Jared Rea

Thanks to the release of “Charlene (I’m Right Behind You)” in Rock Band yesterday, I’ve finally snagged an achievement that has haunted me: Flawless Groove. I come from the Bemani / Guitar Freaks school of down-strum only, so really, this was a long time coming. I’m rhythm gaming dinosaur, I know. I still refuse to touch the bar during a game of Dance Dance Revolution to this day no matter what, amongst many other superstitions and (most likely) bad habits.

But hey, good news for you up-strumming freaks like Miss Shelby. The Rock Band bass guitar is now available, featuring a longer neck and split strum bar for two-finger play. Who says no one cares about bassists?

There should be a film made about my playing Halo 3 again. It would be called, “How Jared Got His Fierce Back.” And while they’re at it, they could make a documentary about why I don’t blog when I totally should, like last week when I put my new feature up about Xbox 360 achievements and how they need fixing.

I was actually inspired by an article by Nadia Oxford over at 1UP on how we, the gamers, are completing our games less and less these days. In my case, I already knew she was right, but I checked out my Gamercard anyway and found that for all these games that I love, my lack of achievements said otherwise. This sent me into a brief frenzy of achievement hunting, which would explain why you may have seen me playing The Simpsons Game and Project Gotham Racing 4.

Kongregate, which has an achievements system all its own, also played into all this as I rediscovered it thanks to our indie gaming week over at GameTap. It’s amazing how Microsoft’s system has changed the way we play games and appreciate games, as there’s nothing more rewarding than earning a few ego boosting points simply by burning the rope. Unfortunately, developers still have plenty to learn about making them so.