The Trouble With Tribbles, And My Rock Band Obsession

Merry Christmas and Happy New year everyone. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to say that the holidays and travel have kept me from my laptop. I'd like to say this but that would be a lie. My first day back at work last week was also the day I found the box set of Rock Band. This game has consume me in ways previous games never could, with the exceptio of Final Fantasy games. I even went to a freinds house to drive him back to mine so we could enjoy a three-member band. No one is stepping up to sing (and I'm not complaining) so I'm quite happy with three people. Some tracks are harder for some instruments than others and its fun to see who had the hardest "workout." The multi-player is the focus of this game, but the single player is useful for practicing the instruments.

Comparing Guitar Hero III (GH3) to Rock Band (RB) is going to happen. GH started this trend with instrument props to replicate guitar rock so its only natural. I will point out other older prop based rhythm games but they don't match up t the quality promised by GH and RB. These include Donka Konga, with small bongo drums, and Samba De Amigo, with maracas. (I'm not counting DDR since you dance, you don't help make music.) I'm sure if I played DK or SDA I would have liked them, but there is something cathartic about "wailing away" on a plastic guitar to Black Magic Woman or Sunshine Of Your Love. GH3 is way harder that RB. I had managed to get more than half-way through GH3 on hard when I made the move to RB. I started RB (with guitar) on Hard and I never looked back. Hard on RB is like Medium on GH3, it just uses all five (5) fret buttons. I'll practice a new RB song on Medium, but move up to hard when I learn it. This isn't really a knock on the game but I had no idea how hard GH3 really was. It's great training for RB, though.

There are a number of pros and cons to each guitar controller. I use the GH2 controller and it also works perfectly in RB. GH2 pros include well defined fret buttons and a sturdy strum bar. I use a three-finger approach to playing, my pinky just isn't up to the challenge. So, I'm sliding up and down the frets on higher levels to match the notes in game. This is made easier by well because the yellow center button has a ride and I can tell what finger is on, and I know where the rest of my fingers are, too, without looking. The RB guitar fret buttons, on the other hand, blend together and it's hard to feel them without looking. They have little bumps (and I mean little) on the buttons for the first, third, and fifth ones, but my finger tips have become numb playing PH3 so much I can't feel them in RB. An odd thing about the GH2 guitar is the click it makes whenever you strum. This can almost distract from the music on screen as your are constantly clicking. RB solved this with a silent strum bar and its worlds better. In fact, the RB guitar is better all around except for the fret button issue. RB also added extra fret buttons for guitar solos and a switch to changle the "voice" of the guitar. Both are unnecessary for gameplay but add a little more flexibilty to your play style. During game play your on-screen fret board will turn blue to indicate a guitar solo, this is the only time you can use the "other" fret buttons. Sadly, I never use them because I have to take my eyes off the screen and miss a note or two just to use them, and the same to move back to the original fret buttons. Nice idea though. They are supposed to make solos easier because you don't have to strum the solo.

Now, for the reason I wanted Rock Band. As soon as I heard there were drums I wanted to try that more than guitar. I'm not alone in my desire since Harmonix/MTV produced like a million of these things hoping more that one person wanted to do this. I also understand that playing GH3 doesn't teach you how to actually play guitar, but Madden 2k7 doesn't really train you for the NFL, either. But the drums are a little different. You actually have to use a real drum stick (actually 2, duh) to hit a drum pad to match the beat, as well as a foot pedal to simulate the base drum. This is way closer to actually learnig an instrument, and I want to see if I have a drummer in me or not. Right now, I have a drummer set on Easy within me, which includes short forays into Medium. This is not an instrument for the faint of heart, especially playing anything by Metallica. I've also noticed punk music requires a lot out of a drummer. The makers claim if you can play drums on Expert you can play for real. I like this challenge but I'm a long from it. Neil Peart I am not. I'm bearly David Grohl. My only complaint in all of this is where are the Jimmi Hendrix songs. My desire for Acheivement points for my GameScore has gone out the window, replaced with my desire to "learn" to play rock music.

Yesterday (December 29) is an oddly important day in Star Trek history. It is the 40th anniversary of the Tribble. The Trouble With Tribbles aired 40 years ago yesterday, and all thanks to David Gerrold, who submitted the plot as a college student. Since then Tribbles have become an icon of Star Trek, almost as much as Vulcans. For the 30th anniversary of the episode, Deep Space 9 did a time travel tale, called Trials And Tribble-ations, back to Space Station K7 while Kirk was there. The DS9 crew interacted with the "old crew" by being inserted into the film of the original episode. Kind of like a cross between Forrest Gump and Back To The Future II. An interesting scene in the episode is when the DS9 crew question Worf as to why Klingons of Kirk's time look human and Worf brushes it off as something embarassing Klingons don't mention with outsiders. It wasn't expained until season 4 of Enterpise that a genetically engineered virus was to blame. Tribbles pop up again briefly in another David Gerrold script for the animated series, again in Star Trek III, and final plans are for David Gerrold to write an episode for the fan-made Star Trek: New Voyages. He had originally wrote himself as a crewmember but was replaced, eventually getting a part in ST:TMP as a crewman during the opening briefing scene and gets a cameo in the DS9 Tribble episode. Gerrold's original reasoning behind a Tribble story was to show what happens when an aggressive species is introduced into an environment without predators, like the rabbit to Australia. The Tribbles hadn't counted on the Klingon, which it reactes to negatively.

The most famous scene, re-examined in DS9, is Kirk opening the bin of wheat only to be cascaded and burried by Tribbles. As it turns out (SPOILER WARNING) someone from the future had planted a bomb in a Tribble to kill Kirk, and the DS9 crew are in the bin above, scanning each Tribble with a tricorder and discarding each "safe" one. These are the individual Tribbles that rain down on Kirk during this whole scene. My favorite part of the DS9 episode is when they find the suicide-bomber Tribble and beam it into space, to safely detonate. It floats scerenly for a moment then explodes. Never has a scene been so tragically-funny, toe-tappingly tragic as Dr. Zoidberg would say. Worf eventually explains that Klingons hate Tribbles so much they went to the Tribble homeworld and destroyed it.

I finally watched I Am Legend and found it much better than the critics have given it credit for. At a latter time I will compare it to The Omega Man, which has more in common than not. I did find that I Am Legend did everything right that failed to work (for me, anyway) than The Omega Man. Will Smith portrayed the sense of a human in survival mode with an edge of lonelyness, where Charlton Heston had an almost unbelievable cavalier attitude towards life. Where Heston (an awesome actor on his own) failed to convince me of his character, Will Smith succeeded in spades. Now I just have to see The Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price to really trace the evolution of the story. See you next broadcast.