![\"gh3_boxshot.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/gh3_boxshot.jpg\")
Last week we took a long trip to look for houses in our ‘new home town’.\u00a0 While the 6+ hour ride each way there was already plenty of reading, music and handheld gaming going on … but the hotel stay provided and interesting and unexpected gaming opportunity that turned out way more fun than it should have been.<\/p>\n
Unless you live under a rock you know about the Guitar Hero franchise and how great the games are on the various platforms. (hehe … did you get the ‘rock’ joke?)\u00a0 But until now, PC gamers have been left out in the cold, tied to a whipping post, as it were.\u00a0 The whole ‘guitar controller’ thing certainly figured into it,\u00a0 but the game itself really seems to lend itself best to the ‘living room experience’.\u00a0 We have been playing the Wii version since Christmas and absolutely loving it – but it is really best as a shared experience.\u00a0 So when I got the Mac \/ PC version from Aspyr and started playing it as a solo game, something was definitely lacking.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, I had stuck the disc and manual in my computer bag and so they came along on our trip.\u00a0 But the guitar controller was safely at home.\u00a0 So on the night we had spent looking at schools, only to have a snow storm blow in and cut the afternoon a bit short, we took advantage of the food in the hotel and stayed in for the evening.\u00a0 We went to the pool and hot tub and exercise room, then looked for a movie – and then I made a suggestion:<\/p>\n
What about playing Guitar Hero III on the Mac?<\/p>\n
“Without the guitar?” was the almost instant response from everyone, to which I replied “well, we can try”.\u00a0 And so we did.\u00a0 We started from the beginning again, taking turns working the keys and waggling the mouse and generally not feeling like musicians.\u00a0 This was not the experience you have heard people about with Guitar Hero – this is a game clearly not designed for a keyboard and mouse.<\/p>\n
But we had a blast!\u00a0 We surprised ourselves with it – clearly showing a couple of things.\u00a0 First off, that Guitar Hero III is a really good game and able to stand up to a sub-par control system.\u00a0 Second, and most importantly, that a family gaming experience transcends just about anything.\u00a0 As I said, my experience with the Mac \/PC version had been less than stellar – even with the guitar controller.\u00a0 It just didn’t live up to the Wii version in terms of overall enjoyment.\u00a0 Yet despite sacrificing the fine guitar for a strange-feeling keyboard and mouse, we laughed and cheered and rocked out for quite a while – which was absolutely perfect in the middle of a busy and stressful pre-move trip; and it reminded me once again of something that cannot ever be overstated:<\/p>\n
Doing fun stuff with your family absolutely ROCKS!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week we took a long trip to look for houses in our ‘new home town’.\u00a0 While the 6+ hour ride each way there was already plenty of reading, music and handheld gaming going on … but the hotel stay provided and interesting and unexpected gaming opportunity that turned out way more fun than it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}