Let me tell you my story.

I started the game for the first time and created an account. As part of that, I had to create an avatar, except the game wouldn’t load any of the pictures, except one, which I ended up choosing just to get past this step.

Then into a tutorial. Like most rhythm games, circles scroll down the screen towards the bottom. When they reach the bottom you tap the correct circle and all is well. That works, though the fact that your finger obscures the thing you’re hitting means it can be tough to see if you’ve hit it correctly.

Then the game introduces arrows, which also scroll down the screen, and which require a shake in the direction that the arrow points when they reach the bottom. These didn’t work for me. I got every up arrow perfectly, even when I wasn’t trying, but the left and right shakes never registered. The developers seemed to realise that there was a problem with these arrows, because you can turn them off in the options screen, which I have done.

After the tutorial I chose one of the three – three! – included songs, which turned out to be a guitar-based abomination that had my wife issuing death threats and making me promise never to play the game within her earshot ever again. Still, the game itself was quite fun.

I got some coins for doing well and I could use those coins to buy new clothes for my avatar. This is all done online and the servers were still struggling, so I spent a lot of time staring at screens like this and waiting.

Eventually I ended up looking like this.

I’m not sure that I’ll be bothering with much avatar customisation.

I decided it was time to download some tracks. I didn’t want to pay for songs, so I looked at the list of free tracks. It’s a long list, but I’d only heard of three artists, I think, and I only like one of those. For some variety, though, I decided to download the pack of free songs for the easy level of the game. You can’t seem to download them in the background, so I had to wait for ages and ages and ages and ages before they were loaded.

One of the free tracks was by Freeland, an artist I genuinely, actually like. So I sat down on the toilet and started his song. I’d never heard this particular track before, but it was excellent and I tapped away and instantly forgave the game everything.

So, yes, this game is a colossal pain the neck, but when it works, it’s lovely. I’m not just not sure I’ll bother fighting through the sea of crap to get to the good stuff very often.

Maybe they’ll update the game and upgrade their servers so it all works faster. Maybe they’ll start releasing some free songs by artists I’ve actually heard of. Or maybe it’ll stay slow, broken and expensive.

Rock Band was announced for the iPhone this morning. Tap Tap Revenge better watch out, because I’m longing to defect.