malvasia bianca

I’d been playing Rock Band with Miranda (my daughter) since we got it, but Liesl (my wife) had been resisting. She was clearly somewhat interested in the game—she would sometimes get caught singing along in the background—but somehow we never managed to pull her in.

But I kept asking; I tried not to be annoying about it, but when I felt like playing it, I would ask both Liesl and Miranda if either of them felt like joining in before jumping in solo. And finally, last week, Liesl accepted an invitation.

I kind of expected her to start with vocals, because of the aforementioned singing, but she decided to play bass instead. She’s been doing quite a solid job, too, quickly starting to earn bass grooves.

And, just a few days later, she seems quite solidly hooked: I’ve been playing a lot of Rock Band 2 over the last week, but I’ve almost never had to play alone, and as often as not she’s the one inviting me to play instead of the other way around. In fact, her band has caught up to Miranda’s band already: all of North America is open to us, and while we haven’t yet gotten a plane with her band, that battle has been available for some time, she just wants to explore some of the other songs that are available before diving into that.

Yesterday, for the first time, all three of us played together; we just need a drummer and we’ll have a full band! (Fortunately, our friend Scott was doing a decent job on the drums when he tried out the game over Thanksgiving.) We all had a good time, and the game is even more fun with three people than it is with two. A little bit safer, too: all of us were playing at difficulty levels where occasionally we’d hit a song that was a bit beyond one of us, but with two other people to save us, we didn’t have to worry about it.

The huge amount of content is finally starting to hit home, too: I really do think that it’s beating down my completionist tendencies, even without my having dipped into the DLC options. Everywhere we turn, there are new songs to play; and, as often as not, when given random songs, old friends from the first game show up. (Or enemies: I like Brainpower a lot, but the triplets kill me most of the time! Good thing I’m playing with a couple of my closest friends to save me…) These days, it feels it more like my iPod on shuffle mode: everywhere I turn, I’ll be listening to something different, and frequently something I haven’t heard in a while.

I’ve stuck with guitar ever since I started on the second game; I really should give the other instruments a try again. (I did do the first bass challenge; I was surprised how much fun bass was, and also learned that switching to up strokes is a reasonable way to give my hand a break during songs with a lot of fast notes.) Probably not just yet, though: I want to get farther both with Liesl’s band and with the challenges before switching instruments.

And I should try it online. Maybe we can do it for the next VGHVI play session, once Roger’s Xbox gets fixed?