TTFAF finished!!!

I finally beat 'Through the Fire and Flames' (TTFAF) today on Expert, obtaining the 'Inhuman Achievement'. This is for Guitar Hero III (GH3) on the XBOX 360. I have a tip for anyone trying their first pass, but here's some background...

When I first got GH3 I played the solo tour, beating it on hard, then worked my way through Expert. I had tried TTFAF before but like most fail at the intro (developing a latent fear of it). I saw videos of people playing it, and although I felt confident I could learn how to play it, it looked like it would take a *LOT* of practice so I just avoided it as long as possible. :)

Well, after playing Rock Band and those fast solos in Green Grass and High Tides, I decided to give TTFAF another shot. I used the 2-hand 'tapping' method for the intro using my elbow to hit the first strum. Surprisingly this didn't take long at all and I was off and running. And like most people on their first pass of the intro, failed around 78%.

There are a group of solos pretty much back to back that are really tough. It was pretty easy to get full star power though and my plan was to make it as far into the solos as possible then activate to get through the rest. The goal is to get pass the 'Twin Solo' part, after that it is mostly smooth sailing to finish.

The problem though, is to save star power that long, you pretty much need to hold out until into section called 'What The...?'. And staying alive until then is really REALLY challenging. You basically have to have your hands blazingly around. I tried a few times and was getting closer and closer but kept falling short. I could activate star power and get into the 81+ percent range but would fail at the 'Twin Solo'. I felt I could keep practicing and get lucky but it was really frustrating.

In one of my runs, I messed up and had to use star power early. I figured I was doomed, but kept playing. I eventually failed but noticed something very important (at least for a first pass run). You can use star power at the start of the series of solos, and still have a chance to regain star power. This gets you deep into the solos with your rock meter in the Green, then if you can snag another star power before the Twin Solo, you can make it home.

That was my new plan. After failing the intro about 5 times (tough to consistently strum with your elbow and get the tapping started), I was off. I activated star power and the right time, got into the solos great, hit the next star power (awesome!) and now just needed to hit the other one. But (crap) I missed it. I was thinking I was doomed but then RIGHT before the twin solo triplets there is one last star power (a bunch of double notes). I nailed that to my amazement and quickly activated star power which got me into final sections of the song. Of course my heart was racing, who knows how much more practice it would take me to get back to this spot.

Fortunately they give you a couple of parts you can build your meter back to green though. I had walked through the ending in practice mode so at least knew what was coming, there was still a big finale that people have gotten stuck at (a lot of people fail at 98%, I feel for them). When that solo hit, I just strummed in rhythm and hit the notes as fast as I could. I could steadily see my meter going from green to yellow to red, but got passed it and combo'd the remaining notes for the win! I let out a 'YEAH!' even though I was the only one in the house at the time. It wasn't an impressive score (~270k) so I only got 3-stars with my first run, but I am completely content with that. If I do it again, I can be more liberal with star power and just practice the easy parts for good combos.

So my tip is, don't try to save your star power until the 'What The...?' section. Use it right at the end of the 'Climatic Build-up' (just before the 2 ascending strings of 4 notes that make a 'pacman' noise when you play them). A full star power meter will run out just in time to pick up another star power.

With the new playing confidence, I went back and 5-starred all the songs on Hard and got the 'Shredder' achievement. Raining Blood started to feel easy on Hard, I got a x4 in Mosh 1.

My XBox live ID is 'Skick'