Groove Assassin

My arm is about to fall off. Who knew playing fake instruments could be so grueling?

I just completed the "Impossible Bass Challenge" on Rock Band 2 (on Hard mode) and, frankly, I could go the rest of my life without ever hearing a song by Dream Theater again, particularly their song "Panic Attack".

How bad was it? Well, let me say that Megadeth and Metallica served up the warm-up songs.

The folks at Harmonix consider "Panic Attack" the hardest song in any Rock Band game so once I saw it on the setlist I dropped down from Expert difficulty to Hard to see what it was like. I already knew "Battery" by Metallica had given me fits on Expert, so there was probably no chance of me passing "Panic Attack" anytime soon.

First attempt: 6% completion.
Second attempt: 73% completion.
Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth attempts: 6% completion each.
Finally, on my seventh attempt, I managed to Overdrive myself to the finish line with a three-star rating.

And yes, the beginning is the hardest part of the song.

I realized afterwards that I could have gotten the Achievement while playing on Easy or Medium difficulty, but honestly, where's the fun in that? If you're going to sidle up to the bar of Impossible Challenges, then you should probably at least be playing with all 5 fret buttons.

But don't set it to Expert unless you have some serious chops, and some mighty strong forearms.

Now it's time to focus on passing 25 challenges on Expert to get another Achievement. 12 challenges down, 13 to go. Unfortunately, I'm running out of challenges I can pass solo while using the bass. I can't play guitar or sing on Expert except for the easiest sets of songs and my drumming ability is non-existent. Also, the band challenges are a no-go since Kristin can't handle higher than Medium mode on guitar and Hard on vocals (primarily because she doesn't know any of the songs).

I'm working on talking my friend Allan into going for the Steel Bladder Achievement -- play the entire on-disc 84 song setlist without pausing. I figure we can pass the guitar back and forth (CAREFULLY!) after every 4 songs or so. It apparently takes 7 hours to complete. Maybe after that I can have his wife do some expert singing for me so I can polish off the other band challenges.