zsjostrom35's Accomplishments (GH2X: FC #56 TLTB!)

[zsjostrom35]

zsjostrom35's Accomplishment Thread

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

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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
elitewarrior500
Fork1
fudrick
GlassDragon
GenericName
Guku416
JohnnyGrey
oddlyuneven
PiemanLK
shredinmadness
singertoad
thatguy4893
TheLonging
TheThirdDay
this1neguy
xboxpro57

Recent Accomplishments (Last month or so):

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1/24/10: It is with sadness that I announce that I will be an indefinite leave of absence as a poster on the ScoreHero forums . The main reason behind this is that recently I've simply been burned out on posting. This is really nobody's fault but my own, via a combination of my propensity for making enormous posts, my stupidly exacting standards that gradually shifted to the point where I didn't even value any post that I made that wasn't that big, and my anal retentiveness that now won't let me post any other way. Trying to keep up with all my friends' threads and my own in this manner was very difficult for me to do, and it eventually got to the point where it was stressing me out so much that I no longer enjoyed doing it. Posting on ScoreHero used to be something I loved to do, and lately it hasn't been.

I do want to emphasize that this has nothing to do with any of you guys that follow this thread or look forward to my posting in yours. If anything, the hardest part about taking this break is going to leaving all these threads; all of you never fail to make me feel appreciated for what I post and I'll really regret not being here to repay you with the attention your threads deserve. There is, however, a slight upside to all of this, and that is that with the extra time I won't be spending on posting anymore I'm going to make it a point to be in more streams from now on and maybe stream more frequently myself. Again, separating myself from all you guys is NOT the point of this, and hanging out in stream chats will be the best way to stay in contact with all of you.

I also want to stress that this is not some kind of attention-grabbing maneuver on my part; if it weren't that don't want people to wonder where I am I wouldn't have bothered to post this at all. So please don't eulogize me; it's not like I'm going to be gone forever . Actually, to reinforce this point I'm going to ask the mods to lock this thread, and when I come back (hopefully within a couple months) I'll probably just start a new one. If you feel inclined to leave a message or want to talk more about my reasons for doing this you can drop me a PM; I'll still be coming on here from time to time to check my inbox and to keep up on everybody else's accomplishments.

So yeah, stay awesome ScoreHero. Pretty sure you'll be fine without me .

1/18/10: Well, it took longer than I hoped it would, but I finally have an achievement in the new year worth updating this thread for . The Light That Blinds FCed! I've been hitting this song pretty hard over the last couple weeks and apparently all that work finally paid off. I had very good methods for just about every section; at this point it was really only a matter of time before I pieced it all together and got an FC run; in fact, it only took me two real runs tonight. My path execution wasn't anything spectacular, but it was solid apart from a bit of missed whammy in the solo. 481,084; 17th place overall.

If you're interested, here's a quick little rundown of the methods I used for the hard parts:

Intro A: I basically learned the strum speed the hard way and then focused only on the greens and oranges. This enabled me to keep a constant fretting speed by evenly spacing out my button presses between the greens and oranges while still having frequent checks to make sure my strumming and fretting were synchronized. I was very solid on this part.
Intro B: Again, I had the strumming speed down and the fretting here is easy. Basically just an endurance issue, which I mostly dealt with by trying not to think about how much my arm hurt.
Verses: Strummed everything except the weird gallop things and the yellow HO/PO before the yellow bursts (I owe this method to Fug). In the constant strumming parts, I used the non-green notes as a check to make sure my strumming and fretting were synchronized both with the music and with each other.
Solo B: For the broken zig-zag, I used standard second position. Since you can't fret any ghost yellows on the ascending parts, this was a little awkward to learn, but once I got it down it was fairly ingrained in my fingers and I just had to concentrate on making sure I wasn't going too slow. For the part after that, I tapped all the orange HO/POs and the two blues right before the orange sustains. My pinky just wasn't feeling up to that part and this was the easiest way to avoid pinky use.

12/16/09: When I broke 20 million in GH2X about ten months ago, I was dimly aware of the fact that there was another million mark possible in the game. I didn't really pay much attention to that, however, because I figured I was probably never going to get there. Even now, I don't fault myself for thinking that; I was pretty good at the game back then and 21 million represented a level of 1337-dom that was so far beyond my abilities that I could never get there without some sort of minor miracle. However, what I didn't count on was actually getting one . Towards the end of last September, I started absolutely destroying GH2, and over the past couple months I've been improving scores and picking up FCs like crazy, to the point where a few weeks ago I realized that this previously-astronomical milestone was actually within reach. When I reduxed Stop tonight to finally bump myself over the mark, there was almost a surreal feeling to it. I simply never thought I'd ever be this good

Anyway, here's a rundown of the last 40k or so since my last update:

--10.7k from various reduxes (in addition to the 700 points on Stop that put me over, highlights included an 11th-place run of X-Stream and a 7th-place run of Laid to Rest)
--6.9k from Misirlou (I think this might have been my first 99% run of the song. Also, the run was notable for the fact that I completely destroyed the Guitar Breaks; if not for more misses than usual in the verses it could have been 350k)
--19.6k from Six (my improvements on this song have been a microcosm of my overall improvments recently; it's simply unbelievable how good this run was compared to my general suckage on the song not too long ago. I FCed from Chorus 1 to about halfway through the outro on this run, which was a streak of over 900 notes, and I was only one miss away from seven stars)
--11.9k from Gemini (hit the zig-zag and FCed outside the X and the chords in 2b; this was also good enough for eight stars)

I'm not sure where I'll go from here now that this major target is out of the way; probably more work on Gemini/TLTB to see if I can pick up a new FC or continued attempts to seven-star Six. For now though, I'll simply enjoy having accomplished something I never dreamed I'd do

12/10/09: I haven't done really much big since my last update, but I've been getting some non-trivial increases on a lot of songs recently and so I'm getting pretty close to my big goal (21 million). Since my CMH FC:

--16.7k from a bunch of reduxes. Highlights of this group included top 20 on TIGRYT, getting really annoying whammy activations on TLB and Raw Dog, and 13th place from actually holding good ticks in Madhouse. Also, having done all these, YRGM is the only FC I have left that is not ranked in the top 200.
--25.5k from The Light That Blinds. This was a dang good run with only two misses (doublet strumming and one of the verses). While I'm not that close to an FC due to the doublet strumming and major consistency issues in the rest, it's a definite possibility at this point.
--25k from Misirlou. I'm getting better at all-around consistency on this, and while I haven't a prayer at an FC right now due to the intro I could still get a lot more. That said, I did break seven stars, which was pretty darn cool.
--13.8k from Hangar 18. Between my best run and my second-best run I FCed all the solos but 4, 7, and 9 and got 97% on each of 4b and 7. However, consistency is still a major issue and the Solo 5 FC was a huge fluke, plus I suck at Solo 9. So there's a lot of room for improvement.
--Nearly 40k (don't know the exact number because I've beaten my old score at least three times in the past week) from Six. This is getting a LOT better; I'm starting to hit the verses now (actually got a Verse 2 FC, although it wasn't on a good run) and have racked up huge combos in the intro and outro, which is where most of the points are coming from. Obviously consistency is a nightmare here and I'm still looking to seven-star it, but I've been pretty happy with what I've been able to do so far.

So yeah, while it's not as eye-popping as that list down in the update below, I've been chugging along quite nicely of late. I'm now up to 20.951 million, and 78th place in the overall rankings. Hopefully I can keep this up for a while longer .

Oh, and by the way, if your username is TheThirdDay, you should know that I FINALLY managed to pass you back after all these months. I know it's not really fair since you don't have a working console right now, but maybe this'll provide some incentive for you to get another one. Or at least steal your friend's, which has apparently been working out pretty well for you. Down N' Dirty FC, FoP 100%, and Free Bird rhythm full solo FC are pretty nice for not actually owning the system .

11/19/09: Those of you who follow this thread know that I've been on what amounts to little less than a rampage through GH2 recently. Prior to tonight, I'd gotten no fewer than six new FCs in the last month, and the accompanying score increases had sent my rank soaring to the point where I was seriously closing in on the top 100 overall. However, I was still a ways away...I thought. Enter the greatest night of Guitar Hero I have EVER HAD (all of it live, no less ):

--I started out with Search and Destroy, a song that had been plaguing me for quite some time with random misses. I've gotten more minus-1s on this song than I can count, but with a little Solo 2b practice and no more than five runs tonight, I finally took it down! FC #1 of the night, 52nd total; +4k (rank 20th on the song)
--I then moved on to Crazy on You, another long-overdue FC that had been annoying me with mistakes pretty much anywhere. It took me a while to get through the intro a few times, but on my third or fourth run making it through there, I FCed out! FC #2/53; +12k (rank 9th on the song)
--At this point I was feeling really optimistic about FC prospects (for obvious reasons ), so armed with the strategy that had gotten me a SCOM FC the night before I went to tackle Them Bones and its infamously strummy outro. With some practice I started hitting it okay (got it twice in a row at the end), so I went to take real runs. On my first try, I had an idiot miss in the final chorus. Second try: FC! FC #3/54; +5k (rank 19th on the song)
--Having already banged out three FCs in one night, I figured I might as well take on the last one on my radar, Carry Me Home. This put up a LOT more of a fight than the other three combined, but after probably an hour of grinding (and one BAD choke) I got it. I GOT IT! FC #4/55; +20k (rank 46th on the song; I missed some whammy)
--I would have loved to go for more FCs after that, but I was really out of viable targets. So, at the urging of alexhaz64 (who always seems to have a knack for pushing me in the right direction in streams ), I went to play Six. To my surprise (it would have been utter astonishment if not for the fact that I was already having the greatest night of my life) I was actually holding decent combos in the verses, and on my first run I picked up 11k and the only six-star I had left in the game!
--I was almost ready to call it a night after that, but I checked the overall rankings on a whim and was shocked to discover that I was only 6k out of the top 100. It seemed fitting that I play Six to get it, so I went back and did some grinding of that bad boy again. This took a lot more effort than the first 11k did, but after an EXCELLENT (for me anyway :P) run of the verses and satisfactory performance elsewhere I got a further 9k and squeaked my way into the TOP ONE HUNDRED OVERALL!

Total stats for the night: +62k, four new FCs, and one new six-star. That would have been great progress in a WEEK, so this goes down as without question the best night I've ever had.

11/18/09: Sweet Child O' Mine FCed! I'm still up in the air as to whether this is my best FC yet, but just the fact that I'm considering it should tell you plenty about how hard this bonker was for me to get. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I spent nearly two hours tonight playing nothing but this song (both real runs and practice), and it was STILL a fluke when I got it. I had no consistency whatsoever on that idiot strumming combined with the fast OBYO right afterward, and despite my best efforts to come up with something useful the best method I could find was "strum kinda fast and hope for the best ". Whatever, though; it worked in the end and I finally took down this song that I thought I might never get . Underwhammied and missed a front end on the last activation, but the rest of the path was very good so I was able to break 315k and get top 30.

I also did some random reduxing tonight; improving by about 4k on Carry on Wayward Son, 1.5k on Message in a Bottle, and 1k on Yes We Can (on which I got all the non-ridiculous squeezes; I am SO GLAD I never have to play this idiot song again ). I'm up to 114th now and inching closer to the final century mark...

11/7/09: It took until the very end of a six-hour stream to get, but I finally managed to pound out Psychobilly Freakout for my 50th FC in GH2! This marked my fifth new FC in less than two weeks, and was undoubtedly the most impressive of the bunch, as I had to learn a couple sections and develop a lot of consistency in some very hard sections of a brutal song to do it. You'd think, with all this high praise, that I was very happy with this FC, and for the most part I am, but I missed the front ends of each of the last three activations and consequently got a score about a thousand points lower than I had hoped for. I guess the score wasn't terrible (321,504; 45th place), but I wanted top 20 at least. Oh well, it's still really nice to pick up a song that I love this much, and getting an epic 50th is always an awesome milestone.

11/2/09: Arterial Black FCed! This was an unexpectedly pleasant ending to what had otherwise been a very frustrating stream from a Guitar Hero point of view (of course, the chat was fun as always ). Solo F was surprisingly solid, and while Solos A, B, and E didn't feel as good as usual I was able to get one good run through all of them and I FCed out. No chokes that night either . Path execution was pretty much best-case for me seeing as I never hit the Solo A activtion front end; score was 284,588 which is 26th place!

So, the next one's the big 50th, and I'd obviously like to get something really good for it. I'm leaning towards Psychobilly Freakout right now, although Carry Me Home is a definite possibility. Both are excellent songs with numerous hard parts and choke-prone areas; hopefully I can get one of them soon. After my GH3 #50 was I'm in the Band, I feel like I could probably stand to do something a tad more epic

10/28/09: All right, this is getting ridiculous . FTK FCed, marking my third FC in as many days! This really wasn't too bad once I learned Kick It!; the other HO/PO fills are fast but fairly straightforward. Path execution wasn't anything spectacular, but I pretty much got the no-squeeze best score, which was good enough for 45th place overall.

Extremely random fact: four of my last five GH2 FCs have started with the letter F :P

After that, I started working on Psychobilly Freakout, which was my worst score on a song not named Six. I finally figured out a good strumming method for the outro, and with a fluke FC of the Verse 1 SP phrase plus a solid run of everything else I managed to get 295k, which was a pickup of 28 thousand points. I'm now up to 135 place overall, which puts me ahead of a certain JohnnyGrey...

10/27/09: Wow, I'm on a roll in GH2; FC #47 Freya! I was pleasanly surprised at how smoothly this went; only took me four or five runs to FC through Solo 1 tonight and I FCed out first try. Of course, I did my best to ensure that that would happen by spending a fair amount of time practicing all the little solo fills after the chord insanity, but it was nice all the same . Score was decent (although I missed a 400 point squeeze that would have let me beat alex :P); 405,332 and 47th place.

In other GH2 news, I put together a pretty good run of Jordan last night for 350k, which was enough of an increase to put me into the top 150 players across all platforms! This run combined three really dumb misses (two pre-solo and blowing the second bridge SP phrase) with a MONSTER run of of Solo F, which I nearly FCed under star power. I could probably beat the score, but I'm happy with it for now. I also beat my Gemini score with an FC outside the insane parts (Bridge, Solo 2b). On a less cheery note, I had TWO single-miss runs of Search and Destroy (both blown in Solo 2d, I FCed out both of them just so I could complain about it here) and a SOLO choke of Carry Me Home.

10/26/09: When I constructed my "Best of" lists for this thread a while back, I included a somewhat-unorthodox choice in my Best FCs list; namely She Bangs the Drums as #5. Though several new FCs have made it into that list since its conception, I've kept the #5 slot constant to reflect the fact that SBtD represented the most I'd ever struggled with an easy song before taking it down (it was #36 in GH3). That, however, has now changed, because I finally managed to get an FC that's given me even MORE trouble: Less Talk More Rokk!

Of course, this whole thing is a little absurd; there's just no way this song ever should have been this hard. I can't argue with the facts, however, and the facts are that this sucker was harder for me to FC than (among many other things) Free Bird and Fall of Pangea. According to the FC breakdowns, I have been good enough to get this since January, but for whatever reason, I simply couldn't. It wasn't for lack of trying; pretty much anybody that's watched me stream GH2 can attest to the fact that I play the song several times every session. I just...couldn't get it. UNTIL NOW

Also, last night brought some pretty cool other stuff in GH2. First of all, I picked up an Intro A FC in The Light That Blinds, which completes a technical FC of the song. Since I was doing very well on the verses and the solo, that's now an FC goal. Carry Me Home also went well; I got nearly 30k on it by finally getting some consistency on the chord switch. I could definitely FC that too (Verse 2 isn't a problem, I hit it three out of four tries). On a slightly less cheery note, I extended my best note streak on Arterial Black to 640, which is a choke three notes from the end. Best non-FC on ScoreHero...yay .

9/28/09: FREEBIRD

On a related note, I know I had some unreplied-to posts when I made that one; I'll get to those in my next response. The thing was, I wanted my Freebird post to stand on its own (meaning no responses in it), but I didn't want to double post (meaning I couldn't do the responses before it).

9/14/09: New co-op firsts on Sabotage and Lay Down! Sabotage took quite a while; apparently even with our more-developed squeezing skills those split activations are still really tough. We had a very good path, however, so once we actually got the FC the first was pretty easy. Lay Down was pretty much the opposite: none of the activations were difficult at all, but I really struggled with the FC and we only barely took first because I was having trouble getting all the SP out of the many little whammied sustains. I certainly didn't get all of it on our FC run, but it was enough.

EDIT: Dang it PBS . Taking our BMW first...

9/9/09: With our first place scores under assault on multiple fronts (we lost three in the past three days), Josh and I sat down today for another round of co-op reduxes. This turned out extremely well, as we managed to defend successfully all three songs and wind up with an additional two firsts in the bargain:

Barracuda 580,044 (This is the THIRD time we've had to retake first on this song)
Helicopter 582,778 (Fixed our path mistakes from the last first place run; near-optimal execution of the path we used)
Black Magic Woman 557,879 (Josh repathed this some for a very sizeable increase)
Suck My Kiss 447,382 (Did this twice because we weren't happy with our execution on the first first place run)
Welcome to the Jungle (We got this score a long time ago, but it wasn't first until today, when the old first place score was deleted as fake )

If I may take a bit of time to brag for myself, I would like to point out that I played lead on both BMW and SMK (and rhythm on Helicopter, but that's more due to my inability to FC lead than my prowess at rhythm). Apparently I'm For Good or for Awesome's designated fast strummer. I was quite proud of the fact that I got the BMW orange streaks on my second try, and the SMK solo twice in a row (fun fact: earlier in the day I hit the SMK solo SEVEN times in a row in practice). It was nice to be able to contribute more to the team than usual.


9/1/09: When I had my horrible choke on Knights of Cydonia back in January, I certainly didn't envision that it would take another five months to FC. There's been a lot more frustration with the outro than just that run in that time, but it's all over tonight! For whatever reason, I was REALLY solid on the Breakneck Desperado section tonight (didn't miss there once in three attempts), but that wasn't the real shocker. The real shocker was that when I finally made it past Hastening Pursuit, I FCed out FIRST TRY. That's right; the outro strumming that had been giving me fits for months actually went down without a fight. I attribute this to my new method of double downstrumming to start the alt-strum on each burst, which lines up the first downstrum with the downbeat. Also, the score was pretty sweet: 512,700, which was good enough for 12th all platforms!

Also, if you're interested, this was my 100th FC across GH2 and GH3, which was a pretty cool milestone.

That FC run would have made for a very good night by itself, but it was by no means alone. Just prior, I had picked up about 10k on Raining Blood, which beat a very old score. If I can get solid on Mosh 2 (lol) and improve on Mosh 1 I have a very good shot at six-starring this. After the KoC FC, I moved on to One, which I still need to seven-star. Unfortunately, I didn't do quite that well (missed somewhere in the Darkness Riffs and in the FSB zig-zag), but I FCed everything else to get a very respectable score of 595k, which was a 14k increase. However, the biggest score leap of the night was yet to come. My final song choice was TWiE (more or less at random), and I proceeded to hammer it for forty-seven thousand points. Apparently, I've finally figured out the strum speed, and although fatigue is still most certainly an issue I can at least get through a run now without stopping mid-verse and missing about twenty notes just to rest. I'm going to continue to go after this since there's still a lot left, plus I'm inching closer to that magical 24 million mark

Speaking of inches, I'm also going to document here my most recent reduxes, which I did on stream several days ago. Got a good one of She Bangs the Drums (28th) and a great one of Rock and Roll All Nite (13th), which together put me ahead of Josh in our little squeeze war (I'm winning the majority of the songs we've both FCed (which is all the songs I've FCed)). However, probably the most notable run of that night was the redux I didn't get: after hitting both the optimal squeezes in Lay Down, I MISSED THE LAST NOTE OF THE SONG, due to some psychological hangup that apparently forces me to go after ticks on sustains even when I know the SP covers the whole thing. That was by a long shot the worst choke I've ever had, since I've only hit the second squeeze three times and that was the first time I'd EVER hit the third, and so I really don't know if I'll be able to get it.

Finally, I need to announce some co-op stuff. I'm taking a page out of elscarecrow's book and adding a co-op section to this thread. To commemorate this momentous moment, I'm announcing our 58th double FC: Holiday in Cambodia! I must say that this is one of my better bass FCs, since the whole thing is pretty tricky and there are two fast descending strummy bits with HO/POs that are really annoying, but of course the bulk of the credit goes to Josh for nailing the intro three times that afternoon while we worked out our path. We also took back our first on Barracuda (for the second time) and reduxed Kool Thing for first (since I figured out how to whammy the choruses and Josh repathed it).

8/25/09: It's taken quite a while to do, but I finally finished my major reduxing project in GH3: all my FC scores are now in the top 200! In fact, all the ones I actually did throughout the whole process (which lasted about two and a half months) are in the top 100 now, so I may continue reduxing old scores to see how many I can get to those lofty heights. Of course, these ranks aren't permanent, so some of the scores that I do have in the top 200 now may not be there for long (I'm looking at you, Barracuda), but it's nice to be able to say it now .

On a non-reduxing note, I got a slight improvement (about 3k) on Cult of Personality, which was notable because I FCed the hard part of Start Soloing! Without one stupid miss earlier I'd have FCed the section, and then I'd be raging about how I completely bombed a very good run under SP in Keep Soloing! Of course, that's still true, but it would have been cooler had I FCed to that point... Anyway, that's a legitimate (although long term) FC goal now; with that run I've hit every part of the two hardest solos in real runs. I'm also pretty solid on Solo!

8/20/09: It's been a while since I've had a decent single-player accomplishment for myself (not that I'm complaining; co-op has more than made up for it in my opinion ), but I finally managed a couple last night: Nothing for Me Here FC and breaking top 300 global in the GH3 rankings! For me, the big news here is the new FC (since I actually got top 300 once before; stagnancy will KILL you on the GH3 leaderboards), which was one of the most unexpected things that has ever happened to me in Guitar Hero. I really was just playing the song at random after finishing some reduxes last night in the hope that I could get a small score increase, but almost immediately I noticed that the chorus had completely clicked. The last time I'd played it I was missing all over the place; now it felt...easy. My mind immediately jumped to shooting for an FC, since I'd always been reasonably good at the solos, but I was shocked at how quickly this came. Within a half hour, I had two runs with FCs up to Solo 2 (FCing Solo 3 both times). I got Solo 2, and after a while more of stupid misses in various places, I finally got an FC to Solo 3, where of course I missed for the first time all night. It wasn't a choke though; I realized that I just didn't know that part well yet (one of the downsides of being a good flailer is that it can mask legitimate problem sections until you actually need to hit them ), so I took it into Practice Mode. Three runs later I had the whole solo nailed down solid, and shortly thereafter I FCed the entire thing. Score was pretty bad, really; I couldn't whammy the choruses well or even hold onto sustains reliably, so I ended up down nearly 4k. On the other hand, it was top 100 at least and quite frankly I don't really care right now.

I give it less than three months before I can't stand it and force myself to redux

Anyway, since my old score was so bad (about 241k; the FC score was 43k better) that made up the bulk of the points that got me into the top 300. However, also aiding that cause was the steady stream of reduxes and other score improvements I've been getting around co-op sessions, which I will list here for your continued boredom (these are all the ones since that 350k F.C.P. score I mentioned about a week ago):

The Metal +1500, 41st (For some reason, I felt compelled to play out a run after missing the first squeeze, so of course I hit all the other ones)
One +14k (This could have been a LOT better; my LP decided to execute its own path starting in Fast Solo C, of all places )
Cult of Personality +14k (Got all of Solo! and most of Start Soloing!, although Keep Soloing! left a bit to be desired)
Holiday in Cambodia +4500 (In theory, I could get this FC. Unlikely, however)
She Bangs the Drums +1500, 43rd (Apparently I am no longer cursed by this song . I still want to get another 200 out of it, however)
Monsters +1500, 54th (Got all the non-doubles except the HO/PO squeeze in Weedley Weedley)
My Curse +11k, 30th (This took a LONG time to redux, but I got all the non-ridiculous squeezes)
Slow Ride +132, 40th (Upper bound -8, and this rank is all I get?)
In Love +2k, 17th (I HATE this song. The only consolation out of this redux is that it's good enough that I can ignore it for a while)
Mauvais Garcon +2k, 5th (Got the 60% squeeze on the first activation, which earned me this massive tie )

I'm nearly done with my "Get all FC scores in the top 200" redux program now (just three songs left, unless something else drops out), so pretty soon I should be focusing my attention more on hard songs again. Although if last night's FC was any indication, maybe all I need to do is keep reduxing .

8/10/09: It is finally finished . After four hours of work on stream (preceded by a couple hours off it), Josh and I banged out the final six songs we needed to take first place global on GH3 co-op! Here's a rundown of the night's work:

Don't Hold Back (done off stream): Double FC and 1st (this was sick. Josh didn't even want to film it because he was so doubtful that we'd get it, but fortunately he proved himself wrong)
Hier Kommt Alex: Double FC and 1st (took a little effort to path, but we got it)
The Way it Ends: 9th (we broke a million, which is what we wanted)
My Curse: Double FC (our score on this was uncharacteristically bad; we will see if we can find the path necessary to make up the 14k between us and first)
Metal Heavy Lady: Double FC (needs a couple path tweaks for first; unfortunately we didn't figure that out until after we'd FCed it)
Take This Life: -1 (better than we thought we'd do; this sucker was rough. A very nice run to finish it all off)

We hung around and improved a couple scores afterward (picked up 20k on TtFaF and reclaimed first on RaRAN), but those were more or less afterthoughts. Final stats: 69/69 songs entered, 57 FCs, and 43 first place scores.


8/9/09: I got back from vacation yesterday, which Josh and I celebrated with yet another round of co-op. This one wasn't as time-intensive as many have been, but we still finished three new songs and got first on all of them. Links below are to the vids; apologies in advance for not lining up the camera well enough that you could see the scores:

In the Belly of a Shark 530,859 (Fortunately whammy here isn't nearly as important as it is in single player; most of the activations have full bars. This wasn't too bad)
I'm in the Band 556,985 (Josh could FC this in his sleep if the score didn't matter, but with the whammy it's very difficult. This took a LONG time to get)
Impulse 659,959 (Tricky bass part, but most of the credit still goes to Josh, who hit the Psychotic Breakdown about five times in a row while I was making idiotic mistakes)

We also did a pointless redux of Mauvais Garcon, which improved our already-first score by about 900 points. This was all Josh's fault; he decided that our old score wasn't good enough so he reFCed the song with my brother on bass and beat it. As he well knew, I wasn't going to stand for that, so I had no choice but to go back and get an even better score, which we did (649,956). The spread between us and second is now about 4500 points.

Anyway, that night's work brought us up to 63/69 songs entered, of which 40 are global firsts. We may stream tonight to go for the last six songs, so keep an eye on this thread if you're interested.

7/31/09: We got first on Mauvais Garcon as well . This took a surprisingly short time to do, but it is one of Josh's best songs and the bass part is really easy. We got it on video, if you're interested.

60/69 entered now; 37 firsts!

7/29/09: For Good or for Awesome had a marathon session of about ten hours last Sunday (more than half of which was on stream), during which we improved seven scores and obtained six new global firsts! Here's a list of our accomplishments in order (links are to YouTube vids, which Josh recorded while we were playing some of the songs):

Down N' Dirty double FC and 1st (for how hard this is supposed to be, we didn't struggle with it all that much)
Prayer of the Refugee double FC and 1st (check out the split squeeze on the front end of the first activation )
In Love double FC and 1st (this took a surprisingly long time; Josh was having trouble with that whack-job HO/PO bit)
Avalancha double FC and 1st by 5k (audio is horribly out of sync; sorry about that)
F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. 4th (Josh FCed this outside End Lead and I FCed my part, so we were pretty happy, despite the ranking not being stellar)
Nothing for Me Here double FC and 1st by 23k (THIS. WAS. SICK. First of all, Josh is a beast for FCing it. Second of all, we managed solid execution of a very difficult path involving multiple chorus and solo activations. By far our best co-op accomplishment ever)
Minus Celsius double FC and 1st

At the end of the night, we had 59/69 scores entered for the setlist, of which 36 were in first place global. Fun fact: we are the only team in the top 120 without all 69 scores entered, and we're 88th missing ten songs . First place overall should only be a matter of time.

7/23/09: The redux train keeps a rollin' with my most impressive score yet: Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll OPTIMAL (yes, the correct spelling of "OPTIMAL" is in all caps)! To be quite honest, none of the squeezes here are all that hard (although I did blow a run or two on the last activation, which is the only squeeze over 60%); the real issue for me was simply getting a re-FC of the blasted song. I knew my first one was a fluke when I got it, but I never imagined at the time that it would take me another seven months to redux with the proper path (I overran on my first FC, and probably the only reason I got it was that I was so mad at the path mistake that I forgot to miss the yellow strums in Solo 2B). Between Solo 1, Solo 2A, and Solo 2B this gave me a devil of a time, but it all came together in the end for an awesome OPTIMAL .

Here's the pic because I like posting pics of OPTIMAL scores



Also, Reptilia 28th.

7/22/09: Most recent round of reduxes didn't yield anything worth changing the thread title for, but I did get an okay score on Miss Murder (40th or so) and a top 10 run of Kool Thing. Kool Thing was interesting, because I'd originally FCed the song with a strumming method for the chorus streaks that started on a downstrum and ended on an upstrum. Unfortunately, I can't whammy like that (and there are three phrases that contain one of those little sustains at the end of the streak), so I had to find something else. I suck at starting on an upstrum, so I quickly discarded that idea after a few tries. I then attempted to start on a double downstrum so as to end on a downstrum. That sort of worked, but then I started having problems with the fretting since I hate changing on an upstrum (I was fretting the double blue too late and missing there). With a little practice I thought I had it down well enough to do it at least three times, but then I discovered that switching between that and my old method screwed up both of them, so that was out. Finally, I remembered a method somebody posted on this song (I think it was Pieman) where you END the streak on a double downstrum. It worked, I must say, like a charm . A little practice of that, and then I quickly FCed the song with a decent score. I decided I'd take a couple more runs to see if I could hit the two squeezes I'd missed, however, and it turned out I could . Score was 329,188.

7/21/09: Apparently I'm getting better at front-end HO/PO squeezing, because I nailed the third Sunshine of Your Love activation and wound up with an untied platform FIRST! This would have been awesome under any set of circumstances, but I took it from none other than Josh, my co-op partner and roommate last year in college . Unfortunately, I did miss two ticks that would have put me in a tie for third place overall (I'm sixth right now), but this is still AWESOME!

Also, I managed top 25 on The Seeker, which probably would have been a lot more exciting on a different night .

7/20/09: GH2 is getting frustrating between my lack of new FCs and a lack of practice mode, so I've moved back to GH3 for reduxes. These are generally fairly stress-free for me, since I like squeezing and most of the songs I'll be redoing are my older FCs (and thus not terribly difficult in general). I may go for new FCs on and off, but my primary goals right now are getting my ranks on the easier songs back to where they should be. See my GH3 non-FC goals in the Table of Contents for my full progress so far; here are some of the highlights:

Lay Down 51st (this wasn't all that impressive rankwise, but I hit a fairly difficult 100% double squeeze to get it. No idea how so many people have optimal here)
Cherub Rock 25th (none of the squeezes are terribly hard, but this was solid execution on a tricky re-FC)
3's & 7's 18th (again, tricky to re-FC, but this also had a decent squeeze or two)
Helicopter 19th (pretty easy, actually)

7/9/09: I had intended to play GH2 tonight, but after only about an hour of doing so (during which I determined that I've gotten much better at the first half of Psychobilly Freakout and much worse at the second) something went wrong and my brother's 360 was unable to read the disk. Needless to say, this is bad . I tried wiping it off, which didn't work, and while I will definitely make a more concerted effort to clean it tomorrow I have to say I have a bad feeling about this.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that when I switched over to GH3 (the 360 read that disk just fine) I was on FIRE with soloing. After a mediocre run of Tom Morello (not enough soloing ), I beat my score on the Slash Battle with little effort and some dumb mistakes. I then moved on to The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Two runs; on the second I broke 500k and five-starred it with over 25k to spare (score was 519,283). After that triumph, I thought "hey, why not try for my other remaining five-star in this game?" After one restart in the intro (missed the SP phrase), I proceed to five-star Revolution Deathsquad comfortably (score was 566,232, which clears the cutoff by well over 15k).

Since I'm just playing for fun, I then decide to take some runs at the three epic freebies (a name that I just made up; refers to Halo Theme, We Three Kings, and Top Gun Anthem). With a few runs each, I FC Halo Theme (NINTH place ) and Top Gun Anthem (34th), and nearly eight-star We Three Kings with an FC outside the two crazy sections (score was 312,762, which is good for 140th place and 7.7 stars).

So yeah, pretty good night considering how it began .

7/8/09: Not sure why, but I felt like playing Smash Hits last night and wound up with four new FCs (as well as three reFCs for which I hadn't entered scores the first time around). The four were:

Shout at the Devil (Weird solo, but not terribly hard. Fun to play)
Killer Queen (Somewhat obnoxious chart, but I really like the song so I didn't mind grinding it for a little while)
Take Me Out (^)
Godzilla (This was actually a pretty nice FC; there are some fast solo fills and I had to tap the BO trills near the end)

I played Round and Round for a while, and though I managed a technical FC and did a bit of grinding I couldn't quite come up with the entire song. I'll definitely go back to that one the next time I play the game, though; it's very fun (and an awesome song).

I've also added a Smash Hits section with the rest of my games; check that out to see the rest of my FCs and some other random crap.

7/6/09: They're not the best accomplishments ever, but I need to change the thread title after over two weeks and I suppose 100% runs of Them Bones and Less Talk More Rokk will do. Actually, I was fairly pleased with that run of Them Bones; I've only FCed the outro solo three or four times in practice and I wasn't really expecting to get the whole thing. A single overstrum (not exactly sure where, but funnily enough the streak was the same as my previous 99% run) was quite good and I managed to pick up about 2k or so since I switched to the optimal path after improving on the outro.

This 100% stands in stark contrast to my other 100% of the stream last night, which came on my perennial GH2 nemesis. I am so frustrated with that song it's not even funny; this was one of three runs I blew in the outro in that particular playing session, and I swear it wasn't my fault. The overstrum came on the sustain at the end of the last SP phrase (which cost me some whammy and therefore a new high), which I ALWAYS strum at the end of EVERY phrase and NEVER miss except, of course, when it's in the outro and I've got an FC on the line. UGH.

On an unrelated note, I also FCed Possum Kingdom about a week ago. I'll add that and any future 360 Exclusive FCs to the list in green.

6/22/09: Impulse FCed! I finally got around to GH3 again after a long break (pretty sure it's been since five-starring TtFaF in April) and it looks like I can still play it . After a bit of practice I was pretty solid on the Psychotic Breakdown, and only two runs after that I managed to FC through it and made it home without a single choke. My path was a tad off, so the score wasn't great, but it was 86th place overall at the time.

In other news, I managed a couple more Intro Solo B FCs in Cliffs of Dover (in practice), so with more work I might be able to get that one. Inconsistency is still a problem throughout, but I'm at least reasonably competent at Solo D and One Last Solo.

6/11/09: Thread overhauled for updated goals, best-of lists, and generally cleaning out lots of old crap . The updated goals have been a necessity for a while; I’ve completed almost all my old ones and as many people in this thread have noticed, I tend to bog down as far as accomplishments when I don’t have a firm source of direction. This should fix that. In order to keep the thread from growing even more enormous than it already is, however, I’ve had to purge my old goal lists of pretty much everything I’ve actually completed, which I figure nobody really cares about anyway . I probably should have done this sooner, but I didn’t really have time because of school, which I finally finished today.

Also, because this is technically a Guitar Hero Accomplishments forum, I should probably share some of the random stuff I did in the past few days. I know I haven’t been on ScoreHero much recently (self-imposed ban to prevent myself from wasting a ton of time when I should be studying for finals), but I did manage to play a couple times and added some new GH1 and GHA accomplishments to my “break” successes. Quotes are necessary now because this “break” has been more productive than the last month I spent not on a break .

Anyway, probably the most impressive accomplishment of this bunch was my six-star run of Texas Flood last night. I am failing miserably in my goal of not grinding this game for score right now; other than that I still don’t enter scores and that I don’t look up paths, I’m exhibiting all my usual symptoms of scoremongering (restarting after bad runs of the intro, pathing during a run, getting hacked when I miss easy stuff, etc.). On the other hand, it was pretty cool to six-star a chart this hard (especially with GH1’s definition of six stars); score was 208,065 with 98% and a 205 note streak.

My other accomplishments of note were in Aerosmith. First of all, I FCed Toys in the Attic, which despite being a great song is a REALLY annoying chart that I dislike playing in general. Fortunately it didn’t take me very long; the first time I made it to the first verse (that chorus riff is extremely aggravating) I FCed out. Very fluke run of the solo, but I’ll take it. Second place Wii, too . I also got technical FCs of several other songs: Walk This Way (Run DMC), on which I got a -1 in a real run and should FC soon; Beyond Beautiful, on which I FCed the VERY fast first solo several times but didn’t actually improve my score in real runs; and Combination, on which I managed to improve my score about 67k to take my rank on the song from appalling to merely bad . That Combination run was also a new seven-star, as was my 15k improvement on Rats in the Cellar (another FC I should get soon). I attempted to seven-star Train Kept a’ Rollin’ on many occasions, but my 12k improvement wasn’t quite enough (need about 1600 more). On the bright side, I did get a technical FC outside of Baggage Car Solo 2 and Caboose (and I got those two on Slow), so I’m more than capable of getting it.

6/6/09: What the heck, I guess I'll start changing the thread title all the time again . Cochise FCed! Apparently the chord solo wasn't as hard as I thought it was; took me all of three runs to FC that part tonight on stream and then FCed out first try .

Also, I got 100% on Infected with an overstrum in the slow HO/POs after the first zig-zag. I liked the song more than I remembered, so I won't have a problem going after an FC there. Revised predicted list for a half-game FC:

21. Smoke on the Water
22. Infected
23. No One Knows
24. Ace of Spades (switched these last two because I forgot how hard this song's outro was)

Farewell Myth is still stupid. Even Rats is impossible.

6/4/09: Decided to play my other "just for fun" game tonight, and banged out two new Aerosmith FCs; Love in an Elevator and Mama Kin! "Just for fun" happens to take on a slightly different meaning in this game, though; I do use paths in this game and I usually try to squeeze the crap out of everything (squeezing IS fun for me ). I say that so you won't be shocked (well, not TOO shocked anyway) when I mention that I out-ticked Undeadfil on Love in an Elevator for a new Wii platform first (fourth overall), and got a platform second on Mama Kin despite missing a pretty easy squeeze .

Also, you probably noticed that I've changed the thread title. I hadn't planned on that, but then again I hadn't planned on FCing Love in an Elevator either, and that might be my favorite song out of all the ones I've FCed EVER. Awesome Joe Perry riffage all over the place and a pretty sweet solo too. The vocals have some really cool harmonies going on (especially the acapella outro), and the bass groove at the beginning is dangerously catchy (I'm not exaggerating about that danger; I actually injured my knee last winter slipping on a patch of ice when I was kinda bouncing around listening to the song on my iPod ). Also, it was a pretty good FC; I had to take a couple of the solo sections into practice and used first and third position a couple times to hit a few tricky bits.

6/3/09: This is turning out to be quite some break . Two new GH1 FCs tonight; Sharp Dressed Man and Heart Full of Black! That brings me to 19 total in the game; five shy of my initial goal of a half-game FC. Here's what I'd like to get for those five:

20. Smoke on the Water (I've reverse choked this three times now; should come soon)
21. Ace of Spades (Technical FC; will probably be difficult to get all the hard parts in one run)
22. No One Knows (See Ace of Spades)
23. Iron Man (I've come very close to a solo FC several times)
24. Cochise/Infected/The Breaking Wheel (Not close to any of these, but I should be able to work one of them out)

I refuse to play Farewell Myth. It's stupid.

On an unrelated note, I also got a 626 note streak in Crossroads; FCing from the beginning of the song all the way to the BO mini-trills in the third solo section.

6/1/09: I'm not going to change the thread title for this (because the Fall of Pangea FC is still the big news), but I did get eight new World Tour FCs today. Most of them were pretty easy, since I'm still just working my way down the setlist, but I did get Are You Gonna Go My Way and Lazy Eye, which were definitely a step up from the others (lots of HO/PO fills/tricky solo and REALLY long, respectively). Check out my World Tour FC list to see the others.

5/26/09: FALL OF PANGEA FCed! I tell you what, this easily rivals my Through the Fire and Flames five-star as far as satisfying accomplishments go. If you've been keeping an eye on my sig tonight, you've noticed that I added four more post-Solo 1d misses to my total tonight before I finally got it. The third of these might have been the most painful choke I've ever had (it's right up there with KoC); I blew my FC with a streak of 1462 notes (52 from the end), at the part where the G-Y G-R G-R pattern changes to G-R G-Y G-R and there are two G-Ys in a row. I almost missed there on my FC run too (if I had to rate the squeeze I hit on the second G-Y, I'd put it at about 80% ). None of that really matters now, though, since I finally got this FC that's been bugging me for weeks! Score was 510,217, which wasn't great, but it was still good enough for 27th overall.

WOOOHOOO!!!!!

Sorry

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents:

1. Recent Accomplishments (Since the Last Time I Cleaned it Out, Anyway)
   
   
2. Guitar Hero I
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
3. Guitar Hero II
   1. Goals
      1. FC Goals
      2. Non-FC Goals
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero II Journey
      3. Notable Chokes
   
   
4. Guitar Hero III
   1. Goals
      1. FC Goals
      2. Non-FC Song Goals
      3. Other Goals (Skill/Ranking)
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero III Journey
      3. Notable Chokes
      4. Five-Starred Through the Fire and Flames
   
   
5. Guitar Hero III Co-op
   1. Goals
      1. FC Goals
      2. Non-FC Goals
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Timeline of Notable Events in our Guitar Hero III Co-op Journey
   
   
6. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
   1. Goals
      1. FC Mercy
      2. (Other) FC Goals
      3. Non-FC Goals
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Notable Chokes
   
   
7. Guitar Hero: World Tour
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Goals
   3. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
8. Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Goals
   3. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
9. Guitar Hero 5
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Goals
   3. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
10. Guitar Hero: Van Halen
    1. Random Thoughts/Observations
    2. Goals
    3. Full Combo/100% List
    
    
11. My "Best" Accomplishments
    1. Top Five Best FCs
    2. Top Five Best FC Scores
    3. Top Five Best Non-FC Scores
    4. Top Five Best Sightread Runs
    5. 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!
  

Full Combo/100% List:

I've decided that I'm not going to upload any scores for GH1, since whenever I do that it inevitably leads to scoremongering on my part and I want to have at least one game that I can just play for fun. Hitting moar notez is fun, however, so I will be keeping track of FCs here. No paths, no scores, just 100%

1. Behind the Mask (First-ever sightread FC in any game on any difficulty. Not one of the pitifully easy ones, either )
   
2. Hey (Second-ever sightread FC in any game on any difficulty. One of the pitifully easy ones )
   
3. Take Me Out (That part where it slows down after the intro is awesome)
   
4. 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)
   
5. Higher Ground (I LOVE this song. Not a bad FC either; the breakdown tells me it's #18)
   
6. I Love Rock and Roll (I am slightly ashamed to say that this took me four tries)
   
7. I Wanna Be Sedated (Probably would have been better practice to alt-strum this, but whatever)
   
8. More than a Feeling (Those solo hooks are WAY slower than they look when you try to alt-strum them)
   
9. Fat Lip (Dangerously catchy riff)
   
10. Hey You (Not sure why, but I really like this one. Downstrummed the solo)
    
11. Stellar (Essentially sightread, I didn't remember this chart at all from my first playthrough)
    
12. 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)
    
13. 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)
    
14. Eureka, I've Found Love (Weird solo strumming patterns cost me a few runs)
    
15. Caveman Rejoice (Not bad at all; this one has a moderate solo and a serious choke hazard in the trips near the end)
    
16. 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)
    
17. Unsung
    
18. Sharp Dressed Man (Should have had this a while ago, but no outro chokes tonight )
    
19. Heart Full of Black (Nailed the orange streak on my second try and FCed out)
    
20. 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)
    
21. 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)
    
22. 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)
    

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)

[_] Re-FC Strutter with all the squeezes I can hit
[X] Get seven stars on 60 songs (YAY MISIRLOU!)
[_] Get all possible seven stars

• [_] Hangar 18 (I need to learn Solo 9!!! and then get an incredibly lucky run)
  
• [_] Jordan (I need to learn Solo B1 and then get an incredibly lucky run)
  
• [_] Six (I was only one miss away on my previous best; just need a slight improvement in the verses

[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 (Blue notes in general are about 50-50)
  
• [_] Chorus consistency (I hit it most of the time, but it needs to be automatic)
  
• [X] Six stars (BOOM!)
  
• [X] 350k (Whoa )
  
• [_] Seven stars (Cutoff's almost exactly 400k; I'm at 397 right now)

[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 (57th. As of right now, about 65k left)

Past Accomplishments:

Full Combo/100% List:

1. Radium Eyes (There is no way a two-note riff should ever be that catchy)
   
2. 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)
   
3. Heart-Shaped Box
   
4. Monkey Wrench (The comment on my scores page is wrong; I got this before Cherry Pie)
   
5. Cherry Pie (See above)
   
6. Strutter (Actually has a moderate solo; showed my progress with GHII HO/POs)
   
7. Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart (GREAT song and not a bad cover, although the Stone Temple Pilots' original is better)
   
8. John the Fisherman (Randomly FCed both the hard parts on my first try in several months)
   
9. Laughtrack
   
10. Mr. Fix It
    
11. Soy Bomb (Those outro chords are really stupid)
    
12. X-Stream (Pretty long song and not very interesting chartwise, but I kinda like it)
    
13. Yes We Can (Harmonix, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?)
    
14. Red Lottery (Fact: I cannot hit the GR part of the trill without index sliding)
    
15. Surrender
    
16. Can't You Hear Me Knockin'
    
17. Shout at the Devil (I FCed the trill probably seven or eight runs in a row before I finally got the whole thing)
    
18. Message in a Bottle (Turned out that with a little practice Solo D wasn't as hard as it looked)
    
19. Elephant Bones (Stupid song...)
    
20. Collide (I kinda like this one)
    
21. 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)
    
22. Last Child (Fun song)
    
23. 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)
    
24. 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)
    
25. Rock This Town (GREAT song; first GH2 FC I'm truly proud of)
    
26. Who Was in My Room Last Night? (Second run of the night without any practice)
    
27. Carry on Wayward Son (Second run of the night without any practice...weird )
    
28. 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)
    
29. Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight (Fluke FC FTW! I had never hit the second trill before this run )
    
30. Girlfriend (Overdue, but I had so much trouble with those hooks that I don't really care)
    
31. Raw Dog (One of the most fun charts in the history of Guitar Hero, and consequently one of my favorite FCs)
    
32. 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)
    
33. Tattooed Love Boys (Learned the bridge strumming in about fifteen minutes; FCed the entire thing three or four runs later)
    
34. 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)
    
35. One for the Road (Got the fast strumming on my first try of the night)
    
36. 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)
    
37. YYZ (Solo was solid; just took some grinding. I tapped the double oranges in the chorus )
    
38. Woman (Downstrumming the HO/PO riff was the only way I could hit it reliably)
    
39. Madhouse (Goofy HO/PO fills took far too long to learn, but it wasn't too bad once I got them down)
    
40. 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)
    
41. Thunderhorse (Epic song FTW )
    
42. Push Push (Lady Lightning) (Funny how you never seem to miss the Big Endings until it actually matters...)
    
43. Mother (MAN, that solo is rough. I was pretty lucky to get this)
    
44. 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% (...)
    
45. Free Bird (I have never experienced anything like hitting note #1982 of this song to complete this FC. Simply amazing )
    
46. Less Talk More Rokk (This felt SO GOOD; I have been unbelievably bad at this song for such a long time)
    
47. Freya (Good Solo 1 method + Practice on post-bridge fills = No (more) chokes FTW)
    
48. 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)
    
49. Arterial Black (Outro chords cost me three runs, but I finally took this sucker down. Solo B HO/POs FTW )
    
50. Psychobilly Freakout (Path execution was sub-par, but I'm still happy to get a song this hard and this awesome)
    
51. Sweet Child O' Mine (VERY underrated; I'm quite proud of this one)
    
52. 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)
    
53. Crazy on You (Perhaps the second-most overdue FC I had, but this score is DEFINITELY worth the wait )
    
54. Them Bones (This and SCOM in consecutive days? When the heck did I learn how to strum?)
    
55. Carry Me Home (FOURTH FC in a single stream; awesome in every sense of the word)
    
56. 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
  

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 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—I'm now pretty solid on everything but SS! and KS!, and I have real-run FCs of every hard part in those two solos
Cliffs of Dover—UGLY One Last Solo choke
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):

1. 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!)
   
2. Mississippi Queen
   
3. 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)
   
4. When You Were Young
   
5. 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)
   
6. Bulls on Parade (Ditto)
   
7. Closer (I actually never played any of the Bonus Songs until I'd already passed Expert career and gotten those first six FCs)
   
8. Radio Song
   
9. 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)
   
10. Talk Dirty to Me
    
11. Hit Me with Your Best Shot
    
12. Generation Rock
    
13. Sabotage (This took way longer than it should have. Chokes FTL...)
    
14. School's Out (I had no business getting this so early, and I somehow used a pretty dang good path by accident)
    
15. My Name is Jonas (See comment on Sabotage)
    
16. Anarchy in the U.K.
    
17. Paranoid
    
18. Reptilia (I REALLY sucked at fast downstrumming with constant fret changes; took me forever not to choke the last chorus)
    
19. 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)
    
20. 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)
    
21. Can't Be Saved
    
22. Ruby (Neither of these last two songs were from lack of trying, I just couldn't get them for some reason)
    
23. 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%
    
24. Paint it Black (broke a LONG drought of over a month and a half without any new FCs)
    
25. Go that Far (I love this song; I was very happy when I didn't choke the last BBGG riff)
    
26. La Grange
    
27. The Seeker (The Seeker Bridge 1 Strumming. I seriously spent ten minutes practicing that method and FCed the song on my first try)
    
28. Avalancha (First time ever hitting the last star power phrase)
    
29. 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)
    
30. Barracuda
    
31. 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)
    
32. 3's & 7's
    
33. Helicopter
    
34. 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
    
35. Hier Kommt Alex
    
36. 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)
    
37. Kool Thing (Finally eradicated a two-month old choke)
    
38. Cherub Rock (After FOUR 100% runs with overstrums after the solo)
    
39. 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)
    
40. Rock and Roll All Nite (Turned a night of chokes into a night of awesome)
    
41. 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)
    
42. The Metal (LONG overdue; eradicated a choke that was about seven months old)
    
43. In Love (Another one that I am quite pleased never to have to play again)
    
44. Mauvais Garçon (See above)
    
45. In the Belly of a Shark
    
46. 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 )
    
47. 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)
    
48. Monsters (FCed the solo at least six times in real runs before I finally got the whole thing)
    
49. Down N' Dirty (Random FC FTW)
    
50. 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 )
    
51. Stricken (Solo tapping was pretty solid after some practice tonight, but I'm SHOCKED that I didn't choke the outro)
    
52. 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 )
    
53. 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 )
    
54. 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)
    
55. Nothing for Me Here (This was unbelievable; I went from having no FC prospects to getting ALL of it in less than an hour)
    
56. Knights of Cydonia (I knew this was overdue, but I certainly didn't expect the outro to go down without a fight tonight )
    
57. Black Sunshine (Seriously, first time getting to Break Down! after I got my tech FC? Wow )
    

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
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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:

1. Bulls On Parade
   
2. Slow Ride (Wish Josh would have let me play that awesome bass outro :P)
   
3. Barracuda*** (Re-re-re-first FTW...)
   
4. When You Were Young* (The redux score here is one of our best ever)
   
5. The Seeker (Nine stars, obviously, but I think we’re the first to get a 6.1 average multiplier on any song EVER)
   
6. Sabotage (Rough path, but we got it)
   
7. School's Out* (The first deliberate shot fired in our squeeze war with PBS)
   
8. Kool Thing (The initial FC was one of the worst scores we’ve ever gotten, but the redux was pretty good)
   
9. Miss Murder* (It’s going to take some insane squeezing to beat this)
   
10. Reptilia
    
11. Lay Down (I'm pretty happy that I got enough of the bass whammy for this first)
    
12. Anarchy in the U.K.* (Bleh. PBS did not win any friends on our team when they forced us to redux this )
    
13. Same Old Song And Dance (We might be the only ones with a path for this song…)
    
14. Cherub Rock
    
15. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (Possibly our best score ever)
    
16. Paranoid (It was our taking this from PBS that unwittingly launched the squeeze war)
    
17. My Name Is Jonas (Split squeezes are fun)
    
18. 3's & 7's (Josh thinks this is one of our better co-op FCs; not sure why)
    
19. The Metal
    
20. Black Sunshine (We got this on our third try . So of course the path is awful )
    
21. Helicopter* (Unless our path is off, this is dang near optimal)
    
22. Monsters (Upon reduxing, this song brought us our first Tier 6 first)
    
23. Talk Dirty to Me
    
24. Hit Me With Your Best Shot (First by a mere 20 points over the Nesquik Fanatics)
    
25. Mississippi Queen
    
26. Suck My Kiss (PBS's oldest first falls )
    
27. Welcome to the Jungle (Kinda backed into this since the first place score got deleted as fake, but ours is still pretty good)
    
28. Even Flow (Josh pathed this himself, and what a path it was!)
    
29. Generation Rock (More split squeezing)
    
30. La Grange (Bass is really annoying here)
    
31. She Bangs the Drums (Some excellent squeezing on this run)
    
32. Radio Song
    
33. Ruby (Bass is a lot harder than you might think)
    
34. Closer (First by ONE TICK )
    
35. Rock and Roll All Nite*
    
36. Before I Forget (With Josh's path, first was pretty easy once we actually managed to reFC it)
    
37. Story of My Life (Despite the extra star power, this path really isn’t much worse than in single player)
    
38. Sunshine of Your Love
    
39. Stricken (Boo bad path. Hooray FC!)
    
40. Pride and Joy (Closer shave than our firsts usually are)
    
41. Go That Far (I LOVE rhythm here. And no, not just because of the four-note chords )
    
42. Black Magic Woman** (Redux with excellent execution)
    
43. Can't Be Saved (My playing lead here was not one of my more positive contributions to the team)
    
44. In Love (Out of respect for Josh, I will refrain from making a disparaging comment about this song in the co-op section)
    
45. Avalancha
    
46. Prayer of the Refugee (First activation was a nice split squeeze)
    
47. Down 'N Dirty (Kinda tough on both parts, but I don’t know why it took so long to be double FCed)
    
48. Nothing for Me Here (First by 23k. Just wow)
    
49. Minus Celsius
    
50. Mauvais Garcon (Not retelling that huge story from our comment)
    
51. In the Belly of a Shark
    
52. Impulse (Bass is tricky, but nowhere near tricky enough to warrant missing as many times as I did)
    
53. I'm in the Band (This took a while. Getting all the whammy on my crappy LP made Josh’s job a LOT harder)
    
54. Don't Hold Back (SICK. SICK. SICK. We did not think we’d get this FC)
    
55. Hier Kommt Alex
    
56. My Curse
    
57. Metal Heavy Lady
    
58. 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 )
    
59. 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.
  

Back to Table of Contents
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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:

1. 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)
   
2. Draw the Line
   
3. Rag Doll (Easily one of my top five favorite songs in the game; probably part of why I got it earlier than most)
   
4. Dream On (I'm somewhat ashamed to say that this actually took a while)
   
5. Uncle Salty (Awkward HO/PO line coming out of the solo cost me a few runs)
   
6. She Sells Sanctuary (By far my favorite non-Aerosmith/Joe Perry song)
   
7. Sex Type Thing (Awkward chords...I once choked this five notes from the end)
   
8. All Day and All of the Night
   
9. Personality Crisis
   
10. Dream Police (No path whatsoever)
    
11. King of Rock (Not bad once the soloing starts, but I don't like the first half)
    
12. Hard to Handle (Downstrumming FTW!)
    
13. Kings and Queens (EPIC SONG)
    
14. 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 )
    
15. Cat Scratch Fever
    
16. Always on the Run (I somehow got 2nd place on the Wii with this score and I tilted two of the three activations)
    
17. 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...)
    
18. Pandora's Box (I downstrummed almost everything in this song; it gets up to 7.7 NPS at times)
    
19. 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 )
    
20. Let the Music Do the Talking (After probably an hour of grinding. Worth it, though, I LOVE this song)
    
21. Talk Talkin' (To steal a phrase from Leo Kottke, Joe Perry's vocals here "sound like geese farts on a muggy day")
    
22. Pink (This song is strangely catchy. Or maybe just strange. I like it, though)
    
23. 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...)
    
24. No Surprize (This sucker is LONG and really stressful for a guy who sucks at chord changes as much as I do)
    
25. Movin' Out (Also long, but thankfully much more fun to play. I think I strummed every slow HO/PO in the song)
    
26. Livin' on the Edge (EPIC. I had to look at my hands for those chord changes in the bridge)
    
27. Bright Light Fright (Hectic, but short and fun. This was a pretty old choke that I got rid of)
    
28. Nobody's Fault (Trill tapping FTW)
    
29. Sweet Emotion (GREAT song; far too many chokes)
    
30. 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 )
    
31. Mama Kin (Awkward chords all over the place; pretty nice FC)
    
32. 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)
    
33. 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
  
• [_] Weapon of Choice--I'm not even sure what exactly I like about this song, but it's one of my favorites

Full Combo/100% List:

1. Up Around the Bend (Second run of the song, but I didn't remember the first so it was almost a sightread)
   
2. Some Might Say (Not bad for a sightread FC; pretty long and chokeable)
   
3. 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)
   
4. Eye of the Tiger (Took a couple tries to get the strumming pattern down)
   
5. Parabola (First (and so far only) time grinding a song in this game. I love the Tool set, though, so I didn't mind)
   
6. Schism (Got this pretty quickly)
   
7. 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 )
   
8. The Joker (I guess the chart isn't terrible, but I don't like the song)
   
9. Freak on a Leash (I HATE this song; every time I missed it gave me a headache knowing I'd have to start over)
   
10. Misery Business
    
11. Hotel California (LOVE this one)
    
12. Hey Man, Nice Shot (Strange song, but I really like it. Pretty easy FC)
    
13. Feel the Pain (On SIGHTREAD. Ostensibly harder than at least 50 other songs in the game)
    
14. 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)
    
15. Everlong (I'd played this before, but it was a while ago; essentially a sightread FC. Great song, too)
    
16. Our Truth (This has a KILLER riff)
    
17. Monsoon (Took me like six tries because I kept trying to squeeze too much . Didn't even get a very good score)
    
18. Aggro (I'm quite pleased that I managed to alt-strum this)
    
19. Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) (Both this and Monsoon have horrendously boring charts, but the songs are pretty good)
    
20. Good God (Couple awkward strumming streaks. Josh, this song isn't nearly as good as you think it is)
    
21. The Kill (This took WAY too long. Stupid song...)
    
22. Shiver (Also took way too long, but at least I kinda like this one)
    
23. Lazy Eye (I had no business FCing this so soon; long songs like this one usually take me forever)
    
24. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast (AC/DC FTW!!!!! Er...whatever)
    
25. Float On
    
26. Nuvole E Lenzuola (Very easy song, but sightread FCs are always nice )
    
27. Pretty Vacant (I'm not a big Sex Pistols fan, but I gotta give Neversoft some props for a fun chart here)
    
28. Are You Gonna Go My Way (Really catchy riff)
    
29. Do it Again (That sitar solo is an absolute blast)
    

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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
  
• [_] 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:

1. I Love Rock 'N Roll (A sightread FC of the first song you play is a good way to start a game )
   
2. Rock and Roll All Nite (Blew a couple runs because of extra notes that weren't on the GH3 chart)
   
3. Smoke on the Water (Not bad for a sightread )
   
4. Heart Shaped Box (Verse chords make this much trickier than the original)
   
5. More Than a Feeling (Extended sustains make the verses harder, but the solo is easier with working HO/POs)
   
6. Hey You (Great song)
   
7. Them Bones (Another good sightread, although the GYB zig-zag is much easier than GH2's YBO and the outro solo is (thankfully) gone)
   
8. Hit Me with Your Best Shot (Solo got a difficulty boost, making this much more fun than the GH3 version)
   
9. Shout at the Devil (For whatever reason, I actually used a path for this one. Got top 5 Wii)
   
10. 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? )
    
11. Take Me Out (Good song, but an annoying chart)
    
12. 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)
    
13. Woman (Even without that infamous RYB(YO) line, these riffs still manage to be annoyingly easy to miss)
    
14. Cherry Pie (SWING IT)
    
15. 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:

1. Song 2 (A sightread FC of the first song you play is a good way to start a game)
   
2. 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)
   
3. Woman from Tokyo ('99 Remix) (Sightread, making it the second straight Deep Purple SRFC I've gotten after Smoke on the Water in SH)
   
4. Kryptonite (I've played this two or three times since the sightread, and I still haven't matched that FC)
   
5. The Rock Show (Did a bit of grinding here; I always like to get Blink 182 over with)
   
6. Fame (I'm not a fan. Sightread in a PFO)
   
7. 2 Minutes to Midnight (Took a couple hours, but this is a really fun and hard song)
   
8. Judith (Definitely my best sightread in this game. LONG song, although I like it)
   
9. Gratitude (Apparently I can hit the slide solo )
   
10. Deadbolt (Fourth try…this seems pretty overrated)
    
11. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Plus diamond on the SP challenge)
    
12. 20th Century Boy (Almost sightread; I restarted about 30 seconds into my first run)
    
13. Du Hast (Power chords and sliders; who knew those could be this much fun?)
    
14. Hungry Like the Wolf (Really happy song )
    
15. 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:

1. Runnin' with the Devil (Pretty good sightread FC)
   
2. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (English grammar called; they want their apostrophes back)
   
3. Jamie's Cryin' (I sure didn't think I'd get three SRFCs of Van Halen songs)
   
4. Cathedral (There are some WEIRD HO/PO chains in this song, but I really like playing it. Sounds cool, too)
   
5. First Date (Blink-182 may be many things, but diverse isn't one of them)
   
6. Safe European Home (Bleh; not a fan of The Clash...or punk at all for that matter)
   
7. Space Truckin' (Apparently I flat-out OWN Deep Purple; third straight SRFC of their songs)
   
8. 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 )
   
9. Stacy's Mom (Heh )
   
10. 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.

1. 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 no other ever has.
   
2. 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.
   
3. Mother—Solos 2c and 2d are basically an appalling mess of random crap, and they’re FAST. I considered getting either of them to be a good run at the time; this FC came out of nowhere.
   
4. Stricken—Intro and outro chords gave me a lot of trouble in the past (although fortunately no outro chokes); solo required more tapping than any other song I’ve ever FCed.
   
5. Less Talk More Rokk—I knew it would take a monster of a "WHY CAN'T I FC THIS?????" song to oust She Bangs the Drums from this list, and ten months of futility on this song certainly qualifies

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

1. 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
   
2. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll 256,894—Pfft, who gets OPTIMAL on their first redux of a song? ME, BABY!
   
3. Generation Rock 280,902--Redux in which I again hit the third activation double squeeze and got a much better reverse tick squeeze on the second
   
4. Love in an Elevator 446,246—Out-ticking Undeadfil AGAIN is one thing, but a Wii platform first on a song this hard is absolutely fantastic for me
   
5. Sabotage 306,858—Optimal. 'Nuff said
   

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.

1. 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.
   
2. Free Bird 610,538—Had I not screwed up under SP in Solos E and H this would have been even better. As it was, FCs of C, I, and J were still really cool
   
3. Mercy 393,474—Minus three and I did this before I knew what the path was
   
4. Jordan 336,633—Apart from a pretty bad showing in Solo F, this was almost a best-case scenario run. I FCed up to Solo B (including the Guitar Break) and FCed out from about halfway through the Bridge; getting both SP phrases there and executing the final two activations nearly perfectly. Six stars is pretty good, too
   
5. Cliffs of Dover -5—It’s somewhat pitiful that this was the best I could do on a run where I FCed Intro Solo B, Solo D, and One Last Solo

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.

1. 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
   
2. 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 .
   
3. 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? )
   
4. 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
   
5. The Way it Ends pass—I think I might have done this by hitting only the single notes and strumming through every break at a speed slightly slower than the song actually goes. I wish I'd written down the score; it must have been awful
   

Top Five Best Runs of Any Song, Period

Essentially just a compilation of the above lists.

1. 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 and locks up the top spot here without breaking a sweat.
   
2. 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
   
3. 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.
   
4. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll 256,894—None of the squeezes were as hard as the ones I've hit on a couple other songs (notably Sunshine), but this was a BRUTAL re-FC so the run as a whole gets a big bump
   
5. Love in an Elevator FC and Wii 1st—Neither the FC nor the score would be enough to warrant inclusion in this list on their own merits, but squeezing this well on my first FC of a song this hard definitely constitutes a "best run".
   

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[zsjostrom35]

zsjostrom35's Accomplishment Thread

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
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Guku416
JohnnyGrey
oddlyuneven
PiemanLK
shredinmadness
singertoad
thatguy4893
TheLonging
TheThirdDay
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Recent Accomplishments (Last month or so):

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1/24/10: It is with sadness that I announce that I will be an indefinite leave of absence as a poster on the ScoreHero forums . The main reason behind this is that recently I've simply been burned out on posting. This is really nobody's fault but my own, via a combination of my propensity for making enormous posts, my stupidly exacting standards that gradually shifted to the point where I didn't even value any post that I made that wasn't that big, and my anal retentiveness that now won't let me post any other way. Trying to keep up with all my friends' threads and my own in this manner was very difficult for me to do, and it eventually got to the point where it was stressing me out so much that I no longer enjoyed doing it. Posting on ScoreHero used to be something I loved to do, and lately it hasn't been.

I do want to emphasize that this has nothing to do with any of you guys that follow this thread or look forward to my posting in yours. If anything, the hardest part about taking this break is going to leaving all these threads; all of you never fail to make me feel appreciated for what I post and I'll really regret not being here to repay you with the attention your threads deserve. There is, however, a slight upside to all of this, and that is that with the extra time I won't be spending on posting anymore I'm going to make it a point to be in more streams from now on and maybe stream more frequently myself. Again, separating myself from all you guys is NOT the point of this, and hanging out in stream chats will be the best way to stay in contact with all of you.

I also want to stress that this is not some kind of attention-grabbing maneuver on my part; if it weren't that don't want people to wonder where I am I wouldn't have bothered to post this at all. So please don't eulogize me; it's not like I'm going to be gone forever . Actually, to reinforce this point I'm going to ask the mods to lock this thread, and when I come back (hopefully within a couple months) I'll probably just start a new one. If you feel inclined to leave a message or want to talk more about my reasons for doing this you can drop me a PM; I'll still be coming on here from time to time to check my inbox and to keep up on everybody else's accomplishments.

So yeah, stay awesome ScoreHero. Pretty sure you'll be fine without me .

1/18/10: Well, it took longer than I hoped it would, but I finally have an achievement in the new year worth updating this thread for . The Light That Blinds FCed! I've been hitting this song pretty hard over the last couple weeks and apparently all that work finally paid off. I had very good methods for just about every section; at this point it was really only a matter of time before I pieced it all together and got an FC run; in fact, it only took me two real runs tonight. My path execution wasn't anything spectacular, but it was solid apart from a bit of missed whammy in the solo. 481,084; 17th place overall.

If you're interested, here's a quick little rundown of the methods I used for the hard parts:

Intro A: I basically learned the strum speed the hard way and then focused only on the greens and oranges. This enabled me to keep a constant fretting speed by evenly spacing out my button presses between the greens and oranges while still having frequent checks to make sure my strumming and fretting were synchronized. I was very solid on this part.
Intro B: Again, I had the strumming speed down and the fretting here is easy. Basically just an endurance issue, which I mostly dealt with by trying not to think about how much my arm hurt.
Verses: Strummed everything except the weird gallop things and the yellow HO/PO before the yellow bursts (I owe this method to Fug). In the constant strumming parts, I used the non-green notes as a check to make sure my strumming and fretting were synchronized both with the music and with each other.
Solo B: For the broken zig-zag, I used standard second position. Since you can't fret any ghost yellows on the ascending parts, this was a little awkward to learn, but once I got it down it was fairly ingrained in my fingers and I just had to concentrate on making sure I wasn't going too slow. For the part after that, I tapped all the orange HO/POs and the two blues right before the orange sustains. My pinky just wasn't feeling up to that part and this was the easiest way to avoid pinky use.

12/16/09: When I broke 20 million in GH2X about ten months ago, I was dimly aware of the fact that there was another million mark possible in the game. I didn't really pay much attention to that, however, because I figured I was probably never going to get there. Even now, I don't fault myself for thinking that; I was pretty good at the game back then and 21 million represented a level of 1337-dom that was so far beyond my abilities that I could never get there without some sort of minor miracle. However, what I didn't count on was actually getting one . Towards the end of last September, I started absolutely destroying GH2, and over the past couple months I've been improving scores and picking up FCs like crazy, to the point where a few weeks ago I realized that this previously-astronomical milestone was actually within reach. When I reduxed Stop tonight to finally bump myself over the mark, there was almost a surreal feeling to it. I simply never thought I'd ever be this good

Anyway, here's a rundown of the last 40k or so since my last update:

--10.7k from various reduxes (in addition to the 700 points on Stop that put me over, highlights included an 11th-place run of X-Stream and a 7th-place run of Laid to Rest)
--6.9k from Misirlou (I think this might have been my first 99% run of the song. Also, the run was notable for the fact that I completely destroyed the Guitar Breaks; if not for more misses than usual in the verses it could have been 350k)
--19.6k from Six (my improvements on this song have been a microcosm of my overall improvments recently; it's simply unbelievable how good this run was compared to my general suckage on the song not too long ago. I FCed from Chorus 1 to about halfway through the outro on this run, which was a streak of over 900 notes, and I was only one miss away from seven stars)
--11.9k from Gemini (hit the zig-zag and FCed outside the X and the chords in 2b; this was also good enough for eight stars)

I'm not sure where I'll go from here now that this major target is out of the way; probably more work on Gemini/TLTB to see if I can pick up a new FC or continued attempts to seven-star Six. For now though, I'll simply enjoy having accomplished something I never dreamed I'd do

12/10/09: I haven't done really much big since my last update, but I've been getting some non-trivial increases on a lot of songs recently and so I'm getting pretty close to my big goal (21 million). Since my CMH FC:

--16.7k from a bunch of reduxes. Highlights of this group included top 20 on TIGRYT, getting really annoying whammy activations on TLB and Raw Dog, and 13th place from actually holding good ticks in Madhouse. Also, having done all these, YRGM is the only FC I have left that is not ranked in the top 200.
--25.5k from The Light That Blinds. This was a dang good run with only two misses (doublet strumming and one of the verses). While I'm not that close to an FC due to the doublet strumming and major consistency issues in the rest, it's a definite possibility at this point.
--25k from Misirlou. I'm getting better at all-around consistency on this, and while I haven't a prayer at an FC right now due to the intro I could still get a lot more. That said, I did break seven stars, which was pretty darn cool.
--13.8k from Hangar 18. Between my best run and my second-best run I FCed all the solos but 4, 7, and 9 and got 97% on each of 4b and 7. However, consistency is still a major issue and the Solo 5 FC was a huge fluke, plus I suck at Solo 9. So there's a lot of room for improvement.
--Nearly 40k (don't know the exact number because I've beaten my old score at least three times in the past week) from Six. This is getting a LOT better; I'm starting to hit the verses now (actually got a Verse 2 FC, although it wasn't on a good run) and have racked up huge combos in the intro and outro, which is where most of the points are coming from. Obviously consistency is a nightmare here and I'm still looking to seven-star it, but I've been pretty happy with what I've been able to do so far.

So yeah, while it's not as eye-popping as that list down in the update below, I've been chugging along quite nicely of late. I'm now up to 20.951 million, and 78th place in the overall rankings. Hopefully I can keep this up for a while longer .

Oh, and by the way, if your username is TheThirdDay, you should know that I FINALLY managed to pass you back after all these months. I know it's not really fair since you don't have a working console right now, but maybe this'll provide some incentive for you to get another one. Or at least steal your friend's, which has apparently been working out pretty well for you. Down N' Dirty FC, FoP 100%, and Free Bird rhythm full solo FC are pretty nice for not actually owning the system .

11/19/09: Those of you who follow this thread know that I've been on what amounts to little less than a rampage through GH2 recently. Prior to tonight, I'd gotten no fewer than six new FCs in the last month, and the accompanying score increases had sent my rank soaring to the point where I was seriously closing in on the top 100 overall. However, I was still a ways away...I thought. Enter the greatest night of Guitar Hero I have EVER HAD (all of it live, no less ):

--I started out with Search and Destroy, a song that had been plaguing me for quite some time with random misses. I've gotten more minus-1s on this song than I can count, but with a little Solo 2b practice and no more than five runs tonight, I finally took it down! FC #1 of the night, 52nd total; +4k (rank 20th on the song)
--I then moved on to Crazy on You, another long-overdue FC that had been annoying me with mistakes pretty much anywhere. It took me a while to get through the intro a few times, but on my third or fourth run making it through there, I FCed out! FC #2/53; +12k (rank 9th on the song)
--At this point I was feeling really optimistic about FC prospects (for obvious reasons ), so armed with the strategy that had gotten me a SCOM FC the night before I went to tackle Them Bones and its infamously strummy outro. With some practice I started hitting it okay (got it twice in a row at the end), so I went to take real runs. On my first try, I had an idiot miss in the final chorus. Second try: FC! FC #3/54; +5k (rank 19th on the song)
--Having already banged out three FCs in one night, I figured I might as well take on the last one on my radar, Carry Me Home. This put up a LOT more of a fight than the other three combined, but after probably an hour of grinding (and one BAD choke) I got it. I GOT IT! FC #4/55; +20k (rank 46th on the song; I missed some whammy)
--I would have loved to go for more FCs after that, but I was really out of viable targets. So, at the urging of alexhaz64 (who always seems to have a knack for pushing me in the right direction in streams ), I went to play Six. To my surprise (it would have been utter astonishment if not for the fact that I was already having the greatest night of my life) I was actually holding decent combos in the verses, and on my first run I picked up 11k and the only six-star I had left in the game!
--I was almost ready to call it a night after that, but I checked the overall rankings on a whim and was shocked to discover that I was only 6k out of the top 100. It seemed fitting that I play Six to get it, so I went back and did some grinding of that bad boy again. This took a lot more effort than the first 11k did, but after an EXCELLENT (for me anyway :P) run of the verses and satisfactory performance elsewhere I got a further 9k and squeaked my way into the TOP ONE HUNDRED OVERALL!

Total stats for the night: +62k, four new FCs, and one new six-star. That would have been great progress in a WEEK, so this goes down as without question the best night I've ever had.

11/18/09: Sweet Child O' Mine FCed! I'm still up in the air as to whether this is my best FC yet, but just the fact that I'm considering it should tell you plenty about how hard this bonker was for me to get. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I spent nearly two hours tonight playing nothing but this song (both real runs and practice), and it was STILL a fluke when I got it. I had no consistency whatsoever on that idiot strumming combined with the fast OBYO right afterward, and despite my best efforts to come up with something useful the best method I could find was "strum kinda fast and hope for the best ". Whatever, though; it worked in the end and I finally took down this song that I thought I might never get . Underwhammied and missed a front end on the last activation, but the rest of the path was very good so I was able to break 315k and get top 30.

I also did some random reduxing tonight; improving by about 4k on Carry on Wayward Son, 1.5k on Message in a Bottle, and 1k on Yes We Can (on which I got all the non-ridiculous squeezes; I am SO GLAD I never have to play this idiot song again ). I'm up to 114th now and inching closer to the final century mark...

11/7/09: It took until the very end of a six-hour stream to get, but I finally managed to pound out Psychobilly Freakout for my 50th FC in GH2! This marked my fifth new FC in less than two weeks, and was undoubtedly the most impressive of the bunch, as I had to learn a couple sections and develop a lot of consistency in some very hard sections of a brutal song to do it. You'd think, with all this high praise, that I was very happy with this FC, and for the most part I am, but I missed the front ends of each of the last three activations and consequently got a score about a thousand points lower than I had hoped for. I guess the score wasn't terrible (321,504; 45th place), but I wanted top 20 at least. Oh well, it's still really nice to pick up a song that I love this much, and getting an epic 50th is always an awesome milestone.

11/2/09: Arterial Black FCed! This was an unexpectedly pleasant ending to what had otherwise been a very frustrating stream from a Guitar Hero point of view (of course, the chat was fun as always ). Solo F was surprisingly solid, and while Solos A, B, and E didn't feel as good as usual I was able to get one good run through all of them and I FCed out. No chokes that night either . Path execution was pretty much best-case for me seeing as I never hit the Solo A activtion front end; score was 284,588 which is 26th place!

So, the next one's the big 50th, and I'd obviously like to get something really good for it. I'm leaning towards Psychobilly Freakout right now, although Carry Me Home is a definite possibility. Both are excellent songs with numerous hard parts and choke-prone areas; hopefully I can get one of them soon. After my GH3 #50 was I'm in the Band, I feel like I could probably stand to do something a tad more epic

10/28/09: All right, this is getting ridiculous . FTK FCed, marking my third FC in as many days! This really wasn't too bad once I learned Kick It!; the other HO/PO fills are fast but fairly straightforward. Path execution wasn't anything spectacular, but I pretty much got the no-squeeze best score, which was good enough for 45th place overall.

Extremely random fact: four of my last five GH2 FCs have started with the letter F :P

After that, I started working on Psychobilly Freakout, which was my worst score on a song not named Six. I finally figured out a good strumming method for the outro, and with a fluke FC of the Verse 1 SP phrase plus a solid run of everything else I managed to get 295k, which was a pickup of 28 thousand points. I'm now up to 135 place overall, which puts me ahead of a certain JohnnyGrey...

10/27/09: Wow, I'm on a roll in GH2; FC #47 Freya! I was pleasanly surprised at how smoothly this went; only took me four or five runs to FC through Solo 1 tonight and I FCed out first try. Of course, I did my best to ensure that that would happen by spending a fair amount of time practicing all the little solo fills after the chord insanity, but it was nice all the same . Score was decent (although I missed a 400 point squeeze that would have let me beat alex :P); 405,332 and 47th place.

In other GH2 news, I put together a pretty good run of Jordan last night for 350k, which was enough of an increase to put me into the top 150 players across all platforms! This run combined three really dumb misses (two pre-solo and blowing the second bridge SP phrase) with a MONSTER run of of Solo F, which I nearly FCed under star power. I could probably beat the score, but I'm happy with it for now. I also beat my Gemini score with an FC outside the insane parts (Bridge, Solo 2b). On a less cheery note, I had TWO single-miss runs of Search and Destroy (both blown in Solo 2d, I FCed out both of them just so I could complain about it here) and a SOLO choke of Carry Me Home.

10/26/09: When I constructed my "Best of" lists for this thread a while back, I included a somewhat-unorthodox choice in my Best FCs list; namely She Bangs the Drums as #5. Though several new FCs have made it into that list since its conception, I've kept the #5 slot constant to reflect the fact that SBtD represented the most I'd ever struggled with an easy song before taking it down (it was #36 in GH3). That, however, has now changed, because I finally managed to get an FC that's given me even MORE trouble: Less Talk More Rokk!

Of course, this whole thing is a little absurd; there's just no way this song ever should have been this hard. I can't argue with the facts, however, and the facts are that this sucker was harder for me to FC than (among many other things) Free Bird and Fall of Pangea. According to the FC breakdowns, I have been good enough to get this since January, but for whatever reason, I simply couldn't. It wasn't for lack of trying; pretty much anybody that's watched me stream GH2 can attest to the fact that I play the song several times every session. I just...couldn't get it. UNTIL NOW

Also, last night brought some pretty cool other stuff in GH2. First of all, I picked up an Intro A FC in The Light That Blinds, which completes a technical FC of the song. Since I was doing very well on the verses and the solo, that's now an FC goal. Carry Me Home also went well; I got nearly 30k on it by finally getting some consistency on the chord switch. I could definitely FC that too (Verse 2 isn't a problem, I hit it three out of four tries). On a slightly less cheery note, I extended my best note streak on Arterial Black to 640, which is a choke three notes from the end. Best non-FC on ScoreHero...yay .

9/28/09: FREEBIRD

On a related note, I know I had some unreplied-to posts when I made that one; I'll get to those in my next response. The thing was, I wanted my Freebird post to stand on its own (meaning no responses in it), but I didn't want to double post (meaning I couldn't do the responses before it).

9/14/09: New co-op firsts on Sabotage and Lay Down! Sabotage took quite a while; apparently even with our more-developed squeezing skills those split activations are still really tough. We had a very good path, however, so once we actually got the FC the first was pretty easy. Lay Down was pretty much the opposite: none of the activations were difficult at all, but I really struggled with the FC and we only barely took first because I was having trouble getting all the SP out of the many little whammied sustains. I certainly didn't get all of it on our FC run, but it was enough.

EDIT: Dang it PBS . Taking our BMW first...

9/9/09: With our first place scores under assault on multiple fronts (we lost three in the past three days), Josh and I sat down today for another round of co-op reduxes. This turned out extremely well, as we managed to defend successfully all three songs and wind up with an additional two firsts in the bargain:

Barracuda 580,044 (This is the THIRD time we've had to retake first on this song)
Helicopter 582,778 (Fixed our path mistakes from the last first place run; near-optimal execution of the path we used)
Black Magic Woman 557,879 (Josh repathed this some for a very sizeable increase)
Suck My Kiss 447,382 (Did this twice because we weren't happy with our execution on the first first place run)
Welcome to the Jungle (We got this score a long time ago, but it wasn't first until today, when the old first place score was deleted as fake )

If I may take a bit of time to brag for myself, I would like to point out that I played lead on both BMW and SMK (and rhythm on Helicopter, but that's more due to my inability to FC lead than my prowess at rhythm). Apparently I'm For Good or for Awesome's designated fast strummer. I was quite proud of the fact that I got the BMW orange streaks on my second try, and the SMK solo twice in a row (fun fact: earlier in the day I hit the SMK solo SEVEN times in a row in practice). It was nice to be able to contribute more to the team than usual.


9/1/09: When I had my horrible choke on Knights of Cydonia back in January, I certainly didn't envision that it would take another five months to FC. There's been a lot more frustration with the outro than just that run in that time, but it's all over tonight! For whatever reason, I was REALLY solid on the Breakneck Desperado section tonight (didn't miss there once in three attempts), but that wasn't the real shocker. The real shocker was that when I finally made it past Hastening Pursuit, I FCed out FIRST TRY. That's right; the outro strumming that had been giving me fits for months actually went down without a fight. I attribute this to my new method of double downstrumming to start the alt-strum on each burst, which lines up the first downstrum with the downbeat. Also, the score was pretty sweet: 512,700, which was good enough for 12th all platforms!

Also, if you're interested, this was my 100th FC across GH2 and GH3, which was a pretty cool milestone.

That FC run would have made for a very good night by itself, but it was by no means alone. Just prior, I had picked up about 10k on Raining Blood, which beat a very old score. If I can get solid on Mosh 2 (lol) and improve on Mosh 1 I have a very good shot at six-starring this. After the KoC FC, I moved on to One, which I still need to seven-star. Unfortunately, I didn't do quite that well (missed somewhere in the Darkness Riffs and in the FSB zig-zag), but I FCed everything else to get a very respectable score of 595k, which was a 14k increase. However, the biggest score leap of the night was yet to come. My final song choice was TWiE (more or less at random), and I proceeded to hammer it for forty-seven thousand points. Apparently, I've finally figured out the strum speed, and although fatigue is still most certainly an issue I can at least get through a run now without stopping mid-verse and missing about twenty notes just to rest. I'm going to continue to go after this since there's still a lot left, plus I'm inching closer to that magical 24 million mark

Speaking of inches, I'm also going to document here my most recent reduxes, which I did on stream several days ago. Got a good one of She Bangs the Drums (28th) and a great one of Rock and Roll All Nite (13th), which together put me ahead of Josh in our little squeeze war (I'm winning the majority of the songs we've both FCed (which is all the songs I've FCed)). However, probably the most notable run of that night was the redux I didn't get: after hitting both the optimal squeezes in Lay Down, I MISSED THE LAST NOTE OF THE SONG, due to some psychological hangup that apparently forces me to go after ticks on sustains even when I know the SP covers the whole thing. That was by a long shot the worst choke I've ever had, since I've only hit the second squeeze three times and that was the first time I'd EVER hit the third, and so I really don't know if I'll be able to get it.

Finally, I need to announce some co-op stuff. I'm taking a page out of elscarecrow's book and adding a co-op section to this thread. To commemorate this momentous moment, I'm announcing our 58th double FC: Holiday in Cambodia! I must say that this is one of my better bass FCs, since the whole thing is pretty tricky and there are two fast descending strummy bits with HO/POs that are really annoying, but of course the bulk of the credit goes to Josh for nailing the intro three times that afternoon while we worked out our path. We also took back our first on Barracuda (for the second time) and reduxed Kool Thing for first (since I figured out how to whammy the choruses and Josh repathed it).

8/25/09: It's taken quite a while to do, but I finally finished my major reduxing project in GH3: all my FC scores are now in the top 200! In fact, all the ones I actually did throughout the whole process (which lasted about two and a half months) are in the top 100 now, so I may continue reduxing old scores to see how many I can get to those lofty heights. Of course, these ranks aren't permanent, so some of the scores that I do have in the top 200 now may not be there for long (I'm looking at you, Barracuda), but it's nice to be able to say it now .

On a non-reduxing note, I got a slight improvement (about 3k) on Cult of Personality, which was notable because I FCed the hard part of Start Soloing! Without one stupid miss earlier I'd have FCed the section, and then I'd be raging about how I completely bombed a very good run under SP in Keep Soloing! Of course, that's still true, but it would have been cooler had I FCed to that point... Anyway, that's a legitimate (although long term) FC goal now; with that run I've hit every part of the two hardest solos in real runs. I'm also pretty solid on Solo!

8/20/09: It's been a while since I've had a decent single-player accomplishment for myself (not that I'm complaining; co-op has more than made up for it in my opinion ), but I finally managed a couple last night: Nothing for Me Here FC and breaking top 300 global in the GH3 rankings! For me, the big news here is the new FC (since I actually got top 300 once before; stagnancy will KILL you on the GH3 leaderboards), which was one of the most unexpected things that has ever happened to me in Guitar Hero. I really was just playing the song at random after finishing some reduxes last night in the hope that I could get a small score increase, but almost immediately I noticed that the chorus had completely clicked. The last time I'd played it I was missing all over the place; now it felt...easy. My mind immediately jumped to shooting for an FC, since I'd always been reasonably good at the solos, but I was shocked at how quickly this came. Within a half hour, I had two runs with FCs up to Solo 2 (FCing Solo 3 both times). I got Solo 2, and after a while more of stupid misses in various places, I finally got an FC to Solo 3, where of course I missed for the first time all night. It wasn't a choke though; I realized that I just didn't know that part well yet (one of the downsides of being a good flailer is that it can mask legitimate problem sections until you actually need to hit them ), so I took it into Practice Mode. Three runs later I had the whole solo nailed down solid, and shortly thereafter I FCed the entire thing. Score was pretty bad, really; I couldn't whammy the choruses well or even hold onto sustains reliably, so I ended up down nearly 4k. On the other hand, it was top 100 at least and quite frankly I don't really care right now.

I give it less than three months before I can't stand it and force myself to redux

Anyway, since my old score was so bad (about 241k; the FC score was 43k better) that made up the bulk of the points that got me into the top 300. However, also aiding that cause was the steady stream of reduxes and other score improvements I've been getting around co-op sessions, which I will list here for your continued boredom (these are all the ones since that 350k F.C.P. score I mentioned about a week ago):

The Metal +1500, 41st (For some reason, I felt compelled to play out a run after missing the first squeeze, so of course I hit all the other ones)
One +14k (This could have been a LOT better; my LP decided to execute its own path starting in Fast Solo C, of all places )
Cult of Personality +14k (Got all of Solo! and most of Start Soloing!, although Keep Soloing! left a bit to be desired)
Holiday in Cambodia +4500 (In theory, I could get this FC. Unlikely, however)
She Bangs the Drums +1500, 43rd (Apparently I am no longer cursed by this song . I still want to get another 200 out of it, however)
Monsters +1500, 54th (Got all the non-doubles except the HO/PO squeeze in Weedley Weedley)
My Curse +11k, 30th (This took a LONG time to redux, but I got all the non-ridiculous squeezes)
Slow Ride +132, 40th (Upper bound -8, and this rank is all I get?)
In Love +2k, 17th (I HATE this song. The only consolation out of this redux is that it's good enough that I can ignore it for a while)
Mauvais Garcon +2k, 5th (Got the 60% squeeze on the first activation, which earned me this massive tie )

I'm nearly done with my "Get all FC scores in the top 200" redux program now (just three songs left, unless something else drops out), so pretty soon I should be focusing my attention more on hard songs again. Although if last night's FC was any indication, maybe all I need to do is keep reduxing .

8/10/09: It is finally finished . After four hours of work on stream (preceded by a couple hours off it), Josh and I banged out the final six songs we needed to take first place global on GH3 co-op! Here's a rundown of the night's work:

Don't Hold Back (done off stream): Double FC and 1st (this was sick. Josh didn't even want to film it because he was so doubtful that we'd get it, but fortunately he proved himself wrong)
Hier Kommt Alex: Double FC and 1st (took a little effort to path, but we got it)
The Way it Ends: 9th (we broke a million, which is what we wanted)
My Curse: Double FC (our score on this was uncharacteristically bad; we will see if we can find the path necessary to make up the 14k between us and first)
Metal Heavy Lady: Double FC (needs a couple path tweaks for first; unfortunately we didn't figure that out until after we'd FCed it)
Take This Life: -1 (better than we thought we'd do; this sucker was rough. A very nice run to finish it all off)

We hung around and improved a couple scores afterward (picked up 20k on TtFaF and reclaimed first on RaRAN), but those were more or less afterthoughts. Final stats: 69/69 songs entered, 57 FCs, and 43 first place scores.


8/9/09: I got back from vacation yesterday, which Josh and I celebrated with yet another round of co-op. This one wasn't as time-intensive as many have been, but we still finished three new songs and got first on all of them. Links below are to the vids; apologies in advance for not lining up the camera well enough that you could see the scores:

In the Belly of a Shark 530,859 (Fortunately whammy here isn't nearly as important as it is in single player; most of the activations have full bars. This wasn't too bad)
I'm in the Band 556,985 (Josh could FC this in his sleep if the score didn't matter, but with the whammy it's very difficult. This took a LONG time to get)
Impulse 659,959 (Tricky bass part, but most of the credit still goes to Josh, who hit the Psychotic Breakdown about five times in a row while I was making idiotic mistakes)

We also did a pointless redux of Mauvais Garcon, which improved our already-first score by about 900 points. This was all Josh's fault; he decided that our old score wasn't good enough so he reFCed the song with my brother on bass and beat it. As he well knew, I wasn't going to stand for that, so I had no choice but to go back and get an even better score, which we did (649,956). The spread between us and second is now about 4500 points.

Anyway, that night's work brought us up to 63/69 songs entered, of which 40 are global firsts. We may stream tonight to go for the last six songs, so keep an eye on this thread if you're interested.

7/31/09: We got first on Mauvais Garcon as well . This took a surprisingly short time to do, but it is one of Josh's best songs and the bass part is really easy. We got it on video, if you're interested.

60/69 entered now; 37 firsts!

7/29/09: For Good or for Awesome had a marathon session of about ten hours last Sunday (more than half of which was on stream), during which we improved seven scores and obtained six new global firsts! Here's a list of our accomplishments in order (links are to YouTube vids, which Josh recorded while we were playing some of the songs):

Down N' Dirty double FC and 1st (for how hard this is supposed to be, we didn't struggle with it all that much)
Prayer of the Refugee double FC and 1st (check out the split squeeze on the front end of the first activation )
In Love double FC and 1st (this took a surprisingly long time; Josh was having trouble with that whack-job HO/PO bit)
Avalancha double FC and 1st by 5k (audio is horribly out of sync; sorry about that)
F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. 4th (Josh FCed this outside End Lead and I FCed my part, so we were pretty happy, despite the ranking not being stellar)
Nothing for Me Here double FC and 1st by 23k (THIS. WAS. SICK. First of all, Josh is a beast for FCing it. Second of all, we managed solid execution of a very difficult path involving multiple chorus and solo activations. By far our best co-op accomplishment ever)
Minus Celsius double FC and 1st

At the end of the night, we had 59/69 scores entered for the setlist, of which 36 were in first place global. Fun fact: we are the only team in the top 120 without all 69 scores entered, and we're 88th missing ten songs . First place overall should only be a matter of time.

7/23/09: The redux train keeps a rollin' with my most impressive score yet: Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll OPTIMAL (yes, the correct spelling of "OPTIMAL" is in all caps)! To be quite honest, none of the squeezes here are all that hard (although I did blow a run or two on the last activation, which is the only squeeze over 60%); the real issue for me was simply getting a re-FC of the blasted song. I knew my first one was a fluke when I got it, but I never imagined at the time that it would take me another seven months to redux with the proper path (I overran on my first FC, and probably the only reason I got it was that I was so mad at the path mistake that I forgot to miss the yellow strums in Solo 2B). Between Solo 1, Solo 2A, and Solo 2B this gave me a devil of a time, but it all came together in the end for an awesome OPTIMAL .

Here's the pic because I like posting pics of OPTIMAL scores



Also, Reptilia 28th.

7/22/09: Most recent round of reduxes didn't yield anything worth changing the thread title for, but I did get an okay score on Miss Murder (40th or so) and a top 10 run of Kool Thing. Kool Thing was interesting, because I'd originally FCed the song with a strumming method for the chorus streaks that started on a downstrum and ended on an upstrum. Unfortunately, I can't whammy like that (and there are three phrases that contain one of those little sustains at the end of the streak), so I had to find something else. I suck at starting on an upstrum, so I quickly discarded that idea after a few tries. I then attempted to start on a double downstrum so as to end on a downstrum. That sort of worked, but then I started having problems with the fretting since I hate changing on an upstrum (I was fretting the double blue too late and missing there). With a little practice I thought I had it down well enough to do it at least three times, but then I discovered that switching between that and my old method screwed up both of them, so that was out. Finally, I remembered a method somebody posted on this song (I think it was Pieman) where you END the streak on a double downstrum. It worked, I must say, like a charm . A little practice of that, and then I quickly FCed the song with a decent score. I decided I'd take a couple more runs to see if I could hit the two squeezes I'd missed, however, and it turned out I could . Score was 329,188.

7/21/09: Apparently I'm getting better at front-end HO/PO squeezing, because I nailed the third Sunshine of Your Love activation and wound up with an untied platform FIRST! This would have been awesome under any set of circumstances, but I took it from none other than Josh, my co-op partner and roommate last year in college . Unfortunately, I did miss two ticks that would have put me in a tie for third place overall (I'm sixth right now), but this is still AWESOME!

Also, I managed top 25 on The Seeker, which probably would have been a lot more exciting on a different night .

7/20/09: GH2 is getting frustrating between my lack of new FCs and a lack of practice mode, so I've moved back to GH3 for reduxes. These are generally fairly stress-free for me, since I like squeezing and most of the songs I'll be redoing are my older FCs (and thus not terribly difficult in general). I may go for new FCs on and off, but my primary goals right now are getting my ranks on the easier songs back to where they should be. See my GH3 non-FC goals in the Table of Contents for my full progress so far; here are some of the highlights:

Lay Down 51st (this wasn't all that impressive rankwise, but I hit a fairly difficult 100% double squeeze to get it. No idea how so many people have optimal here)
Cherub Rock 25th (none of the squeezes are terribly hard, but this was solid execution on a tricky re-FC)
3's & 7's 18th (again, tricky to re-FC, but this also had a decent squeeze or two)
Helicopter 19th (pretty easy, actually)

7/9/09: I had intended to play GH2 tonight, but after only about an hour of doing so (during which I determined that I've gotten much better at the first half of Psychobilly Freakout and much worse at the second) something went wrong and my brother's 360 was unable to read the disk. Needless to say, this is bad . I tried wiping it off, which didn't work, and while I will definitely make a more concerted effort to clean it tomorrow I have to say I have a bad feeling about this.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that when I switched over to GH3 (the 360 read that disk just fine) I was on FIRE with soloing. After a mediocre run of Tom Morello (not enough soloing ), I beat my score on the Slash Battle with little effort and some dumb mistakes. I then moved on to The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Two runs; on the second I broke 500k and five-starred it with over 25k to spare (score was 519,283). After that triumph, I thought "hey, why not try for my other remaining five-star in this game?" After one restart in the intro (missed the SP phrase), I proceed to five-star Revolution Deathsquad comfortably (score was 566,232, which clears the cutoff by well over 15k).

Since I'm just playing for fun, I then decide to take some runs at the three epic freebies (a name that I just made up; refers to Halo Theme, We Three Kings, and Top Gun Anthem). With a few runs each, I FC Halo Theme (NINTH place ) and Top Gun Anthem (34th), and nearly eight-star We Three Kings with an FC outside the two crazy sections (score was 312,762, which is good for 140th place and 7.7 stars).

So yeah, pretty good night considering how it began .

7/8/09: Not sure why, but I felt like playing Smash Hits last night and wound up with four new FCs (as well as three reFCs for which I hadn't entered scores the first time around). The four were:

Shout at the Devil (Weird solo, but not terribly hard. Fun to play)
Killer Queen (Somewhat obnoxious chart, but I really like the song so I didn't mind grinding it for a little while)
Take Me Out (^)
Godzilla (This was actually a pretty nice FC; there are some fast solo fills and I had to tap the BO trills near the end)

I played Round and Round for a while, and though I managed a technical FC and did a bit of grinding I couldn't quite come up with the entire song. I'll definitely go back to that one the next time I play the game, though; it's very fun (and an awesome song).

I've also added a Smash Hits section with the rest of my games; check that out to see the rest of my FCs and some other random crap.

7/6/09: They're not the best accomplishments ever, but I need to change the thread title after over two weeks and I suppose 100% runs of Them Bones and Less Talk More Rokk will do. Actually, I was fairly pleased with that run of Them Bones; I've only FCed the outro solo three or four times in practice and I wasn't really expecting to get the whole thing. A single overstrum (not exactly sure where, but funnily enough the streak was the same as my previous 99% run) was quite good and I managed to pick up about 2k or so since I switched to the optimal path after improving on the outro.

This 100% stands in stark contrast to my other 100% of the stream last night, which came on my perennial GH2 nemesis. I am so frustrated with that song it's not even funny; this was one of three runs I blew in the outro in that particular playing session, and I swear it wasn't my fault. The overstrum came on the sustain at the end of the last SP phrase (which cost me some whammy and therefore a new high), which I ALWAYS strum at the end of EVERY phrase and NEVER miss except, of course, when it's in the outro and I've got an FC on the line. UGH.

On an unrelated note, I also FCed Possum Kingdom about a week ago. I'll add that and any future 360 Exclusive FCs to the list in green.

6/22/09: Impulse FCed! I finally got around to GH3 again after a long break (pretty sure it's been since five-starring TtFaF in April) and it looks like I can still play it . After a bit of practice I was pretty solid on the Psychotic Breakdown, and only two runs after that I managed to FC through it and made it home without a single choke. My path was a tad off, so the score wasn't great, but it was 86th place overall at the time.

In other news, I managed a couple more Intro Solo B FCs in Cliffs of Dover (in practice), so with more work I might be able to get that one. Inconsistency is still a problem throughout, but I'm at least reasonably competent at Solo D and One Last Solo.

6/11/09: Thread overhauled for updated goals, best-of lists, and generally cleaning out lots of old crap . The updated goals have been a necessity for a while; I’ve completed almost all my old ones and as many people in this thread have noticed, I tend to bog down as far as accomplishments when I don’t have a firm source of direction. This should fix that. In order to keep the thread from growing even more enormous than it already is, however, I’ve had to purge my old goal lists of pretty much everything I’ve actually completed, which I figure nobody really cares about anyway . I probably should have done this sooner, but I didn’t really have time because of school, which I finally finished today.

Also, because this is technically a Guitar Hero Accomplishments forum, I should probably share some of the random stuff I did in the past few days. I know I haven’t been on ScoreHero much recently (self-imposed ban to prevent myself from wasting a ton of time when I should be studying for finals), but I did manage to play a couple times and added some new GH1 and GHA accomplishments to my “break” successes. Quotes are necessary now because this “break” has been more productive than the last month I spent not on a break .

Anyway, probably the most impressive accomplishment of this bunch was my six-star run of Texas Flood last night. I am failing miserably in my goal of not grinding this game for score right now; other than that I still don’t enter scores and that I don’t look up paths, I’m exhibiting all my usual symptoms of scoremongering (restarting after bad runs of the intro, pathing during a run, getting hacked when I miss easy stuff, etc.). On the other hand, it was pretty cool to six-star a chart this hard (especially with GH1’s definition of six stars); score was 208,065 with 98% and a 205 note streak.

My other accomplishments of note were in Aerosmith. First of all, I FCed Toys in the Attic, which despite being a great song is a REALLY annoying chart that I dislike playing in general. Fortunately it didn’t take me very long; the first time I made it to the first verse (that chorus riff is extremely aggravating) I FCed out. Very fluke run of the solo, but I’ll take it. Second place Wii, too . I also got technical FCs of several other songs: Walk This Way (Run DMC), on which I got a -1 in a real run and should FC soon; Beyond Beautiful, on which I FCed the VERY fast first solo several times but didn’t actually improve my score in real runs; and Combination, on which I managed to improve my score about 67k to take my rank on the song from appalling to merely bad . That Combination run was also a new seven-star, as was my 15k improvement on Rats in the Cellar (another FC I should get soon). I attempted to seven-star Train Kept a’ Rollin’ on many occasions, but my 12k improvement wasn’t quite enough (need about 1600 more). On the bright side, I did get a technical FC outside of Baggage Car Solo 2 and Caboose (and I got those two on Slow), so I’m more than capable of getting it.

6/6/09: What the heck, I guess I'll start changing the thread title all the time again . Cochise FCed! Apparently the chord solo wasn't as hard as I thought it was; took me all of three runs to FC that part tonight on stream and then FCed out first try .

Also, I got 100% on Infected with an overstrum in the slow HO/POs after the first zig-zag. I liked the song more than I remembered, so I won't have a problem going after an FC there. Revised predicted list for a half-game FC:

21. Smoke on the Water
22. Infected
23. No One Knows
24. Ace of Spades (switched these last two because I forgot how hard this song's outro was)

Farewell Myth is still stupid. Even Rats is impossible.

6/4/09: Decided to play my other "just for fun" game tonight, and banged out two new Aerosmith FCs; Love in an Elevator and Mama Kin! "Just for fun" happens to take on a slightly different meaning in this game, though; I do use paths in this game and I usually try to squeeze the crap out of everything (squeezing IS fun for me ). I say that so you won't be shocked (well, not TOO shocked anyway) when I mention that I out-ticked Undeadfil on Love in an Elevator for a new Wii platform first (fourth overall), and got a platform second on Mama Kin despite missing a pretty easy squeeze .

Also, you probably noticed that I've changed the thread title. I hadn't planned on that, but then again I hadn't planned on FCing Love in an Elevator either, and that might be my favorite song out of all the ones I've FCed EVER. Awesome Joe Perry riffage all over the place and a pretty sweet solo too. The vocals have some really cool harmonies going on (especially the acapella outro), and the bass groove at the beginning is dangerously catchy (I'm not exaggerating about that danger; I actually injured my knee last winter slipping on a patch of ice when I was kinda bouncing around listening to the song on my iPod ). Also, it was a pretty good FC; I had to take a couple of the solo sections into practice and used first and third position a couple times to hit a few tricky bits.

6/3/09: This is turning out to be quite some break . Two new GH1 FCs tonight; Sharp Dressed Man and Heart Full of Black! That brings me to 19 total in the game; five shy of my initial goal of a half-game FC. Here's what I'd like to get for those five:

20. Smoke on the Water (I've reverse choked this three times now; should come soon)
21. Ace of Spades (Technical FC; will probably be difficult to get all the hard parts in one run)
22. No One Knows (See Ace of Spades)
23. Iron Man (I've come very close to a solo FC several times)
24. Cochise/Infected/The Breaking Wheel (Not close to any of these, but I should be able to work one of them out)

I refuse to play Farewell Myth. It's stupid.

On an unrelated note, I also got a 626 note streak in Crossroads; FCing from the beginning of the song all the way to the BO mini-trills in the third solo section.

6/1/09: I'm not going to change the thread title for this (because the Fall of Pangea FC is still the big news), but I did get eight new World Tour FCs today. Most of them were pretty easy, since I'm still just working my way down the setlist, but I did get Are You Gonna Go My Way and Lazy Eye, which were definitely a step up from the others (lots of HO/PO fills/tricky solo and REALLY long, respectively). Check out my World Tour FC list to see the others.

5/26/09: FALL OF PANGEA FCed! I tell you what, this easily rivals my Through the Fire and Flames five-star as far as satisfying accomplishments go. If you've been keeping an eye on my sig tonight, you've noticed that I added four more post-Solo 1d misses to my total tonight before I finally got it. The third of these might have been the most painful choke I've ever had (it's right up there with KoC); I blew my FC with a streak of 1462 notes (52 from the end), at the part where the G-Y G-R G-R pattern changes to G-R G-Y G-R and there are two G-Ys in a row. I almost missed there on my FC run too (if I had to rate the squeeze I hit on the second G-Y, I'd put it at about 80% ). None of that really matters now, though, since I finally got this FC that's been bugging me for weeks! Score was 510,217, which wasn't great, but it was still good enough for 27th overall.

WOOOHOOO!!!!!

Sorry

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents:

1. Recent Accomplishments (Since the Last Time I Cleaned it Out, Anyway)
   
   
2. Guitar Hero I
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
3. Guitar Hero II
   1. Goals
      1. FC Goals
      2. Non-FC Goals
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero II Journey
      3. Notable Chokes
   
   
4. Guitar Hero III
   1. Goals
      1. FC Goals
      2. Non-FC Song Goals
      3. Other Goals (Skill/Ranking)
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Timeline of Notable Events in my Guitar Hero III Journey
      3. Notable Chokes
      4. Five-Starred Through the Fire and Flames
   
   
5. Guitar Hero III Co-op
   1. Goals
      1. FC Goals
      2. Non-FC Goals
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Timeline of Notable Events in our Guitar Hero III Co-op Journey
   
   
6. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
   1. Goals
      1. FC Mercy
      2. (Other) FC Goals
      3. Non-FC Goals
   2. Past Accomplishments
      1. Full Combo/100% List
      2. Notable Chokes
   
   
7. Guitar Hero: World Tour
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Goals
   3. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
8. Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Goals
   3. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
9. Guitar Hero 5
   1. Random Thoughts/Observations
   2. Goals
   3. Full Combo/100% List
   
   
10. Guitar Hero: Van Halen
    1. Random Thoughts/Observations
    2. Goals
    3. Full Combo/100% List
    
    
11. My "Best" Accomplishments
    1. Top Five Best FCs
    2. Top Five Best FC Scores
    3. Top Five Best Non-FC Scores
    4. Top Five Best Sightread Runs
    5. 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!
  

Full Combo/100% List:

I've decided that I'm not going to upload any scores for GH1, since whenever I do that it inevitably leads to scoremongering on my part and I want to have at least one game that I can just play for fun. Hitting moar notez is fun, however, so I will be keeping track of FCs here. No paths, no scores, just 100%

1. Behind the Mask (First-ever sightread FC in any game on any difficulty. Not one of the pitifully easy ones, either )
   
2. Hey (Second-ever sightread FC in any game on any difficulty. One of the pitifully easy ones )
   
3. Take Me Out (That part where it slows down after the intro is awesome)
   
4. 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)
   
5. Higher Ground (I LOVE this song. Not a bad FC either; the breakdown tells me it's #18)
   
6. I Love Rock and Roll (I am slightly ashamed to say that this took me four tries)
   
7. I Wanna Be Sedated (Probably would have been better practice to alt-strum this, but whatever)
   
8. More than a Feeling (Those solo hooks are WAY slower than they look when you try to alt-strum them)
   
9. Fat Lip (Dangerously catchy riff)
   
10. Hey You (Not sure why, but I really like this one. Downstrummed the solo)
    
11. Stellar (Essentially sightread, I didn't remember this chart at all from my first playthrough)
    
12. 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)
    
13. 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)
    
14. Eureka, I've Found Love (Weird solo strumming patterns cost me a few runs)
    
15. Caveman Rejoice (Not bad at all; this one has a moderate solo and a serious choke hazard in the trips near the end)
    
16. 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)
    
17. Unsung
    
18. Sharp Dressed Man (Should have had this a while ago, but no outro chokes tonight )
    
19. Heart Full of Black (Nailed the orange streak on my second try and FCed out)
    
20. 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)
    
21. 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)
    
22. 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)
    

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)

[_] Re-FC Strutter with all the squeezes I can hit
[X] Get seven stars on 60 songs (YAY MISIRLOU!)
[_] Get all possible seven stars

• [_] Hangar 18 (I need to learn Solo 9!!! and then get an incredibly lucky run)
  
• [_] Jordan (I need to learn Solo B1 and then get an incredibly lucky run)
  
• [_] Six (I was only one miss away on my previous best; just need a slight improvement in the verses

[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 (Blue notes in general are about 50-50)
  
• [_] Chorus consistency (I hit it most of the time, but it needs to be automatic)
  
• [X] Six stars (BOOM!)
  
• [X] 350k (Whoa )
  
• [_] Seven stars (Cutoff's almost exactly 400k; I'm at 397 right now)

[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 (57th. As of right now, about 65k left)

Past Accomplishments:

Full Combo/100% List:

1. Radium Eyes (There is no way a two-note riff should ever be that catchy)
   
2. 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)
   
3. Heart-Shaped Box
   
4. Monkey Wrench (The comment on my scores page is wrong; I got this before Cherry Pie)
   
5. Cherry Pie (See above)
   
6. Strutter (Actually has a moderate solo; showed my progress with GHII HO/POs)
   
7. Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart (GREAT song and not a bad cover, although the Stone Temple Pilots' original is better)
   
8. John the Fisherman (Randomly FCed both the hard parts on my first try in several months)
   
9. Laughtrack
   
10. Mr. Fix It
    
11. Soy Bomb (Those outro chords are really stupid)
    
12. X-Stream (Pretty long song and not very interesting chartwise, but I kinda like it)
    
13. Yes We Can (Harmonix, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?)
    
14. Red Lottery (Fact: I cannot hit the GR part of the trill without index sliding)
    
15. Surrender
    
16. Can't You Hear Me Knockin'
    
17. Shout at the Devil (I FCed the trill probably seven or eight runs in a row before I finally got the whole thing)
    
18. Message in a Bottle (Turned out that with a little practice Solo D wasn't as hard as it looked)
    
19. Elephant Bones (Stupid song...)
    
20. Collide (I kinda like this one)
    
21. 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)
    
22. Last Child (Fun song)
    
23. 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)
    
24. 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)
    
25. Rock This Town (GREAT song; first GH2 FC I'm truly proud of)
    
26. Who Was in My Room Last Night? (Second run of the night without any practice)
    
27. Carry on Wayward Son (Second run of the night without any practice...weird )
    
28. 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)
    
29. Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight (Fluke FC FTW! I had never hit the second trill before this run )
    
30. Girlfriend (Overdue, but I had so much trouble with those hooks that I don't really care)
    
31. Raw Dog (One of the most fun charts in the history of Guitar Hero, and consequently one of my favorite FCs)
    
32. 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)
    
33. Tattooed Love Boys (Learned the bridge strumming in about fifteen minutes; FCed the entire thing three or four runs later)
    
34. 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)
    
35. One for the Road (Got the fast strumming on my first try of the night)
    
36. 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)
    
37. YYZ (Solo was solid; just took some grinding. I tapped the double oranges in the chorus )
    
38. Woman (Downstrumming the HO/PO riff was the only way I could hit it reliably)
    
39. Madhouse (Goofy HO/PO fills took far too long to learn, but it wasn't too bad once I got them down)
    
40. 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)
    
41. Thunderhorse (Epic song FTW )
    
42. Push Push (Lady Lightning) (Funny how you never seem to miss the Big Endings until it actually matters...)
    
43. Mother (MAN, that solo is rough. I was pretty lucky to get this)
    
44. 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% (...)
    
45. Free Bird (I have never experienced anything like hitting note #1982 of this song to complete this FC. Simply amazing )
    
46. Less Talk More Rokk (This felt SO GOOD; I have been unbelievably bad at this song for such a long time)
    
47. Freya (Good Solo 1 method + Practice on post-bridge fills = No (more) chokes FTW)
    
48. 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)
    
49. Arterial Black (Outro chords cost me three runs, but I finally took this sucker down. Solo B HO/POs FTW )
    
50. Psychobilly Freakout (Path execution was sub-par, but I'm still happy to get a song this hard and this awesome)
    
51. Sweet Child O' Mine (VERY underrated; I'm quite proud of this one)
    
52. 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)
    
53. Crazy on You (Perhaps the second-most overdue FC I had, but this score is DEFINITELY worth the wait )
    
54. Them Bones (This and SCOM in consecutive days? When the heck did I learn how to strum?)
    
55. Carry Me Home (FOURTH FC in a single stream; awesome in every sense of the word)
    
56. 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
  

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 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—I'm now pretty solid on everything but SS! and KS!, and I have real-run FCs of every hard part in those two solos
Cliffs of Dover—UGLY One Last Solo choke
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):

1. 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!)
   
2. Mississippi Queen
   
3. 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)
   
4. When You Were Young
   
5. 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)
   
6. Bulls on Parade (Ditto)
   
7. Closer (I actually never played any of the Bonus Songs until I'd already passed Expert career and gotten those first six FCs)
   
8. Radio Song
   
9. 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)
   
10. Talk Dirty to Me
    
11. Hit Me with Your Best Shot
    
12. Generation Rock
    
13. Sabotage (This took way longer than it should have. Chokes FTL...)
    
14. School's Out (I had no business getting this so early, and I somehow used a pretty dang good path by accident)
    
15. My Name is Jonas (See comment on Sabotage)
    
16. Anarchy in the U.K.
    
17. Paranoid
    
18. Reptilia (I REALLY sucked at fast downstrumming with constant fret changes; took me forever not to choke the last chorus)
    
19. 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)
    
20. 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)
    
21. Can't Be Saved
    
22. Ruby (Neither of these last two songs were from lack of trying, I just couldn't get them for some reason)
    
23. 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%
    
24. Paint it Black (broke a LONG drought of over a month and a half without any new FCs)
    
25. Go that Far (I love this song; I was very happy when I didn't choke the last BBGG riff)
    
26. La Grange
    
27. The Seeker (The Seeker Bridge 1 Strumming. I seriously spent ten minutes practicing that method and FCed the song on my first try)
    
28. Avalancha (First time ever hitting the last star power phrase)
    
29. 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)
    
30. Barracuda
    
31. 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)
    
32. 3's & 7's
    
33. Helicopter
    
34. 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
    
35. Hier Kommt Alex
    
36. 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)
    
37. Kool Thing (Finally eradicated a two-month old choke)
    
38. Cherub Rock (After FOUR 100% runs with overstrums after the solo)
    
39. 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)
    
40. Rock and Roll All Nite (Turned a night of chokes into a night of awesome)
    
41. 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)
    
42. The Metal (LONG overdue; eradicated a choke that was about seven months old)
    
43. In Love (Another one that I am quite pleased never to have to play again)
    
44. Mauvais Garçon (See above)
    
45. In the Belly of a Shark
    
46. 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 )
    
47. 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)
    
48. Monsters (FCed the solo at least six times in real runs before I finally got the whole thing)
    
49. Down N' Dirty (Random FC FTW)
    
50. 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 )
    
51. Stricken (Solo tapping was pretty solid after some practice tonight, but I'm SHOCKED that I didn't choke the outro)
    
52. 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 )
    
53. 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 )
    
54. 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)
    
55. Nothing for Me Here (This was unbelievable; I went from having no FC prospects to getting ALL of it in less than an hour)
    
56. Knights of Cydonia (I knew this was overdue, but I certainly didn't expect the outro to go down without a fight tonight )
    
57. Black Sunshine (Seriously, first time getting to Break Down! after I got my tech FC? Wow )
    

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
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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:

1. Bulls On Parade
   
2. Slow Ride (Wish Josh would have let me play that awesome bass outro :P)
   
3. Barracuda*** (Re-re-re-first FTW...)
   
4. When You Were Young* (The redux score here is one of our best ever)
   
5. The Seeker (Nine stars, obviously, but I think we’re the first to get a 6.1 average multiplier on any song EVER)
   
6. Sabotage (Rough path, but we got it)
   
7. School's Out* (The first deliberate shot fired in our squeeze war with PBS)
   
8. Kool Thing (The initial FC was one of the worst scores we’ve ever gotten, but the redux was pretty good)
   
9. Miss Murder* (It’s going to take some insane squeezing to beat this)
   
10. Reptilia
    
11. Lay Down (I'm pretty happy that I got enough of the bass whammy for this first)
    
12. Anarchy in the U.K.* (Bleh. PBS did not win any friends on our team when they forced us to redux this )
    
13. Same Old Song And Dance (We might be the only ones with a path for this song…)
    
14. Cherub Rock
    
15. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (Possibly our best score ever)
    
16. Paranoid (It was our taking this from PBS that unwittingly launched the squeeze war)
    
17. My Name Is Jonas (Split squeezes are fun)
    
18. 3's & 7's (Josh thinks this is one of our better co-op FCs; not sure why)
    
19. The Metal
    
20. Black Sunshine (We got this on our third try . So of course the path is awful )
    
21. Helicopter* (Unless our path is off, this is dang near optimal)
    
22. Monsters (Upon reduxing, this song brought us our first Tier 6 first)
    
23. Talk Dirty to Me
    
24. Hit Me With Your Best Shot (First by a mere 20 points over the Nesquik Fanatics)
    
25. Mississippi Queen
    
26. Suck My Kiss (PBS's oldest first falls )
    
27. Welcome to the Jungle (Kinda backed into this since the first place score got deleted as fake, but ours is still pretty good)
    
28. Even Flow (Josh pathed this himself, and what a path it was!)
    
29. Generation Rock (More split squeezing)
    
30. La Grange (Bass is really annoying here)
    
31. She Bangs the Drums (Some excellent squeezing on this run)
    
32. Radio Song
    
33. Ruby (Bass is a lot harder than you might think)
    
34. Closer (First by ONE TICK )
    
35. Rock and Roll All Nite*
    
36. Before I Forget (With Josh's path, first was pretty easy once we actually managed to reFC it)
    
37. Story of My Life (Despite the extra star power, this path really isn’t much worse than in single player)
    
38. Sunshine of Your Love
    
39. Stricken (Boo bad path. Hooray FC!)
    
40. Pride and Joy (Closer shave than our firsts usually are)
    
41. Go That Far (I LOVE rhythm here. And no, not just because of the four-note chords )
    
42. Black Magic Woman** (Redux with excellent execution)
    
43. Can't Be Saved (My playing lead here was not one of my more positive contributions to the team)
    
44. In Love (Out of respect for Josh, I will refrain from making a disparaging comment about this song in the co-op section)
    
45. Avalancha
    
46. Prayer of the Refugee (First activation was a nice split squeeze)
    
47. Down 'N Dirty (Kinda tough on both parts, but I don’t know why it took so long to be double FCed)
    
48. Nothing for Me Here (First by 23k. Just wow)
    
49. Minus Celsius
    
50. Mauvais Garcon (Not retelling that huge story from our comment)
    
51. In the Belly of a Shark
    
52. Impulse (Bass is tricky, but nowhere near tricky enough to warrant missing as many times as I did)
    
53. I'm in the Band (This took a while. Getting all the whammy on my crappy LP made Josh’s job a LOT harder)
    
54. Don't Hold Back (SICK. SICK. SICK. We did not think we’d get this FC)
    
55. Hier Kommt Alex
    
56. My Curse
    
57. Metal Heavy Lady
    
58. 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 )
    
59. 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.
  

Back to Table of Contents
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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:

1. 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)
   
2. Draw the Line
   
3. Rag Doll (Easily one of my top five favorite songs in the game; probably part of why I got it earlier than most)
   
4. Dream On (I'm somewhat ashamed to say that this actually took a while)
   
5. Uncle Salty (Awkward HO/PO line coming out of the solo cost me a few runs)
   
6. She Sells Sanctuary (By far my favorite non-Aerosmith/Joe Perry song)
   
7. Sex Type Thing (Awkward chords...I once choked this five notes from the end)
   
8. All Day and All of the Night
   
9. Personality Crisis
   
10. Dream Police (No path whatsoever)
    
11. King of Rock (Not bad once the soloing starts, but I don't like the first half)
    
12. Hard to Handle (Downstrumming FTW!)
    
13. Kings and Queens (EPIC SONG)
    
14. 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 )
    
15. Cat Scratch Fever
    
16. Always on the Run (I somehow got 2nd place on the Wii with this score and I tilted two of the three activations)
    
17. 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...)
    
18. Pandora's Box (I downstrummed almost everything in this song; it gets up to 7.7 NPS at times)
    
19. 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 )
    
20. Let the Music Do the Talking (After probably an hour of grinding. Worth it, though, I LOVE this song)
    
21. Talk Talkin' (To steal a phrase from Leo Kottke, Joe Perry's vocals here "sound like geese farts on a muggy day")
    
22. Pink (This song is strangely catchy. Or maybe just strange. I like it, though)
    
23. 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...)
    
24. No Surprize (This sucker is LONG and really stressful for a guy who sucks at chord changes as much as I do)
    
25. Movin' Out (Also long, but thankfully much more fun to play. I think I strummed every slow HO/PO in the song)
    
26. Livin' on the Edge (EPIC. I had to look at my hands for those chord changes in the bridge)
    
27. Bright Light Fright (Hectic, but short and fun. This was a pretty old choke that I got rid of)
    
28. Nobody's Fault (Trill tapping FTW)
    
29. Sweet Emotion (GREAT song; far too many chokes)
    
30. 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 )
    
31. Mama Kin (Awkward chords all over the place; pretty nice FC)
    
32. 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)
    
33. 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
  
• [_] Weapon of Choice--I'm not even sure what exactly I like about this song, but it's one of my favorites

Full Combo/100% List:

1. Up Around the Bend (Second run of the song, but I didn't remember the first so it was almost a sightread)
   
2. Some Might Say (Not bad for a sightread FC; pretty long and chokeable)
   
3. 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)
   
4. Eye of the Tiger (Took a couple tries to get the strumming pattern down)
   
5. Parabola (First (and so far only) time grinding a song in this game. I love the Tool set, though, so I didn't mind)
   
6. Schism (Got this pretty quickly)
   
7. 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 )
   
8. The Joker (I guess the chart isn't terrible, but I don't like the song)
   
9. Freak on a Leash (I HATE this song; every time I missed it gave me a headache knowing I'd have to start over)
   
10. Misery Business
    
11. Hotel California (LOVE this one)
    
12. Hey Man, Nice Shot (Strange song, but I really like it. Pretty easy FC)
    
13. Feel the Pain (On SIGHTREAD. Ostensibly harder than at least 50 other songs in the game)
    
14. 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)
    
15. Everlong (I'd played this before, but it was a while ago; essentially a sightread FC. Great song, too)
    
16. Our Truth (This has a KILLER riff)
    
17. Monsoon (Took me like six tries because I kept trying to squeeze too much . Didn't even get a very good score)
    
18. Aggro (I'm quite pleased that I managed to alt-strum this)
    
19. Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) (Both this and Monsoon have horrendously boring charts, but the songs are pretty good)
    
20. Good God (Couple awkward strumming streaks. Josh, this song isn't nearly as good as you think it is)
    
21. The Kill (This took WAY too long. Stupid song...)
    
22. Shiver (Also took way too long, but at least I kinda like this one)
    
23. Lazy Eye (I had no business FCing this so soon; long songs like this one usually take me forever)
    
24. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast (AC/DC FTW!!!!! Er...whatever)
    
25. Float On
    
26. Nuvole E Lenzuola (Very easy song, but sightread FCs are always nice )
    
27. Pretty Vacant (I'm not a big Sex Pistols fan, but I gotta give Neversoft some props for a fun chart here)
    
28. Are You Gonna Go My Way (Really catchy riff)
    
29. Do it Again (That sitar solo is an absolute blast)
    

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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
  
• [_] 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:

1. I Love Rock 'N Roll (A sightread FC of the first song you play is a good way to start a game )
   
2. Rock and Roll All Nite (Blew a couple runs because of extra notes that weren't on the GH3 chart)
   
3. Smoke on the Water (Not bad for a sightread )
   
4. Heart Shaped Box (Verse chords make this much trickier than the original)
   
5. More Than a Feeling (Extended sustains make the verses harder, but the solo is easier with working HO/POs)
   
6. Hey You (Great song)
   
7. Them Bones (Another good sightread, although the GYB zig-zag is much easier than GH2's YBO and the outro solo is (thankfully) gone)
   
8. Hit Me with Your Best Shot (Solo got a difficulty boost, making this much more fun than the GH3 version)
   
9. Shout at the Devil (For whatever reason, I actually used a path for this one. Got top 5 Wii)
   
10. 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? )
    
11. Take Me Out (Good song, but an annoying chart)
    
12. 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)
    
13. Woman (Even without that infamous RYB(YO) line, these riffs still manage to be annoyingly easy to miss)
    
14. Cherry Pie (SWING IT)
    
15. 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:

1. Song 2 (A sightread FC of the first song you play is a good way to start a game)
   
2. 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)
   
3. Woman from Tokyo ('99 Remix) (Sightread, making it the second straight Deep Purple SRFC I've gotten after Smoke on the Water in SH)
   
4. Kryptonite (I've played this two or three times since the sightread, and I still haven't matched that FC)
   
5. The Rock Show (Did a bit of grinding here; I always like to get Blink 182 over with)
   
6. Fame (I'm not a fan. Sightread in a PFO)
   
7. 2 Minutes to Midnight (Took a couple hours, but this is a really fun and hard song)
   
8. Judith (Definitely my best sightread in this game. LONG song, although I like it)
   
9. Gratitude (Apparently I can hit the slide solo )
   
10. Deadbolt (Fourth try…this seems pretty overrated)
    
11. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Plus diamond on the SP challenge)
    
12. 20th Century Boy (Almost sightread; I restarted about 30 seconds into my first run)
    
13. Du Hast (Power chords and sliders; who knew those could be this much fun?)
    
14. Hungry Like the Wolf (Really happy song )
    
15. 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:

1. Runnin' with the Devil (Pretty good sightread FC)
   
2. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (English grammar called; they want their apostrophes back)
   
3. Jamie's Cryin' (I sure didn't think I'd get three SRFCs of Van Halen songs)
   
4. Cathedral (There are some WEIRD HO/PO chains in this song, but I really like playing it. Sounds cool, too)
   
5. First Date (Blink-182 may be many things, but diverse isn't one of them)
   
6. Safe European Home (Bleh; not a fan of The Clash...or punk at all for that matter)
   
7. Space Truckin' (Apparently I flat-out OWN Deep Purple; third straight SRFC of their songs)
   
8. 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 )
   
9. Stacy's Mom (Heh )
   
10. 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.

1. 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 no other ever has.
   
2. 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.
   
3. Mother—Solos 2c and 2d are basically an appalling mess of random crap, and they’re FAST. I considered getting either of them to be a good run at the time; this FC came out of nowhere.
   
4. Stricken—Intro and outro chords gave me a lot of trouble in the past (although fortunately no outro chokes); solo required more tapping than any other song I’ve ever FCed.
   
5. Less Talk More Rokk—I knew it would take a monster of a "WHY CAN'T I FC THIS?????" song to oust She Bangs the Drums from this list, and ten months of futility on this song certainly qualifies

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

1. 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
   
2. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll 256,894—Pfft, who gets OPTIMAL on their first redux of a song? ME, BABY!
   
3. Generation Rock 280,902--Redux in which I again hit the third activation double squeeze and got a much better reverse tick squeeze on the second
   
4. Love in an Elevator 446,246—Out-ticking Undeadfil AGAIN is one thing, but a Wii platform first on a song this hard is absolutely fantastic for me
   
5. Sabotage 306,858—Optimal. 'Nuff said
   

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.

1. 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.
   
2. Free Bird 610,538—Had I not screwed up under SP in Solos E and H this would have been even better. As it was, FCs of C, I, and J were still really cool
   
3. Mercy 393,474—Minus three and I did this before I knew what the path was
   
4. Jordan 336,633—Apart from a pretty bad showing in Solo F, this was almost a best-case scenario run. I FCed up to Solo B (including the Guitar Break) and FCed out from about halfway through the Bridge; getting both SP phrases there and executing the final two activations nearly perfectly. Six stars is pretty good, too
   
5. Cliffs of Dover -5—It’s somewhat pitiful that this was the best I could do on a run where I FCed Intro Solo B, Solo D, and One Last Solo

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.

1. 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
   
2. 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 .
   
3. 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? )
   
4. 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
   
5. The Way it Ends pass—I think I might have done this by hitting only the single notes and strumming through every break at a speed slightly slower than the song actually goes. I wish I'd written down the score; it must have been awful
   

Top Five Best Runs of Any Song, Period

Essentially just a compilation of the above lists.

1. 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 and locks up the top spot here without breaking a sweat.
   
2. 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
   
3. 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.
   
4. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll 256,894—None of the squeezes were as hard as the ones I've hit on a couple other songs (notably Sunshine), but this was a BRUTAL re-FC so the run as a whole gets a big bump
   
5. Love in an Elevator FC and Wii 1st—Neither the FC nor the score would be enough to warrant inclusion in this list on their own merits, but squeezing this well on my first FC of a song this hard definitely constitutes a "best run".
   

Back to Table of Contents

[ortiz1193]

Nice to see you made one of these. You even have it all nice and neat like your guides. I don't agree with the never bumping your thread thing though, I personally think that's just silly. But it does make sense at the same time. I guess I'll stop to check in here every now and then, to see if you've accomplished anything new.
_________________

Thanks to Silferzom for the great avatar. Accomplishment Thread

[ortiz1193]

Nice to see you made one of these. You even have it all nice and neat like your guides. I don't agree with the never bumping your thread thing though, I personally think that's just silly. But it does make sense at the same time. I guess I'll stop to check in here every now and then, to see if you've accomplished anything new.
_________________

Thanks to Silferzom for the great avatar. Accomplishment Thread

[zsjostrom35]

[zsjostrom35]

[Malchia]

Your thread is all nice and neat. Look at mine, it justs breaks stuff up. You have a table of contents! Geez.

Anyways, any accomplishment is an accomplishment. I started my thread I think after I got my 8th FC though, so you definitely could've started earlier if you were so inclined.

Personally, every time I break the next hundred of ranks I bump my topic so people can know.....also so I don't have to keep going back 4 pages to find it and update it. I recently got top 800, bumped it, got top 700, bumped it. Etc. That's just my style though.

Keep up the nice FCs. GO GET MOAR!
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Accomplishment Threads
GH3: FC #32 - Welcome to the Jungle! TOP 500!!!!
Rockband: Big Updates
GH Goals:
Top 500 on all 3 games [ ] (GH3, taken down.)
FC 20 songs on each games [ ]

[Malchia]

Your thread is all nice and neat. Look at mine, it justs breaks stuff up. You have a table of contents! Geez.

Anyways, any accomplishment is an accomplishment. I started my thread I think after I got my 8th FC though, so you definitely could've started earlier if you were so inclined.

Personally, every time I break the next hundred of ranks I bump my topic so people can know.....also so I don't have to keep going back 4 pages to find it and update it. I recently got top 800, bumped it, got top 700, bumped it. Etc. That's just my style though.

Keep up the nice FCs. GO GET MOAR!
_________________

Accomplishment Threads
GH3: FC #32 - Welcome to the Jungle! TOP 500!!!!
Rockband: Big Updates
GH Goals:
Top 500 on all 3 games [ ] (GH3, taken down.)
FC 20 songs on each games [ ]

[zsjostrom35]

Not just a bump since I'm responding to a post :P However, I do have a couple updates to the OP:

--With regards to my confession in the OP, I finished moving my Wii scores to the 360.
--Added a new section of goals for ranking/development of overall skills.

[zsjostrom35]

Not just a bump since I'm responding to a post :P However, I do have a couple updates to the OP:

--With regards to my confession in the OP, I finished moving my Wii scores to the 360.
--Added a new section of goals for ranking/development of overall skills.

[Malchia]

Yeah, I hope you get those FCs soon. Once you FC them you can write guides on them .

P.S. I'm getting really close to getting to the top 500 on GH3 on Ps2.
P.P.S. I like pie!
_________________

Accomplishment Threads
GH3: FC #32 - Welcome to the Jungle! TOP 500!!!!
Rockband: Big Updates
GH Goals:
Top 500 on all 3 games [ ] (GH3, taken down.)
FC 20 songs on each games [ ]

[Malchia]

Yeah, I hope you get those FCs soon. Once you FC them you can write guides on them .

P.S. I'm getting really close to getting to the top 500 on GH3 on Ps2.
P.P.S. I like pie!
_________________

Accomplishment Threads
GH3: FC #32 - Welcome to the Jungle! TOP 500!!!!
Rockband: Big Updates
GH Goals:
Top 500 on all 3 games [ ] (GH3, taken down.)
FC 20 songs on each games [ ]

[zsjostrom35]

[zsjostrom35]

[Malchia]

Double Post FTL

[Malchia]

Double Post FTL

[Malchia]

[Malchia]

[acatisfinetoo]

Yo, way to go on My Curse. I guess that small amount of practice and my exit were all you really needed to get the job done. Well done on Helicopter, too.

All right, I'm off to go play 3s and 7s, for obvious reasons ...


Also, this accomplishments thread is sweet. You have inspired me - I might just have to make one for myself. And when I say that, I mean acquire your services in the making of one for me. heh.

[acatisfinetoo]

Yo, way to go on My Curse. I guess that small amount of practice and my exit were all you really needed to get the job done. Well done on Helicopter, too.

All right, I'm off to go play 3s and 7s, for obvious reasons ...


Also, this accomplishments thread is sweet. You have inspired me - I might just have to make one for myself. And when I say that, I mean acquire your services in the making of one for me. heh.

[zsjostrom35]

[zsjostrom35]

[Stona]

Nice accomplishments. Good to see a list of what you have done so far and what you are looking forward to doing. Congratulations on the FCs, and good job on all the guides you've been writing as well, they have helped me a lot.
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Stona's Accomplishments - GH2H 40 FCs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Stona]

Nice accomplishments. Good to see a list of what you have done so far and what you are looking forward to doing. Congratulations on the FCs, and good job on all the guides you've been writing as well, they have helped me a lot.
_________________

Stona's Accomplishments - GH2H 40 FCs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[zsjostrom35]

[zsjostrom35]

[ShadowDude27]

Wow, looks pretty! Can I steal your formatting for when I finally get around to making an accomplishment thread ?

About your Prayer of the Refugee choke: I remember when I thought I could FC that song, it took me three runs to realize that measure 101 curveball. When I finally got it down, I choked and got a 713 note streak. Good luck with your goals, I'm on an FC drought right now, trying to get #22: In Love/Minus Celsius.
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My Number of the Beast guide | My accomplishment thread

[ShadowDude27]

Wow, looks pretty! Can I steal your formatting for when I finally get around to making an accomplishment thread ?

About your Prayer of the Refugee choke: I remember when I thought I could FC that song, it took me three runs to realize that measure 101 curveball. When I finally got it down, I choked and got a 713 note streak. Good luck with your goals, I'm on an FC drought right now, trying to get #22: In Love/Minus Celsius.
_________________

My Number of the Beast guide | My accomplishment thread

[Bravo]

hahaha. Nice formatting. I think I might have to steal it like Shadow is planning. <_<; It certainly does look pretty. :P

In any event, grats on your Helicopter FC! And I must agree about KT. Choking at 1k+ NS sucks on that song. While mine wasn't as bad, I choked at something like 1011 or so.

Gogo Metal FC!
_________________

I can has achievements? Check them out.

[Bravo]

hahaha. Nice formatting. I think I might have to steal it like Shadow is planning. <_<; It certainly does look pretty. :P

In any event, grats on your Helicopter FC! And I must agree about KT. Choking at 1k+ NS sucks on that song. While mine wasn't as bad, I choked at something like 1011 or so.

Gogo Metal FC!
_________________

I can has achievements? Check them out.