Wii

[_] All the Young Dudes (21st. Only the last activation needs to be any better)
[X] Rag Doll (3rd. I’ve had enough ticks for a platform first on four separate occasions; I’m certainly not done with this one)
[_] King of Rock (11th. Solo activations are always harder to memorize...)
[_] Hard to Handle (18th. Dunno how well I'll be able to squeeze those fast chords)
[_] Dream On (15th. Moar ticks pl0x)

[_] Get first place all platforms on She Sells Sanctuary (This might be my loftiest goal ever, but I'm only down nine ticks and I know where I can get about five or six easily)
[X] 12.5 Million total score
[_] 12.75 Million total score (12.681)
[_] Top 50 overall (65th)

Past Accomplishments:

Full Combo/100% List:

Complete Control (LOLrandom, was just playing through stuff to unlock songs on my brother's 360. Probably should delete the Wii score, but I need to redux it anyway)
Draw the Line
Rag Doll (Easily one of my top five favorite songs in the game; probably part of why I got it earlier than most)
Dream On (I'm somewhat ashamed to say that this actually took a while)
Uncle Salty (Awkward HO/PO line coming out of the solo cost me a few runs)
She Sells Sanctuary (By far my favorite non-Aerosmith/Joe Perry song)
Sex Type Thing (Awkward chords...I once choked this five notes from the end)
All Day and All of the Night
Personality Crisis
Dream Police (No path whatsoever)
King of Rock (Not bad once the soloing starts, but I don't like the first half)
Hard to Handle (Downstrumming FTW!)
Kings and Queens (EPIC SONG)
All the Young Dudes (If I ever need concrete proof that I can hit triplets, this FC will do)
Make It 100% (I honestly thought I had FCed this; apparently I overstrummed after the first note )
Cat Scratch Fever
Always on the Run (I somehow got 2nd place on the Wii with this score and I tilted two of the three activations)
I Hate Myself for Loving You (Fun fact: at the time I got this I had FCed every non-Aerosmith song in the main setlist and only five songs with guitar by Joe Perry. And people said the game would be too easy because of him...)
Shakin' My Cage 100% (Not a good time for my LP to overstrum...)
Pandora's Box (I downstrummed almost everything in this song; it gets up to 7.7 NPS at times)
Shakin' My Cage (Ordinarily I'm not a huge fan of Joe Perry trying to sing, but for some reason I really like this one. Might have something to do with that slide riff, which gets stuck in your head like only a Joe Perry riff can )
Let the Music Do the Talking (After probably an hour of grinding. Worth it, though, I LOVE this song)
Talk Talkin' (To steal a phrase from Leo Kottke, Joe Perry's vocals here "sound like geese farts on a muggy day")
Pink (This song is strangely catchy. Or maybe just strange. I like it, though)
Make It (Took me forever to get rid of that overstrum, and I had to compromise my path a little to do it. This song is supposed to be easy...)
No Surprize (This sucker is LONG and really stressful for a guy who sucks at chord changes as much as I do)
Movin' Out (Also long, but thankfully much more fun to play. I think I strummed every slow HO/PO in the song)
Livin' on the Edge (EPIC. I had to look at my hands for those chord changes in the bridge)
Bright Light Fright (Hectic, but short and fun. This was a pretty old choke that I got rid of)
Nobody's Fault (Trill tapping FTW)
Sweet Emotion (GREAT song; far too many chokes)
Love in an Elevator (I freaking LOVE THIS SONG; short of Mercy I really don't think there's any other song in the setlist I'd rather have gotten for my 30th )
Mama Kin (Awkward chords all over the place; pretty nice FC)
Toys in the Attic (Really annoying chart; I would probably never play it if I didn’t love the song so much. Those HO/PO lines gave me fits right up until I FCed it)
Rats in the Cellar (Tough verse riffs, but I was able to keep solo chokes to a minimum)

Notable Chokes:

Green: I've since FCed the song
Red: I'm still angry

Dream Police: I actually FCed this before the choke, but that was with no path. Upon attempting to redux, I lost concentration and missed the last note. Still a good score, but I hate 99%. This is the highest non-FC score of the song
Make It: The ultimate reverse choke; I overstrummed after the first note and didn't even realize that I hadn't FCed it until I entered the score
Sweet Emotion: I have missed in the outro solo so many times it's not even funny. Actually, it wasn't even funny the first time.
She Sells Sanctuary: I choked in the outro once and got the best non-FC score of the song; then did it again and beat that score
Bright Light Fright: Missed ten notes from the end; one of the best non-FC scores here
Cat Scratch Fever: I FCed all the solos in a real run before I hit all the main riffs
Sex Type Thing: Song #3 on which I've had the highest non-FC score in this game; I missed five notes from the end after near-flawless execution of the no-squeeze path
Toys in the Attic: I realize that the chorus of this song isn't exactly easy, but dang it...I was so close

Kings and Queens: Reverse choke; had some random miss in Verse 2 and proceed to flail my way to a solo FC essentially in a sightread situation (I had no memory of it)
Let the Music Do the Talking: I had a bunch of chokes and reverse chokes on this song, but the real reason I'm putting this here is because one of them marked the fifth time in this game that I'd gotten the highest non-FC score on a song
Pink: I haven't FCed this song yet, so I must have choked somewhere

Pandora's Box: I can't remember exactly where this miss was, but I was absolutely furious afterward (my comment: "Effing chokes. I suck."). Song #4 with the highest non-FC score

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Guitar Hero: World Tour:

Random Thoughts/Observations:

First, a few thoughts about the setlist. This one is mostly hit-or-miss for me. There are many songs I absolutely love, (such as the Tool Set, Hot for Teacher, Satch Boogie, Stranglehold, Do it Again, and Weapon of Choice), but some that I vehemently wish never to play again (Obstacle 1, One Way or Another, Good God, and Spiderwebs come to mind). The charting in general is less insane than GH3, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. Most of it is accurate, but it's a little easy.
It's taking me a little while to get used to the graphical engine in this game. I've yet to notice any significant differences between this an Aerosmith as far as the actual mechanics of the engine go (the fast strumming might be a bit looser, but I haven't had any real problems with the purple notes), but some of the visuals are a bit strange. This is especially true of fast strumming sections, where the way the notes disappear is very disorienting, but less-noticeable things like the smaller notes during star power phrases and the actual look of the purple notes can also throw me off.
I suck at Hot for Teacher and Satch Boogie. The former took me a ton of tries and practice to scrape a five-star, and the latter I still haven't gotten. This is mostly due to my complete inability to combo any part of Solo F; in fact, that part burns my arm out so much that I can't even grind the song for a good score. I could maybe fluke five stars if I miraculously hit almost everything else besides the trill, but I'm probably just going to have to learn how to tap it. For my money, this song is much harder to five-star than anything besides TtFaF.
I'm getting much better at sightreads (or at least first runs of songs), as you will see in my FC list below. Also notable was a -4 run of Demolition Man (Live).
Neversoft gets a lot of crap. But dang it, they got DLC for the Wii in this game, and for that I am eternally grateful . I am loving the free songs I picked up, especially Anything and the Ted Nugent Duel.

Goals:

I have no current plans to grind this game for high scores. I've decided to enter the scores I do get (for whatever reason), but I doubt I'll be reduxing anything. However, I do have some definite goals for this game (unlike GH1), so when I play it won't just be random songs. On the other hand, these goals will just kinda be a random collection of stuff that I'd like to do, and not nearly as specific as my GH2 and GH3 lists.

Also, I'll probably add a lot to this list as I play the game more.

[_] Beat the career and enter all scores (50/86)
[X] Five-star Satch Boogie
[_] FC all the songs I like that are conceivably within reach:

[_] Livin' on a Prayer—LOLchoke
[_] About a Girl—LOLchoke #2
[_] Mountain Song—Strummy bits
[X] Hotel California
[_] Vicarious—Consistency in bridge and end trips
[X] Do it Again—GREAT chart; love this solo
[X] Everlong—Foo Fighters FTW
[_] Ramblin' Man—Solo reminds me a lot of Jessica
[_] Stranglehold—Long-term, but I LOVE this song
[X] Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast—I seriously thought this was AC/DC the first time I heard it
[X] Our Truth
[_] Love Spreads—Long, but not too hard and a great song
[X] Weapon of Choice--I'm not even sure what exactly I like about this song, but it's one of my favorites
[_] Pull Me Under—Very difficult pre-choruses and solo, but I'd love to get this

Full Combo/100% List:

Up Around the Bend (Second run of the song, but I didn't remember the first so it was almost a sightread)
Some Might Say (Not bad for a sightread FC; pretty long and chokeable)
What I've Done (First try, but I'd seen the chart before so it wasn't a true sightread. Not that I wouldn't have FCed it anyway)
Eye of the Tiger (Took a couple tries to get the strumming pattern down)
Parabola (First (and so far only) time grinding a song in this game. I love the Tool set, though, so I didn't mind)
Schism (Got this pretty quickly)
Heartbreaker (I really wish I hadn't missed the first note while not paying attention on my first attempt; then I could have put this as my best sightread ever. I'd seen the solo a couple times before, but I would have bent that rule if it had truly been my first run. Really impressive anyway, though )
The Joker (I guess the chart isn't terrible, but I don't like the song)
Freak on a Leash (I HATE this song; every time I missed it gave me a headache knowing I'd have to start over)
Misery Business
Hotel California (LOVE this one)
Hey Man, Nice Shot (Strange song, but I really like it. Pretty easy FC)
Feel the Pain (On SIGHTREAD. Ostensibly harder than at least 50 other songs in the game)
Dammit (Considering that Feel the Pain took me one run, it's a little galling that this took me about ten. I suck at burst strumming)
Everlong (I'd played this before, but it was a while ago; essentially a sightread FC. Great song, too)
Our Truth (This has a KILLER riff)
Monsoon (Took me like six tries because I kept trying to squeeze too much . Didn't even get a very good score)
Aggro (I'm quite pleased that I managed to alt-strum this)
Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) (Both this and Monsoon have horrendously boring charts, but the songs are pretty good)
Good God (Couple awkward strumming streaks. Josh, this song isn't nearly as good as you think it is)
The Kill (This took WAY too long. Stupid song...)
Shiver (Also took way too long, but at least I kinda like this one)
Lazy Eye (I had no business FCing this so soon; long songs like this one usually take me forever)
Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast (AC/DC FTW!!!!! Er...whatever)
Float On
Nuvole E Lenzuola (Very easy song, but sightread FCs are always nice )
Pretty Vacant (I'm not a big Sex Pistols fan, but I gotta give Neversoft some props for a fun chart here)
Are You Gonna Go My Way (Really catchy riff)
Do it Again (That sitar solo is an absolute blast)
Weapon of Choice (Odd selection for a Guitar Hero game, but I really like this song)

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Guitar Hero: Smash Hits:

Random Thoughts/Observations:

First, a few thoughts about the setlist. As a Wii player, I LOVE that they skewed the song selection toward the earlier games; it means that I get access to some great songs from games that I couldn't have otherwise gotten on my platform. GH3/GHA selection (or lack thereof, in Aerosmith's case) is kinda meh, but I don't really care about those songs. Really, there are only two or three choices from the first three games that I neither like as a song or as a chart, which is much more than I can say for any other game I own.
For the most part, I LOVE Beenox's charting. In some places, I get the impression that the charting isn't always completely "accurate", but it's still great fun and that's really what it should be about. The awkward chord changes present a nice challenge, and most of the solos are beefed up from their counterparts in the original games, which is usually nice. The only issue I have with it is that swing rhythm is often charted VERY strangely, and it's not at all fun when that happens. The main songs on which I noticed that were Take Me Out, Killing in the Name, and No One Knows, which not coincidentally were three of my most-hated charts in the game.
I really think this version of TtFaF is even harder than the original (at least for those of us not good enough to FC it). Even though the HO/POs have been removed from the fast strumming, I'm still not good enough to hit it with the tighter strumming engine, and most of the solo fills that I used to be able to hit are changed to be more awkward and now I miss those too. Granted, I haven't played the song a ton, but I've still yet to four-star the thing and I'm not likely to try it much more in the near future. There are way too many songs in this game that are too much fun to play without wasting time on this piece of crap [/sour grapes].
My sightreading skill continues to improve; I banged out five FCs on my first playthrough of the game. Most were easy, but Smoke on the Water and Them Bones weren't too bad, if I do say so myself. .

Goals:

Since I don't plan on playing this game for high scores, this list will be much like the World Tour list, in the sense of being a random collection of stuff I'd like to do.

[_] Enter scores for the setlist (15/48. I really should have done this while I was sightreading)
[_] FC all the songs from GH1 (I ought to be able to do it with working HO/POs

):

[_] Stellar—I HATE this song
[_] Unsung
[_] Thunder Kiss '65—I normally dislike excessive chugging, but I do like this one
[/] No One Knows—Great song; idiotic chart (got 100%)
[_] Take it Off—Don't remember this much
[_] Cowboys from Hell (Live)—This'll be tough
[_] Bark at the Moon—Fast, but definitely doable on this engine

[_] FC all the songs from GH2 within reason:

[X] Woman—Organ part is weird
[X] Cherry Pie—Solo is much harder this time around
[_] Message in a Bottle—Taking longer than it should
[_] Killing in the Name—Awkward rhythms make it much harder than it should be
[_] Carry On Wayward Son—More beefed-up solos
[_] Mother—See above
[_] Monkey Wrench—One awkward chord change and a weird HO/PO in the riff
[_] Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart—Harder solo (common theme, isn't it?)
[_] Stop!—Extended sustains are annoying
[_] YYZ—Don't remember this one much
[_] Laid to Rest—New chart is hard, but I love what they did to it
[_] The Trooper—Actually doable now with slower trills
[_] Beast and the Harlot—Solo's been narcotized, but the riff still packs a punch

[_] FC two-thirds of the GH80s songs (need four of these six):

[_] I Wanna Rock—Solo is long and has some very hard parts
[X] Round and Round—Technical FC many times over; just some fine-tuning and then grinding left
[_] Nothin' But a Good Time—Nearly FCed this on sightread
[_] Caught in a Mosh—Very hard chord changes and the solo is no slouch
[_] Electric Eye—Solo's been dumbed down a bit, but it's still rough
[_] Play with Me—Hah.

[X] Care not at all about GH3 and GHA FCs

Full Combo/100% List:

I Love Rock 'N Roll (A sightread FC of the first song you play is a good way to start a game )
Rock and Roll All Nite (Blew a couple runs because of extra notes that weren't on the GH3 chart)
Smoke on the Water (Not bad for a sightread )
Heart Shaped Box (Verse chords make this much trickier than the original)
More Than a Feeling (Extended sustains make the verses harder, but the solo is easier with working HO/POs)
Hey You (Great song)
Them Bones (Another good sightread, although the GYB zig-zag is much easier than GH2's YBO and the outro solo is (thankfully) gone)
Hit Me with Your Best Shot (Solo got a difficulty boost, making this much more fun than the GH3 version)
Shout at the Devil (For whatever reason, I actually used a path for this one. Got top 5 Wii)
Killer Queen (Quirky little number, but I really like it. What other GH song would ever start out with finger snaps rather than a click-off? )
Take Me Out (Good song, but an annoying chart)
Godzilla (I really like this one, and the solos are much more fun with working HO/POs. End trills weren't too bad with tapping)
Woman (Even without that infamous RYB(YO) line, these riffs still manage to be annoyingly easy to miss)
Cherry Pie (SWING IT)
Round and Round (EXCELLENT song choice and a great chart by Beenox here; this sucker is FUN)

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Guitar Hero 5:

Random Thoughts/Observations:

I agree with pretty much every review I've seen of this game in that it really seems polished. Neversoft NAILED the little touches in this game, from the ability to create a band out of whatever instruments you want to the ease of using Quickplay and Party Play to the shorter loading times (that was a big problem with the Wii versions of World Tour and Smash Hits). The game just…feels comfortable, like a GH game should
I'm also liking the engine. The fast strumming might be a bit too tight for my taste, but everything else is pretty darn solid, especially the much-improved sliders. HO/PO chords are also a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, these good touches are somewhat offset by a setlist that is not my favorite. There are just too many boring songs as far as I'm concerned. Note that I don't say "easy songs"; there are many songs that really aren't that hard that can be a lot of fun. It's just that it seems like half the setlist consists of "chord-chord-chord-chord-chord-chord-chord-gallop-chord-chord-chord…" ad nauseum. Mississippi Queen was a LOT more fun than that crap.
That said, there are some songs in here that are an absolute blast to play. Off the top of my head:
--The hard stuff is mostly good; well, the 'S' songs are anyway (SNA(FF), TSoR, Superstition, SoS, and Scatterbrain), not so much the 'D' songs (Demon(s), Disconnected, DwEDfN). Also NOtDO and Younk Funk. Not 21CSM.
--Back Round
--Lust for Life
--Medicate
--Streamline Woman
--And many others that I'm not thinking of right now

Goals:

I have yet to decide whether I want to play this game for score. I'm leaning towards not, but if I change my mind I'll add some more stuff here. For now, just FC goals (this is not a complete list; mostly just songs I like/like to play right now):

[_] Back Round (This might be the best song in the game)
[_] Brianstorm (If nothing else, it'll help my alt-strumming)
[_] Bullet with Butterfly Wings (Lolchoke. Also, great song)
[_] Lonely Is the Night (Closest thing we've got to Led Zeppelin in Guitar Hero

)
[_] Lust for Life (Live) (This is either burst strumming madness or burst strumming Sparta)
[_] Medicate (One of two AFI songs that I actually like; the other is Miss Murder. Nice picks, Neversoft

)
[_] Never Miss a Beat (Kaiser Chiefs are pretty darn catchy)
[_] Play That Funky Music (Goofy rhythms; very fun)
[_] Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting) (One of the toughest chorus riffs ever)
[_] Streamline Woman (Really fun riff)
[_] Sultans of Swing (Those trip chords can really get tiring)
[_] Sympathy for the Devil (I cannot listen to this without thinking about how much better GnR's version is)
[_] Wolf Like Me (I'm pretty much gonna have to FC this just to get the challenge)
[_] Younk Funk (Goofy and fun)

Full Combo/100% List:

Song 2 (A sightread FC of the first song you play is a good way to start a game)
They Say (Also sightread and it was the second song I played, meaning I was on my third before I missed a note )
Only Happy When it Rains 100% (I have no memory of this run)
Woman from Tokyo ('99 Remix) (Sightread, making it the second straight Deep Purple SRFC I've gotten after Smoke on the Water in SH)
Kryptonite (I've played this two or three times since the sightread, and I still haven't matched that FC)
The Rock Show (Did a bit of grinding here; I always like to get Blink 182 over with)
Fame (I'm not a fan. Sightread in a PFO)
2 Minutes to Midnight (Took a couple hours, but this is a really fun and hard song)
Judith (Definitely my best sightread in this game. LONG song, although I like it)
Gratitude (Apparently I can hit the slide solo )
Deadbolt (Fourth try…this seems pretty overrated)
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Plus diamond on the SP challenge)
20th Century Boy (Almost sightread; I restarted about 30 seconds into my first run)
Du Hast (Power chords and sliders; who knew those could be this much fun?)
Hungry Like the Wolf (Really happy song )
Shout it Out Loud (I seriously didn't know KISS was in the game until I found this song)

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Guitar Hero: Van Halen

Random Thoughts/Observations:

This game is about the opposite of GH5. I LOVE the setlist, as Van Halen is a pretty awesome band in my opinion, but everything else is identical to Smash Hits and is a bit of a disappointment after playing GH5 (especially the engine and the loading times). I know they didn't have a choice here since GHVH was supposed to come out first, but that's just my take on it. I'm not complaining though; free is free
This game is HARD. I knew that was probably to be expected, since Eddie Van Halen is a legendary shredder, but I certainly didn't think I'd be failing stuff. Both Eruption and Spanish Fly claimed my Rock Meter on sightread, and although I usually pass them now neither is guaranteed. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't do wonders for my score on either, as the failing hazards comprise pretty much half of the songs. If you can't pass easily, then you can't five-star it; simple as that. I'm sitting at about 4.5 stars on each, with very little hope of major improvements. I just can't tap triplets that fast.
Not having played through the game in full yet, I may add more stuff to this list later.

Goals:

I have yet to decide whether I want to play this game for score. I'm leaning towards not, but if I change my mind I'll add some more stuff here. For now, just FC goals (this is not a complete list; mostly just songs I like/like to play right now):

[_] Panama (This is one of my favorite songs in all of Guitar Hero)
[X] Stacy's Mom (Absurdly fun)
[_] Intruder/(Oh) Pretty Woman (Fun riff)
[_] Best of You (Gotta love Foo Fighters)
[_] And the Cradle Will Rock (I've yet to try the fast strumming choruses with a working guitar, so I don't know how hard this'll be)
[X] Jump (

)
[_] Ice Cream Man (Really fun)
[_] Master Exploder (Tenacious D is so hilariously metal)
[_] Little Guitars (Probably out of reach, but I'm gonna give this awesome song my best shot)

Full Combo/100% List:

Runnin' with the Devil (Pretty good sightread FC)
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (English grammar called; they want their apostrophes back)
Jamie's Cryin' (I sure didn't think I'd get three SRFCs of Van Halen songs)
Cathedral (There are some WEIRD HO/PO chains in this song, but I really like playing it. Sounds cool, too)
First Date (Blink-182 may be many things, but diverse isn't one of them)
Safe European Home (Bleh; not a fan of The Clash...or punk at all for that matter)
Space Truckin' (Apparently I flat-out OWN Deep Purple; third straight SRFC of their songs)
The End of Heartache (This is pretty darn fun to play. Reminds me of My Curse, but without the wanting to smash your guitar for missing in the verse riffs a billion times )
Stacy's Mom (Heh )
Jump (Insanely happy song )

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My "Best" Accomplishments:

This is the part where I'm going to list my rankings for the best things I've done across all Guitar Hero games. Note that these lists are going to be my own judgments. For example, just because the FC Breakdowns might list a song as hard, if I didn't think it was too tough to get it's not going in my list of best FCs (you'll see a very obvious example of this in that section).

Top Five Best FCs

These are going to be the ones that took the most effort to get, or would be very difficult to duplicate. And yes, I realize that they're all GH2; I guess I'm just that much better at that game than any other.

The Light That Blinds—Doesn't have as many hard parts as a couple others here, but what it does have is MUCH nastier
Free Bird—REALLY long song requiring consistency on at three major hard parts and a ton of choke points. This sucker taxed my mental approach, technique ingenuity, and straight-up fretting skills like few others ever have.
Fall of Pangea—LONG song; very rough first solo and very chokeable second. The middle choruses gave me an obscene amount of trouble, and I had three chokes total in the outro and bridge as well.
Carry Me Home—That evil chord switch in the verses took me quite a long time to get solid, and even once I learned that there was still the intro and a wicked-fast set of trips in the second verse
Less Talk More Rokk/Search and Destroy—Both of these were nearly a year overdue by the time I finally picked them up; I find it almost impossible to choose between them for the coveted #5 slot.

Top Five Best FC Scores

Since I originally learned how to squeeze I've been pretty enamored of high-ranked scores. This section details the highlights of my career in path execution. Originally this list was pretty balanced across the games I've played seriously, but after going through the squeezing meat grinder of the S11 GH2X league this list is going to be heavily slanted toward that game.

Carry Me Home 419,888—First place global . I had to come up with a hybrid path for this and hit several very tough squeezes
War Pigs 396,579—Other than the first activation, incredibly good ticking throughout and one hard squeeze as well. My only regret is that I didn't get 20 more points in the intro and take first overall
Less Talk More Rokk 393,782—The squeezing in this song isn't really difficult (although the last activation is fairly hard and so is very easy to "choke"), but trying to hold full ticks is absolutely brutal. Third place global though
Sunshine of Your Love 267,887—First (and so far only) untied platform first on any GH3 song, and it was definitely no cakewalk to get. The HO/PO squeeze in the solo is a pain, and even with a nice front end there I just barely got the squeeze with a HUGE back end
John the Fisherman 206,048—Very easy FC, but I hit an INSANE front end to get the ticks I got on the third activation and tie for second place global

Top Five Best Non-FC Runs

Since one of my main strengths as a Guitar Hero player is in path execution, I rarely have "good" runs of songs that aren't FCs. On occasion, however, I've managed to piece together a really good run of a hard song; the best examples of that are here.

Jordan 408,195—FCed Solo B1 and only one miss outside Solo B2-C for a FG7*...awesome
Through the Fire and Flames 589,278—Really, not a great score by any objective standard, but a great run by my own subjective ones. This meant more to me than any Guitar Hero achievement I’d ever had at the time.
Hangar 18 460,761—Traditionally I flat-out suck at tough, solo-heavy songs; this score shows how far I've come in that regard.
Misirlou 357,252—Breaking the 350k mark on this song is a HUGE deal for me considering how bad I used to be at it, and FCing both Guitar Breaks to do it just made it even better
Trogdor 197,117—Burninated the entire yellow streak for what I believe is my highest non-FC score (top 70 at the time) in any GH game other than Aerosmith

Top Five Best Sightread Runs

These rankings are relative to my skill level at the time; otherwise they'd be horribly weighted toward games I'd played most recently. You only get one shot at a sightread, so it really wouldn't be fair to GH3/GH2 that I was much worse when I first played them than I was when I played Aerosmith/World Tour.

Synchronicity II FC—Even though this was quite recent I still think it's VERY impressive; 80s is not an easy game by any stretch and this one is a pretty high FC on the breakdown
Cult of Personality pass—I had been playing Expert for all of about three weeks when I pulled this out of nowhere. Guess my legendary flailing skills were present even then
Feel the Pain FC—Some really goofy stuff in the end solo, and a BO trill the gets as fast as 13 NPS that I hit from second. Not bad at all .
Demolition Man (Live) -4—I'm really not very good at holding combos on sightread (which is why most of the songs in this list are passes), so imagine my surprise when the purple circles started disappearing after the two opening sustains . I made it to the second set of that green-anchored stuff before I missed, then proceeded to FC through the third and fourth sets before finally missing again in the descending trips near the end. If I had used any sort of path this would have been a very good score (but that sort of defeats the purpose of a sightread, doesn't it? )
Satch Boogie pass—I still struggle to get through Solo F on occasion, so even though this was fairly recent I still think it's impressive

Top Five Best Runs of Any Song, Period

Essentially just a compilation of the above lists. Weighted towards FCs because, well, FCs are awesome

Carry Me Home First Place Global—Crazy-good squeezing, and on a really tough song to boot . Not much else to say here
The Light That Blinds FC and top 20—I'll be honest, it's a little painful for me to bump Free Bird from the top spot here, but I can't ignore just how hard this song really is. FCing four very difficult strumming sections and near-baffling fast solo, as well as snagging a score as good as I did on the first try, shows that I've reached a level in this game that I never would have dared to dream was possible
Free Bird FC—Forget the length and forget the difficulty for a second. Can you say "EPIC"? Commemorating my Freebird post with this incredible FC is one of the coolest things I've ever done
Fall of Pangea FC—This took me 22 post-Solo 1d misses, three weeks, and one crazy tapping method to get, but as you can see I’ve hardly ever been happier with a run of anything
Through the Fire and Flames Five Stars—I would have given this the top spot in a heartbeat if I’d actually been working on it for the fourteen months that elapsed between my first pass and my first five-star run. Even without that, though, it was still extremely gratifying to get this on a song that had been so aggravating to me for so long.

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**Benster26** · Joined: 31 Jan 2009 Posts: 1348 Location: London, England

Nice you are back.

Once again you thread is looking impekable (spelling).

Nice to have you back.

Good job with all the gh1 stuff, I find gh2 hard and that is with functioning ho/pu so I can imagine how bloody hard gh1 must be.
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psn: benloves26

Back on the 11th!

**xboxpro57** · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 275 Location: Virginia Tech

Oh my God. Hi. Epic post. Look forward to following your achievements!
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**The-B.O.D.** · Joined: 20 Dec 2008 Posts: 2413 Location: Portland, Oregon

Glad to see you back on SH Z

**elScarecrow** · Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 1404 Location: Raleigh

WELCOME BACK

methinks you should work on taking down some more of those GH3 co-op FC goals; we're catching up.

but we've been over this before...

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Smaller dreams get pushed aside
For larger ones that change my life

**zsjostrom35** · Joined: 17 Feb 2008 Posts: 2130 Location: Columbus, Ohio

**LemonMeringue** · Joined: 27 Nov 2007 Posts: 2048 Location: Pennsylvania

Yo yo, good to see people are still playing the older games. As someone who goes for high scores and stuff, you will enjoy the leaderboard competition more than the WT+ games I'm sure.

Have you considered playing a bit on hard? I think you would do rather well, and it would be good to see someone new giving GH1H and GH2H a try.
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nanos gigantium humeris insidentes

**TheThirdDay** · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 4357 Location: Toms River, NJ

**alexhaz64** · Joined: 01 Mar 2008 Posts: 4480 Location: Long Beach, CA

**CristianHero** · Joined: 06 Mar 2010 Posts: 404

I look forward to seeing what you will accomplishment. Every time you get into a new game you always come out with great results

. It's also very interesting that we have the same love for some songs (PMU, Stranglehold, etc.) Cheers to your new thread!

By the way, I would also like to receive a PM from you when you stream, I like to see what's going on

.

**zsjostrom35** · Joined: 17 Feb 2008 Posts: 2130 Location: Columbus, Ohio

**GenericName** · Joined: 21 Feb 2009 Posts: 1630 Location: ¯\(°_o)/¯

I've never posted here yet, have I...

Well, now I have. I don't really have anything to say yet... but I wanted a post here.

Lol random.
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**Munzapoppa** · Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 2:43 am Post subject:

It's good to see you posting again. I think I only posted in your old thread once, but I read it a lot, because it's probably one of the most interesting accomplishment threads here. Nice job on all the new FCs too.
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Guitar Hero Acc. - 20 Guitar, 3 Bass, 2 Vocal FCs
Rock Band Acc. - 61 Guitar FCs, 111 Bass FCs, 27 Drum FCs (6 Pro), 27 Vocal FCs, 2 Keys FCs, 3 OMBFCs
Total Expert FCs (GH + RB): 253

200 Rock Band FCs achieved 11/5/10
Dookie Vox FCs: 13/14

**oddlyuneven** · Joined: 14 Aug 2008 Posts: 658

Man, I'm glad you finally rehashed your expired thread. I was beginning to think you were done with SH for good. BTW, it looks great. I would love to comment on your recent accomplishments, but you know how I feel about GH1

. I look forward to keeping up with your thread again.
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Show me yours and I'll show you mine...

**Benster26** · Joined: 31 Jan 2009 Posts: 1348 Location: London, England

*By oddlyuneven's demand*

haha I fced BiF, I am superior to you in every way.

BiF is easy, and is definatley in the easiest 50 fcs!!!!

Dont hate me... it was oddly, hes evil, he forced me to do it.

He said

and I was liek

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psn: benloves26

Back on the 11th!