Guitar Hero II - Completed all songs on medium difficulty

I know I am late to the party, but this game is freaking awesome. You can truly feel like you are shredding through some hot rock and metal songs.

In college, I decided to learn the guitar. I had a few lessons the summer before I left and then pretty much tried to teach myself during my freshman year. I learned to play chords and can do that pretty well, but plucking and playing individual notes was always a bit beyond me. I'm sure if I had really dedicated myself to it, I could have done a bit better. I took piano lessons for 10 years and eventually got decent at that. Given all the other distractions at college, I never progressed beyond chords and frankly was fairly happy with that as I could sing along.

Still, I always envied my freshman year roommate who had more guitar skills than me. I dreamed of being able to recreate Slash's guitar skills in Sweet Child O' Mine (okay, this was largely prompted by a girl I was into once proclaiming how sexy that was). Now, thanks to Guitar Hero, I can pretend I'm jamming with the best guitarists.

The game is more-or-less set up like Dance Dance Revolution, having to strum the right fret when it hits the bottom of the screen. This means that two skills really help with this: hand-eye coordination and rhythm. Fortunately, I have both to some degree so Easy mode was genuinely easy for me. Medium mode is requiring much more skill and getting 5-star ratings on all those songs seems like it may take awhile, but I will remain diligent just because I want to rock.

I read an editorial worrying about whether games like these would discourage people from experimenting in actual music. For me, at least, that is poppycock. Playing this game has only made me want to pick up my actual guitar and hone my skills a bit. As much fun as it is pretending that I'm jamming some great songs, I know it would be much more impressive if I could actually do those things. Until then, I'll have to pretend it really is me shredding up Freebird.