I've 5 stared everything on Medium except for Institutionalized and Carry Me Home. I've (barely) earned 4 stars in both of them after a lot of practice but I just can't nail them.

Institutionalized - if I concentrate I can nail the whole song except for 2 parts the fast Red-Green-Red-Yellow-repeat part and the really fast green-green-green-green-green-... yellow-yellow-yellow-... red-red-red-red-... green-green-... part

Basically I can't even do the first part above in practice on slow or slower... on slowest I can barely manage

and even if I alt-strum I can't even come close to getting the timing right during the long string of greens in the second part above. my combo always breaks in the middle like there's a hesitation or ti changes paces or something that I'm not getting. I can usually get the rest of it


On Carry Me Home - I have the most trouble on the Green-Green-Green-Red+Yellow-repeat part... I fail every time it comes up... the rest of the song I've got down it's just that one section that kills me and keeps me from the 5 stars.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated... I got 5 stars on about 50% of the songs my first play through... then 90% my 2nd try with the ones I missed. Spent another day cleaning up some more loose ends toward the bottom. the last 3 days I've had nothing but these two songs left and it's driving me nuts.

try turning down the sound of the band
it helped me cause the guy who is talking isnt in time when he does it so it throws off everything


it took me somewhere like 20 trys to 5 star it

my advice would personally be to forget about it for now.

to elaborate a little bit more, i mean play the game through on hard. you'll get much better, and you'll be able to go back and 5 star everything easily. after playing the game through on hard, i was able to 5 star every song on medium on the first try except for psycho billy freakout.

i'm assuming that you are using your star power when you already have a 4x multiplier and are trying to use it in a section with a bunch of 2 note chords? the chords are worth more points then the single notes, so i try to get my 8x multiplier kicking in on parts with a bunch of them.

HOLY CRAP I had no idea you could turn down the band! I'll definitely be doing that tonight... part of my problem with that song was that I had never heard it before and the guitar was just all over the place so not only was it hard I had to learn the song. If I can get rid of the rest of the band that will help a TON.


I'd considered going through on hard but it seems to me that the jump from Medium to Hard is a LARGE one. I've attempted 1 song on hard and I barely finished it, having to actually slide my hand down the neck for the orange button is a whole lot more difficult then it sounds...

...I'm sure if I try it will come to me but I'm not sure if I really want to even bother with Hard... I'd like to finish these two songs on medium and then do just enough on hard to earn another grand or so to buy all the guitar finishes... I might come back to this game later but there are a lot of other games I'm itching to play.

As for the using the SP when I've got 4x... I always try to but I wind up breaking my combo so frequently on these songs that just tilting the guitar up screws me

I can manage getting 4x on institutionalize for the chord part but I can't keep a 4x combo on Cary me Home

heart shaped box is a very good song to get used to hard on. that song by the toadies is also good to learn on. i personally slide my hand very minimally. i stretch my pinkie out so that i use it for orange and blue, and essentially only slide when i have a blue/orange cord (and sometimes i even just get a good angle and hit them both with my pinkie).

another strategy that doesn't work for me, but some of my friends like, is to start putting your fingers on the bottom frets, then extend the pointer finger to hit the green.

for the five stars, perhaps you could try going into practice mode, and figuring out the parts that are breaking your combo a little bit better. if your not using star power at all (which it sounds like might be the case), your not going to get the 5 star.

the game really is a practice makes perfect thing unfortunately.

my advice would be to learn the songs, as in dl and listen to them a few times... it gives you a feel for what the game will throw at you as you know what the notes are going to be... i NEVER alt strum and ive 5 stared almost all of medium and a few on hard... god damn psychobilly freakout is pissing me off right now though... all those quick red-yellow notes that for some stupid reason arent ho-po's...

you have to be careful with listening to the actual songs because some of them are actualy different in the game than in the real version, they rerecord the songs for GH2 themselves and some of the songs have slightly different parts, freebird is a good example of this cuz they change this song a bunch. but this is good advice cuz i did it and it helped a lot

Institutionalized is a pain because of the constant tempo changes. I've never thought of turning down the band before. I always turn the crowd off.

If you ever need advice on specific songs, you could always head on over to the forums section of scorehero.com (an old site for keeping track of GHI/II scores when we didn't have leaderboards)

Just wait 'till you get to expert - that's where all the fun is at

WOOT!

I finally managed to 5 star those songs.... I was up late playing them over and over again, carry me home was just murdering my fret hand and Institutionalized was murdering my strum hand.

I got up early the next next day to see if I played any better fresh in the morning and I nailed both of them in under 2 tries each.

I really didn't play them any better then I had in the past but the I managed to play through the non-difficult sections perfectly and used the star power at the best possible spots.

Also turning down the band and croud helped me learn the songs and once I knew them well I did better with the band back in place (listening to the drummer helps me keep tempo, particularly on Institutionalized)

After that I went on to get the 300K achievement (Free Bird on Medium) and the 500 Note streak (Less talk more rokk).

I wish less talk more rokk was longer, I Full Comboed the thing for about an 850 streak... I could have kept going right to 1000 if it was long enough


after that I went though and played enough on Hard to buy the rest of the guitar finishes and complete the shop.

I think I'm done with the game for now until I find someone to help me with the co-op achievements...

If I put my mind to it I could probably 400K/1000 streak Freebird on Medium and maybe complete Hard (I was able to 5 star most of the first two sections). But I don't like Free Bird enough to spend that much time with it and I have lots of other games to play

Thanks for your help guys.