For years, video games have been giving awkward teenagers the ability to escape from their parents’ basement and travel to a different world. This video game world gives you the ability to be whoever you want to be, such as a demon-slaying badass or a mustached plumber. Both of which are much cooler things to do than just be in high school and have acne.

But back in 2005, a different kind of video game came out. This video game allowed you to be the most badass rock star ever, something everyone wants. It came with a strange controller unlike anything anyone had seen before. It was a big, plastic guitar with five buttons.

I eyed this new game up in the store. I was intrigued, but completely oblivious to the fact that I was in the presence of greatness. I gave in though, and low and behold I found the greatest video game there will ever be.

Here I was wasting my life trying to figure out how to play real guitar, when all I had to do was shell out $50 and I could be playing Metallica in front of millions of people. Talk about cutting out the middleman.

I know that a lot of people who play Guitar Hero get criticized for not playing a real instrument by a bunch of terrible musicians on YouTube. I don’t understand any of that. When I play a song on Guitar Hero, it sounds just like the real song. I sound really good. When I play that same song on a real guitar, not so much. Besides real guitar is hard: Guitar Hero is easy and cheaper.

Guitar Hero had an arch nemesis throughout its reign: Rock Band. Their relationship can only be described with the Metallica/Megadeth relationship. Rock Band (Megadeth) essentially stole their idea from Guitar Hero (Metallica) but made it more technical. And we’ll just call DJ Hero the Limp Bizkit or Panic! At the Disco of this reference, because no one really cared about it unless they were trying to be funny. Guitar Hero and Metallica were also at their best through their first four releases, and they hate when you steal from them. Coincidence? Who’s to say?

So maybe Rock Band did lead to the death of Guitar Hero, but that wasn’t the only factor.

You can only have a guitar-playing game for so long without it getting old. It essentially became the same as the Madden series when each new game was just the same game with new players. That’s money you might as well spend being addicted to something.

So maybe Guitar Hero needed to come to an end. It was only a matter of time before we were faced with games such as Clarinet Hero, Tax Evasion Hero or Call of Duty. So while I am disappointed, I can respect Guitar Hero for quitting while it was ahead, something Metallica could never figure out.

Goodbye Guitar Hero, I’ll never love another video game again.