Rocksmith Review (360)

Be a guitar god, not just a hero

When Activision pulled the plug on Guitar Hero, people thought the genre was dead. Turned out, all it need was a little imagination injecting into it. Enter Ubisoft’s – Rocksmith. I have to admit, I was a huge fan of Guitar Hero. I played the Metallica version religiously for months and months. However, I always had the same complaint. As a guitarist myself, I found the control to have no real relation to guitar playing. It was a great reactions game, but I longed to be holding my trusty Godin guitar rather than a piece of plastic. Imagine how excited I was to find out that Rocksmith was going to let me do just that. Touting itself as a cross between Guitar Hero and a kind of gamified guitar teaching experience, Rocksmith puts a real guitar in your hand (or bass) and lets you rock out to some great tracks. The basic pack comes with Ubisoft’s “Real Tone” guitar to USB lead and the game – as well as some simple set up instructions. On loading up the game, you are taken through the basics of how to tune the guitar and get going with the game. Simple stuff, but for a beginner it would be essential!

A real rock god rather than a child with a toy

Once in the game, it is a familiar affair. Play songs, get points, play gigs, get more points. Points mean unlocks and progression. Rocksmith throws in a few interesting curve balls to add to its teaching credentials though. Each “level” gives you more techniques to learn, from bending strings to chords and more. TO help with your learning, there are also a few very clever games available in the GuitarCade! There are 8 in total, all designed to help you learn more about how to play your guitar – under pressure. Whether it is shooting ducks Galaga style in Super Ducks, or killing zombies in Dawn of the Chorded – each is fun and well balanced. I have been playing for 16 years and found these to be challenging! On top of these, there are technique challenges that help you work on slides, chords, bends and more. There is the Riff repeater, that lets you break songs down and learn them and there is the Amp Mode. This lets you turn your TV into a virtual amp with all sorts of options and stomp boxes to play with. There is a superb mix of songs including tracks from the Rolling Stones, Muse, Nirvana, Lynyrd Skynyrd and more. Each offered a unique challenge in playing. Notes scroll towards the onscreen virtual guitar neck, with each string being represented by a certain colour. Rather than just being made to play each song note for note, Rocksmith gives you little bits at a time To start with you will only be playing a few notes on the Low E and A strings. As you get better, Rocksmith dynamically ups the challenge, adding more strings and more notes. If you start to struggle, the game will drop the difficulty for you – meaning you never get too frustrated with a song. Eventually you will be playing the whole song, pretty much note for note. It can take a bit of time to get used to, but then you are playing a real guitar here! As I say, I have been playing guitar for quite some time, but have found Rocksmith to be a fun challenge (for the most part). There are a few things that are hard to get over. First, if you know the song already, it is really hard to play what Rocksmith wants you to play. For example, I play Soundgarden’s Outshine all the time. In Rocksmith, because it is asking me to play specific notes rather than the song, I struggle to get a good score. Another thing that takes some time is how the game displays the incoming notes. Unlike Guitar Hero, you have over 20 possible frets and 6 strings to play on. To accommodate this, the display zooms in and out and moves around. This can be very hard to keep track of at times, especially on songs that need you to go from one end of the neck to the other on a regular basis. My final gripe is the tracking of what you are playing. I found that there was a significant delay between playing a note and hearing it. You can adjust this a little and it is a common issue with guitar to digital interfaces. However, it can be very jarring at times and made the Amp Mode unusable for me. Not everyone has had this issue, it depends on your set up, but it did taint the experience for me. Overall, I have to say – gripes aside – this is the start of the future of the music and rhythm genre. Playing a real guitar along to great tracks is fun, really fun. You get the chance to feel like a real rock god rather than a child with a toy. With extras like the Riff Repeater, Amp Mode, Technique Challenges and of course the GuitarCade, this is a game that will help any beginner get used to a guitar and any expert break out of a few bad habits. I love it. now Rock On Dudes!