chuckro | Rock Band, Kinect

Edgehopper has us over a ways back to play the new Rock Band (now with keyboards!) and try out a couple of Kinect games. All fun, but in the end I think they all go into the same bucket as most of the stuff for the Wii: Fun as party games for a few hours, but I wouldn't put the time into them to actually justify a purchase.

Rock Band, especially with the new "pro" controllers that much more closely mimic playing the actual instrument, and Dance Central are both a bit less about playing a game than learning a physical skill. Which is fine--arguably, "platformer reflexes" are just as much a skill that games "train" you on--but it's not what I'm looking for in a gaming experience. If I wanted to learn to play guitar, the Rock Band pro guitar mode would be the awesomest thing ever and I'd play it all the time until I could pick up and play real songs on a real guitar instead. Likewise for pro drums or pro keyboard.

Similarly, I think Dance Central could actually make you a pretty good dancer. Or at least get you into decent shape: Jethrien was quite good at Dance Central because she's done a lot of exercise videos, and the screen-mimicking skills are basically the same. If I bought a 360 for other reasons, I'd be tempted to buy the game to feed her exercise video habit. But it's not worth buying a system for.

Which got me thinking about what I do want from my gaming experience: I want it to feel like entertainment, not work; and I want to feel some sense of accomplishment rather than a sense of wasted time. That's probably why I gravitate towards rpgs, because they have a beginning, middle and end, and are designed to be long and played once rather than attempted repeatedly because you keep failing. Likewise, I tend to avoid harder action/platformers (practicing them feels like frustrating work) and casual games (which tend to feel like lost time). Party games like these both feel like work (read: I'm a lazy gamer who hates exercise) and don't have much of a progression or goal to accomplish. 5-starring everything on Expert just doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.

It's nice to have friends who buy all the cool toys and let me play with them, so I don't have to spend the money myself just to decide it wasn't worth it to me.