Endless Set List

Rock Band 2 has a couple of set lists dubbed "endless set lists." The first one is 58 songs and takes over four hours to complete. I saw that and decided to avoid it, knowing that our band would crap out before finishing the set. There's a second set list with 84 songs, which would theoretically take over six hours to complete. Realizing that our band couldn't make the "short" endless set list, I thought there would be no way in hell to make the second one. I was right.

My brother-in-law was in town for a few days. He likes playing on the Xbox, and we (meaning the whole family) spent a good chunk of time playing Rock Band 2. (Good thing we bought that second wireless guitar for Christmas!) On the last day of his visit, my older daughter says "Let's do the endless set list." I guestimated that it would take us 5 hours to finish and tried to discourage her.

"Look kid, you're going to get us started and then go to your boyfriend's house and leave us all hanging."

"That's okay dad, [Mrs. Evan] can join in when I leave."

"Okay, but then nobody can switch out. We'll all have to play full time." They talked me into it. Wouldn't you know? I was right. An hour in to the game, the older kid said "The boyfriend is here. Bye." Three more grueling hours later, my shoulder was sore and Mrs. Evan said "We've got to quit. Time to take [brother-in-law] to the airport."

I figured I'd just pause the game and we'd play later. A couple of hours into the pause, I remembered something. I had configured the Xbox console to automatically power down after six hours of sitting idle... and the only way to change that configuration was to exit the game. That was when I kind of knew that we wouldn't be finishing the set, but wasn't quite ready to give up.

The game was paused. All I knew was that if I quickly unpaused and re-paused the game, that would count as activity, and the console wouldn't shut down. This also meant that I couldn't play any other games until finishing the endless set list. I couldn't believe what my fucking kid had gotten me in to.

Next morning, the console was still on, but I was losing patience over not being able to play other games. We managed to keep the console on throughout the day, but I told myself that if we didn't at least play some of the endless set list and whittle ourselves toward the finish line that I'd let the console power off. The kids got home from school and I asked if they wanted to play. They did in theory, but nobody moved. The older kid -- the one who got us here in the first place -- was most excited. "Yeah! Let's play Rock Band 2." Shortly after that, she was heard saying "Ooooooo, something shiny," and that was the last we heard of her. As far as I know, she's still missing in action.

The Xbox shut itself down sometime last night. It too had given up on the dream of conquoring the Endless Set List... the Mount Everest of Rock Band 2. What were we thinking? We hadn't trained. We were mere amateurs attempting to accomplish the impossible. But we learned our limits. And I can now play other games.