Tuesday 2 January, 2007

I've been working on improving some of my scores in Guitar Hero and I started thinking about perfection. Actually, I was thinking about the role of perfect achievement in games.

When I practice a particular song in guitar hero it's not about being able to "get to the end" as happens in so many other games. It's about getting everything right, with no mistakes, and with the highest possible score. I'm sure I could go online and find out what it takes to get a perfect score on each song, in each difficulty. You can work it out. It's a decidable problem.

Does that mean it's less fun or less intersting?

In this case, obviously not...in fact there are many other games (most of them non-video) where perfection is attainable. Bowling, darts, snooker are but a few examples. However, there is a difference between the existence of an obvious perfect score and a fuzzily definable score.

Sure, in any racing game there has to be an absolute minimum time in which the race can be won. Right? A lot of people spend hours shaving milliseconds off their lap-times, right? But the truth is, you never REALLY know if you've run a perfect race... You can converge on that minimum...but you'll never know if you really got it.

Guitar Hero is different. It's such an unforgiving, unrelenting linear experience. No wiggle room...no barely made it. It's an all or nothing thing.

I guess the reason for this is that every single action you take in this game is score and measured. (ok, you can press the fret buttons and if you don't strum, nothing happens...but you get the idea). Doesn't that seem terribly harsh?

Finally, and it may be just my impression, but the idea of the perfect game is pretty rare in videogames. On the one hand I think it's because the possibilities of what games could be literally exploded, but I also think that it's an interface issue. Videogames can quantify a LOT more player actions per second than anything else. The computer has the capacity to rate and score each and everytime you press a button...but it's so many button presses that each individual press becomes meaningless, so videogames tend to "score" other things.

This is by far one of the best games for PS2. You can achive perfection, but that led me to wander about giving time to some real instrument instead of playing this game.

Practice leads to perfection. Why not go for the real thing?

It's an interesting question.. I guess the learning curve is what helps the most. It can take a lot of practice with a real guitar before you can play even the "easiest" songs acceptably.

As great a game as GH2 may be, I see your point. Once you've beaten Freebird in Expert, what else is there? Perhaps if it were a little bit more like Parappa (and Parappa 2) for the original Playstation - you can win and get points for being on beat, though not necessarily on cue. The exact sound and style of the songs can fluctuate depending on how well you match the beat and button-mashing overall, and copying the guide symbols directly isn't always the best option.

Hey, real guitar players can ad lib a little, too, right?