Guitar Hero. Awesome.

[Squeek]

I get that triples that are connected are easier than the ones that are essentially one double and a single with a gap between them, but see, with those, usually the change to the next triple is just removing one finger and putting another down. For example, in Cherub Rock, it was YBO, R-BO, RY-O, RYB. It's essentially walking the gap down the fret. It's logical. It makes sense.

With YBO -> GRY, you have to move your entire hand no matter what position you're in. You can't just shift one finger or lift & replace. The entire hand has to move. Quickly. I know sliding up and down is normal, but it's not normal to do it with triples on either side of the board.

I preferred the original where triples didn't exist =(

I think Activision doesn't understand how Easy, Medium, and Hard are supposed to be done. Since I haven't seen Expert, I'm not sure if the difficulty curve is continuing to be exponential, but I assume they basically double the notes or insert more in-between the patterns that exist on Hard.

Take Trauma Center, for example. Some people consider the game to be insanely hard. I love it. I started on Easy. I didn't fail a single operation. That's just right for Easy. The missions start off easy, then get slightly harder while still retaining the qualities that make them easy. Then you get to Normal. The last mission on Easy should be easier than the first mission on Normal. That's how it should be done. The pattern continues all the way up to Hard. Trauma Center also has an Extreme difficulty mode for a few bonus stages, which is just perfect. It's possible, but even the best player can't beat it every time. It takes both luck and skill. You actually feel like you've accomplished something when you do it. It doesn't change the basic formula you used to beat any other goal. It just makes it harder to do it.

In Trauma Center, you have a Vitality meter. It acts like a patient's heart rate, but you can't defibrillate if it drops to zero like in reality. Every mistake you make drops their vitals. Every second that passes drops their vitals. Every open wound that you leave open will drop their vitals even faster. On Easy, the patient's vitals don't really drop that fast at all. You will barely find yourself reaching for the syringe with the special medicine that raises their vitals somehow. That syringe will raise their vitals by 30. Considering the max is 99, that's really too much. It's designed for novices.

On Normal, their vitals drop a lot faster and mistakes are much more costly. The syringe only adds 15-20 vitality. It's significantly harder and you will fail often. On Hard, the vitals plummet on mistakes. In dangerous situations, a normal patient's vitality will drop 2 points per second. If they have open wounds, it will drop about 5-10 points per second. The syringe will only bring back 10 units of vitality. And oh, by the way, using it too much will waste your supply. There are times when the syringe will only just break even with the rate at which their vitality falls. Failing is common.

Then you get to Extreme. Holy crap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIN5QepfJd0

That's just a taste of it. This guy sucks, by the way. I have a much higher score and a much faster time. He's way too jittery.

THAT is why I pre-ordered Trauma Center 2.