11.1.2014

One year after the UK got the first "Rocksmith", Ubisoft released this new version, which they do not consider to be a sequel. You do not have to have played the earlier game to get the best out of this one, although all except five of the songs from that game can be exported to your console's storage and played in "Rocksmith 2014", while all 143 DLC songs that worked in that game can also be played in this. Note that all DLC songs released since the release of "Rocksmith 2014" are not compatible with the first "Rocksmith" due to the new features in this newer game changing the file format.However, there were quite a few annoying issues in the earlier game that grated on quite a few people,including audio lag that did not seem to improve that much even when changing to an analogue lead for HDMI TVs (and, let's face it, who wants to do that with an HDMI TV, especially just to play one game?) and a very poorly-designed menu system.Now we have RS2014, and I am pleased to be able to announce that it is streets ahead of the earlier game, with far less noticeable lag issues (although it's still not perfect), a better calibration method and a greatly-improved interface that makes considerably more sense. An added bonus is that it takes a fraction of the time to load a song for you to play along to compared to having to wait about 20-odd seconds (if you were lucky) like you had to previously.You can select one of the songs available to you straightaway. There is no need to unlock any of the on-disc songs; they are all ready for you to select right from the first time you load the game (although a very small number of bonus songs require you to sign up to a uPlay account).When you select a song for the first time it'll bring up the tuner, but for second and subsequent songs in a session it will only bring up the tuner again if you are about to play a song that has a different tuning to the song that you have just played. As well as Standard and Drop-D tuning, there are some songs that use D-Standard (which is like standard tuning, except a tone lower: DGCFAD) and E-flat tuning (all strings a semitone lower than standard tuning), Drop-Db (like Drop-D but a semitone lower). However, one pig that will be a bit of a bind is that there are a small number of songs that are not "concert pitch" (a.k.a. A440); some songs are a fraction higher and others a fraction lower, and even some of the DLC that you could play in the previous game suddenly requires you to make these slight tuning adjustments before you can play them, even though you did not have to do this when playing them in the previous game (T-Rex's "20th Century Boy" and Queen's "Fat-Bottomed Girls" are two examples of such DLC). These are a bit of an irritation because the chances are that you will only be making these slight adjustments for one or two songs, and some guitars and basses out there can be fiddly to tune due to the differences in tension on the neck affecting the other strings, meaning that those go out of tune even after you thought you had already tuned them correctly. This means that you could be spending several minutes just trying to detune for a very small portion of songs. Sadly this is not up to Ubisoft, as they would only be allowed to pitch-shift if the rights holders gave them permission to do so, and said rights holders clearly did not want these songs’ pitches tampered with in any way, so “true tunings” it is, I’m afraid...Actually, while we are on about the tuner, I hate to say that the built-in tuner still isn't that great. It still seems to be either a bit too forgiving with accuracy or incredibly picky, from what I can make out.You will also note that songs that you played on guitar in the first game (be they DLC songs or ones that you exported from that game) that had three or more different arrangements then now only have two (lead or rhythm). Playing along you will also notice that they have had some of RS2014's new features built into them. Natural harmonic chords are now possible, whereas they always seemed to be just single notes in the first game. Also, while you are playing an arrangement, any change in tone (such as switching from a clean tone to one with distortion or delay or some other effect) is automatically done by the game, so what you play won't have the same tone throughout, and it sounds much more like the sound of the instrument used for that section in the original song.In the first game you could change the sorting order of the songs (e.g. by artist or by song title), but that always reset itself to song title after every song that you played, and also put it to the very first song that came alphabetically in the list! No such problem this time! Whichever sorting was last picked before selecting a song is retained until you change it yourself, and the highlighted song when you return to the song selection menu will be the song that you have just played, so you won't have to scroll through all of the songs to get to one at the far end of the list (although it would have been nice if you could just jump straight to an initial letter when songs are sorted alphabetically in some form. New sorting options this time around include sorting by difficulty, by song length, by tuning and by favourites (you can "favourite" a song, which would then have a heart icon next to it, so when sorting using this all the songs with hearts beside them would be clumped together at the top).The Riff Repeater is back, and it is better than it ever was before. Not only do you not have to access it separately or navigate through fiddly menus to get to practice the song section that you want, you can now just elect to play a song in the normal way and then access the Riff Repeater via the Pause menu, and you can use the bumpers and triggers to specify which section of the song that you would like to "riff-repeat" (to build up speed, difficulty etc. as before), and you can set error tolerance so that you don't always get penalised for flubbing just one note, although one complaint that I have is that this does not always seem to be consistent -- sometimes it just seems to penalise you for a single mistake while other times it will allow up to four or five.In fact, if you wanted, you could even "riff-repeat" a whole verse or even the whole song if you so wished -- no need to just select one riff this time! Oh, and no limited number of times to try and perfect the section (the previous game limited it to 30 -- sometimes even just five attempts to max out a phrase)!In fact, if you are not a beginner and do not want to be "babied" through even the simplest of songs until you have built them up enough to have all sections at least close to 100% mastery, then by selecting whole sections or the entire song in Riff Repeater and ramping up the difficulty (note that you can see just what notes/techniques are being added to the selected section in a note highway preview in the background with each increased step in difficulty). This is a massive improvement on the previous game, where you would have had to navigate through tedious menu options and select each riff or song section individually -- talk about painting a wall with a toothbrush!There are numerous tutorial videos in RS2014, but a big plus compared to the first game is that there are some aspects of playing that even cater for aspects of playing outside of the game's direct support (such as replacing a string, applying and adjusting a strap so that your guitar/bass is in a comfortable position, and even how to do pinch harmonics). Because of this not all of the tutorial videos have associated challenges, but their inclusion nonetheless is worthy of note as it makes the game even more of a learning tool than the previous game was.There are some different games in the Guitarcade, including a variation on the zombie game that was in the previous Rocksmith that allowed you to practice chords (apparently this was VERY popular), and many of them have a wonderfully retro feel to them (although some instructions in one or two games could have done with being a bit clearer).But the biggest aspect of RS2014 that has got people really excited is the Session Mode, where you can set up a virtual band and practice scales and other aspects in certain keys and the "band" would do its best to follow your lead, so to speak.Overall, this is a massive improvement on the previous game, and is more like the guitar and bass game that players of those instruments have been waiting for. I do still have some other criticisms besides those already mentioned above:(1) The on-screen strings are still displayed by default as having the bottom string uppermost on-screen, rather than the top string uppermost, as is used in TAB outside of the game and is also the order that you see the strings when you look down on them. There is the option to invert them, but it does not seem to make sense for the flipped version to be the default setting. It also makes no sense to this reviewer why this alternative view is even in the game when sources outside the game will not show the lowest string uppermost, which could potentially be very confusing.(2) The Rocksmith Shop still does not mark songs already downloaded in a particularly good way. As before, songs are available individually, whereas some connected ones are available in packs of three or more. The problem is that if you bought all of the songs in a pack singly then the pack containing them is not marked as being downloaded, and if you bought a song pack then the single songs within the pack are still marked as not having been purchased. This problem never happened in other music games such as "Guitar Hero" or "Rock Band", so you were never in danger of paying twice for songs that you did not realise you already had, so the fact that there is a risk of doing so in RS2014 is too important an issue to simply gloss over.(3) On the highway, some notes and repeated chord-plays are hard to see, usually because they are either too tightly packed behind other notes/chords, or because they blend in too well with other things on the screen. There is also the added problem that quite often red and orange notes are very hard to tell apart, while some blue and red notes (especially palm-muted ones) can be hard to see.(4) Some chord names are musically incorrect. While on many occasions it does display the correct enharmonic spelling (e.g. whether a chord should be G# [G-sharp] or Ab [A-flat] in relation to the key of a song), there are other times where it names a chord with the wrong one. This could lead to people who are genuinely also learning about music theory to pick up bad habits and potentially think that note names are interchangeable, which more often than not is not the case and could potentially cause anyone sitting music theory exams to lose marks.The game still comes highly recommended, and it still manages to make something fun out of drilling techniques that can otherwise seem like a real chore! You might still need to consult a human for some things, but this does a better job of teaching than the previous game.At the time of starting to write this review there were three official versions of RS2014 available: a bundle with a guitar, cable and the game; a bundle with just the game; or just the game by itself (ideal for people that bought the first game and do not want/need to fork out for another RealTone cable).

23.1.2015

Firstly, let’s clear the air on this game. There has been a constant battle between gamers and guitarists everywhere ever since the first Guitar Hero came out. Personally I stood firmly against guitar based games like that as trivialising the skill and effort put in to learn to play an instrument, until I tried them and found them to be genuinely good fun and the ideal party games. However, it did seem weird that people were telling me that I should be better at Guitar Hero because I could play the guitar already…it made no sense. Yes I may have more dexterity in my fingers, a better sense of timing, an inbuilt affinity with the songs being played, but the two did not equal each other.Rocksmith is not,I repeat NOT, another one of these beat keeping games pushing coloured buttons in time with the song. This is something so much more – it is a practice tool for playing REAL instruments. Rocksmith is built on the principle of making learning to play an instrument, even for a complete beginner, more fun and less repetitive.The Positives:Rocksmith is set-up to allow anyone to learn to play Bass, Lead or Rhythm guitar from any level in a fun environment designed to eliminate the boredom of repetitive instrument exercises and replace them with mini-games, progressive learning and rocking out to your favourite songs (as long as they are available of course). There is also a fun little feature allowing you to jam along in free-mode.If, like myself you are a seasoned guitarist wanting to brush up on techniques and learn some new songs, or even just have a practice tool to jam along with, this is an ideal package. Rocksmith even allows you to play with your effects rack, amp settings and a number of other features to tweak your guitar tone and tuning. However, Rocksmith also caters for the complete beginner, having lessons that include everything from how to hold your guitar and pick, through to scales and chords and more advanced techniques will be brought in as you progress…and more importantly as you prove to the game that you are ready to progress.Techniques are no longer built up based on endless practice of a specific chord or scale, you now build them up through playing games, you are essentially getting better at playing the guitar as you level up the game, and without even realising you are practicing thanks to the mini-games.Even learning a song can be done in parts, with the game allowing you to slow harder parts down and add more notes in as you get better and even auto-speed up until you are playing all the notes at full speed. It’s a great little practice tool.The Negatives:The first thing anyone who already plays guitar will notice is the layout of the strings and notes is a little quirky. If you are used to reading music then this is a harsh transition, even those familiar with tablature will need some time to adjust to the layout of the notes on the screen. The timing of the notes and when to hit them often feels like you will be running late with following the visuals, but they are fairly accurate. The biggest problem I had out of the box was hitting the right string due to the string layout and thinking it was one string when it was actually the other way around on the neck (something you can swap around in the settings as I found out). But once you’ve had a chance to adjust your way of thinking you should be OK.Now to address the elephant in the room – the delay. If you run this game to your TV via a HDMI and run the sound through this as well, there will be a noticeable delay in playing a note and hearing the sound. This makes it impossible to actually play the game. Rocksmith does come with instructions on how to connect the audio so this isn’t a major negative and certainly says so on the back of the box, so I’m not sure why those giving it 1 star for this being needed feel that the game needs a bad review rather than them learning to read…but hey ho. The best thing to do to eliminate this delay is to use the optical out on your xbox One, run this directly to a amp and it will work nicely. If you don’t have a stereo that accepts S/PDIF input then buy a cheap optical to RCA convertor off ebay and all your problems will be fixed, I have practically zero noticeable delay now on my system.There are some other little quirky flaws in the game, the odd weird hum, having to have your guitar volume turned up full to ensure the system picks it up…but these are very minor points and nothing that you wouldn’t see in a practice amp – let’s not forget this is a practice tool not a pro-studio.The last negative, and probably the main reason for a star knocked off, is the content. The game comes with a number of songs with a wide range of genres and difficulty levels, some are obscure and I’ve never heard of them, others are all time classic guitar tracks. But, it is limited and if you switch between songs often you find yourself getting rather tired of retuning, since it even retunes to match the recording (so even if it is in standard E tuning but “sounds” flat on the recording due to the recording methods, it will ask you to retune from the previous standard e tuning you just used) – not a major point but annoying non-the-less….and you can resort the tracks in order of tunings.But adding new tracks from the store, is my major complaint…they are horrendously expensive if you want to build your repertoire. Each track is practically double the cost of a digital download from iTunes…without the benefit of actually being able to listen to your music on the go….which when you are learning songs you probably want to be able to listen to them as well without needing to load the game up. The catalogue of DLC tracks is in all fairness very impressive, besides a few obvious omissions such as Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Ac/DC, Metallica etc (due to inability to get them to sign agreements) there is still plenty to get your teeth in, but as I say you will need a second mortgage on your house to buy them all and will probably lead to pirated downloads on PC and probably limited downloads on consoles…theres a fine line for artists to tread here price wise before people will start looking elsewhere and they won’t get ANY money through trying to get TOO MUCH.Overall Impression:Besides a few negative points and the obvious bugbear of mine that is price of DLC, this is a great little game and a legitimate way for people to learn guitar/bass. Just remember that this isn’t picking up a game and so don’t expect to get great in a matter of hours like you did with Guitar hero – keep practicing and eventually you will see improvements.

12.2.2014

Funny enough I proposed an idea like this years ago on a forum and it got bashed. Full of negative replies such as "I've been playing guitar for 20 years, why do I need some stupid game to teach me?" And this game faces the same negativity. However, I, last time I got graded was grade 6, am by no means a beginner. As time went by, I found myself playing my guitar less and less, usually with other things to do and places to go I found myself neglecting my guitars and started to sell off my collection in favour of space and money. I saw this game going on sale for £15 or whatever and thought what the hell, why not,I've still got one guitar left.The game arrived and then I realised I no longer had a cable to connect my guitar to the computer and I'm fairly certain you would need the Rocksmith proprietary cable, although I've done no research in regards to that I've noticed that it identifies as a Sony Rocksmith RealTone Cable so I'd imagine the game looks for that only, however I may be wrong. So then I had to get the cable which was £24, very steep for a damn cable but what the hell, I got the game now...Firing it up I was impressed by how you could chose between Lead, Rhythm and Bass guitar, it also asked you what type of headstock you had and whether you were a lefty or a righty. It came with a broad selection of songs which is personally my favourite aspect as I had found that once I had learnt all my favourites, that's when I started to get bored with playing. I rushed into my first song, eager to see what awaited and at first it was about 1 note per 2-4 seconds which I immediately began to think I hope it doesn't stay like this for every song. A few correct notes into the song and now I'm getting a note every 1-2 seconds. A bar or two of more correct notes and now it's a note every second and sometimes on another string. A few songs went with this slow and steady improvement and it eventually became challenging. It seems to have learnt that I'm fairly decent with chords and most of the time in a song I've never played before it will still display the full chord rather than 40% or whatever. It has learnt that I'm fairly good at keeping up with what is being displayed and any new song I start seems to be around 60% of the full arrangement. So with all that in mind, it's great.My favourite thing with this game is how your input is perfectly blended into the real song, but additionally there is a mixer if you wish to tone down your input or the songs volume against your input etc. I'm not sure if this is just me being unlucky but in a few songs I seem to miss notes in the exact same spot and I'm starting to think it's a bug. For the song Judas Priest - Breaking the Law, on Rhythm the intro bar I miss a good 60% of the notes every single time, yet if I play lead I can get 98% overall in that song which includes playing that intro riff a good many times, not really sure what that is about but I've only seen this in this song and one other.The song has many many, many DLCs available and if you buy Rocksmith 1 (which I managed to get for £6!) then all the songs from that game automatically appear in this one, so there is no need to switch for different songs. Same goes for all the DLCs available for the first game (which again I managed to get 75% off!). It does get expensive and no you don't need this game to learn songs, learning via tab or Guitar Pro is equally the same, but it's not the same. I've always been a huge Muse fan but I've never bothered learning their songs, why? Because Matt Belamy loves his amp effects, emulating the same sounds to play along is nigh impossible. This game gives you all those sounds and changes them for you while you are playing along, the Muse pack is now my favourite.This game also features many little games that are incredibly for learning. One thing I always avoided before this was Chords. I was convinced I've never remember their names, and I'd never learn them properly. This game has a mini-game called "Star Chords" which is favourite so far, you're in a space ship and to destroy enemies you have to play the chord. At the start, it'll give you the fingering and the name of the chord, and then as you get further in the speed on displaying the fingering gets slower and slower so you begin to get that high score, you need to recognise chords by the name and this has helped me sevenfold. It has many other mini-games for things such as scales.Additionally this game has many tutorial videos. I didn't bother looking before with that typical "I'm probably better than the tutorial videos target" attitude, but after a while the curiosity got the better for me. For each technique there is a tutorial, and it starts on 101, then 201, then 301, etc up to I think 601, so there is 6 difficulties of each tutorial. Each tutorial video will demonstrate something and then switch to live mode where you are expected to play the parts demonstrated.Every aspect of this game also includes a mode where you can reduce the song speed and scale the difficulty in order to learn the songs at your own pace.If you consider yourself a complete rookie to master, I still recommend giving this game a try out. Just be expected to get addicted and want to buy every single DLC available. I've probably spent £80-100 so far and I don't regret a single penny of that. There's a new Kiss song pack out at the moment I'm eying up.

25.10.2013

I was a massive fan of the original Rocksmith even though it was admittedly a flawed piece of software. Annoyingly the biggest gripe many people had with RS1 was the lag which in all cases was down to the hardware you used to display the video or play the audio, nothing to do with the game at all.Anyway, now we have RS2.0!Well, the thing that annoyed me most about RS1 was the interface, it sucked, hard. The new interface is silky like Del Boys pyjamas. Its super fast to navigate the track list and really easy to find your way around the different modes. There are many many new ways to sort the track list which really does make a huge difference.The new arcade games are really polished this time,they are also very much geared to actually making you learn something rather than just get a high score. For instance, the star wars inspired shoot em up shows you the name of the chord and then slowly fills in the colours of the chord in a small hint display, if you already know that chord you can shoot much faster so it pays to actually learn what the chords are called. Works really well!Session mode is pure witchcraft, its amazing. Set up a pre loaded band and start hitting notes that are shown on the screen in any random order and somehow you are making a noise that could be described as musical (well, musicalish). Time will tell how flexible this tool is, not sure how many different ways of playing there are and how much it really follows you but we shall see!Multiplayer has some new modes, the usual play a song is there along with some head to head challenge stuff.Also in single and multiplayer is non-stop play. You can set a time and select a tracklist, or leave it totally up to the game and then just play. Its great, it just keeps throwing song after song at you with just a pause in between.Now a less positive note. Due to the game now supporting a much larger selection of tunings you will find yourself tuning A LOT. Its not as intrusive as the first game was but I highly recommend that the guitar you play this game with has a fixed bridge and not a floating bridge like a Floyd Rose. Lucky for me I have a few guitars and can leave them in different tunings but if you are just starting out its REALLY important you get a fixed bridge. Having all these different tunings supported is not really negative at all as it will allow many more bands to be supported with their weird tunings, yes, I'm looking at you Biffy Clyro.The in game tuner does a half decent job of getting your guitar in tune, its better than the RS1 tuner by a long way but I still feel it doesn't do as good a job as a proper chromatic tuner. No idea why this is, but I do get better percentages when I tune with my Snark tuner than the game tuner.Please don't listen to any review that marks this game down because they didn't like the track list. That is entirely a personal taste opinion that should have no bearing on if you get the game or not. If the songs really are the worst you ever heard (they are not!) then there are 200 odd tracks to choose from on DLC at just under £3 each with more being added every week. Before you take the plunge on DLC, I recommend checking out what they look like with someone else playing them on Youtube, it gives you a much better understanding of the song if you can watch and hear someone else playing it.If you are in any way thinking you might like to learn guitar but are too shy or cant afford a guitar teacher then buy this game now, I always wanted to learn guitar and now in my 40's having played Rocksmith for the last 2 years I can confidently say I can play guitar. I'm no legend, yet, but I can pick up a guitar and have a stab at most songs put in front of me. I have always owned at least one guitar since I was a small child, never managed to learn any other way but Rocksmith gave me something I always wanted and now I play guitar for at least an hour a day and its not a chore. I'm rocking along with the Foo's or hammering out Get Free by The Vines, strumming along with The Cure. I have a new appreciation of music that I didn't have before learning guitar too. My only regret is that I was born 25 years too early, if I had Rocksmith when I was a lad who knows how good I could have got!! Also I have now increased my guitar collection to 9!If you have read this far you must be interested in the game, if you are then just buy it, you will never regret it (well, maybe when your fingers start bleeding)....

30.10.2013

Rocksmith seems like a good idea in that it offers you an experience like Rock Band or Guitar Hero could never do. Allow you to play your REAL guitar and learn the real notes. Up until now, you had the first Rocksmith; which was good despite some huge flaws, or getting proper lessons. Rocksmith 2014 is re-written from pretty much the ground up. To clarify, this will not run on Windows XP. The recommended operating system is Windows 7.This game boasts over 50 tracks, and in my opinion the music is a better selection this time around. The first one had too few popular hits but from some good artists, but the great bi-weekly DLC made up for it. You also have the option of paying £7.99 to import the Rocksmith 1 soundtrack,although unfortunately at the time of writing a couple of tracks do not make the transfer. Hopefully, Eric Clapton himself will see sense, and sever ties with the failure that is Power Gig.The note highway can be alarming at first and its easy for new players to get confused. Luckily, the game adjusts difficulty on the fly depending on how well, or not so well you are playing. The Riff repeater is also a good feature, enabling players to highlight a part of a song to practice at a slower speed. For the expert players, the pitch bending is new, allowing the expert players to sound that bit extra like the real recording whereas before it seemed to artificial.When you are done attempting to play your favouite riffs, you can go into the Guitarcade and play some guitar versions based on old school arcade type games. These do help with finding notes for the real songs as well, so this game mode DOES have a purpose. In most games, the arcade games seem like an afterthought; like the ones in GTA San Andreas.There are a few problems at the moment and these are a few I've picked up from.The tuning is improved, but in my opinion is now too fussy. The high E registers most of the time, but sometimes if you don't pluck it quite hard enough, the string stops playing just before the software accepts it as a "correctly tuned note". Maybe the sensitivity will be softened in a title update.The menu is more logical than Rocksmith 1, but still not brilliant. The Options menu for instance, isn't in bold letters on the main menu where you'd expect, but instead you have to press SPACE bar to go into Tools, and then options is in there. However, there is a UPLAY option on the menu which is pointless because the game tells you to press SHIFT+F2 in-game to display it anyway! The Smashing Pumpkins 5 pack of DLC is locked in-game at the moment, and cannot be played, even if you have paid for it. Ubisoft are aware of this and are working to get the fix out as soon as possible. Sometimes the game will successfully log into the Ubisoft servers, sometimes they will say that the servers are unavailable. Whether that is true, or whether it is timing out before a response is received from the servers, I'm not too sure. The game is sometimes being too harsh on the scoring and the comments. In one instance I could get about 20% and it says "Very good Performance!", and another song I could get about 55% and it says "...could be worse!" Surely, if the comments were the other way around, it would make more sense.Overall, this game is still buggy in places but it's much improved on the original. I've brought loads of DLC already, some that I never picked up before and I'm always playing the same songs a few times a day to see if I can up my percentage.Once the bugs are fixed, this will be a must have piece of software for the guitar playing lover, or the people that want to teach themselves how to play. At the moment though, I recommend you hold off until the bugs are sorted. I'll try to remember to revise my review when this happens. Until then, I award it a 4 star rating, but only just.

16.2.2014

The original Rocksmith was a phenomenal idea, somewhat lacking in the execution. One of the biggest criticisms of the original was the glacially slow load times for every menu transition along with the awful menu layouts and UI. Well I'm happy to confirm that Rocksmith 2014 fixes this issue. The menus are so much more intuitive, and gone are those terrible load times. It's a much faster, snappier game, and as a result you're less likely to give up on this one.Now on to the game itself. The game follows a similar template to Guitar Hero, the familiar grid, with vertical lines representing frets and horizontal lines representing strings. While it may have been perfectly feasible in Guitar Hero,quickly interpreting which of the 5 buttons to press as the notes fly at you in real time, but in Rocksmith you don't just have 5 buttons, you have 21 frets and 6 strings, hundreds of chords and note positions. Quite frankly, it's just far too difficult to read, interpret and play the chords and notes as they come at you at 80+ bpm. To counter this, the game starts you off on a very simple version, usually just the odd root note. The notes the game chooses aren't necessarily the most intuitive or expected ones, but the game builds up a song is a nice touch. You can practice anywhere from 50% to full speed. It still doesn't change the fact that when the game does throw a new chord at you, it can be hard to read, interpret and play first time, but still a nice touch. For these reasons, I wouldn't start learning a song through Rocksmith, you really want to go off and learn the chords elsewhere, at your own pace, and then come to Rocksmith to practice playing and assess your technique and develop rhythm.The game doesn't just teach you songs though, it also offers lessons teaching all sorts of techniques, from string bending, slides, vibrato, palm muting, all the way up to tremolo picking! The games star feature though (in my opinion), is the wonderful Guitarcade, a series of retro arcade game styled minigames where you get to practice techniques, such as moving up frets to shoot in a space invaders style game, or raising/lowering the volume to move up or down the screen in an auto scrolling platform game. These guitarcade games are absolutely the best way to practice your techniques because they make it fun. Although playing guitar can be very satisfying, there is no denying that there is an awful lot of tedious repetitive exercises required in order to progress, Rocksmith's greatest achievement is in making them fun!Anyone buying this game who thinks it may be a nice and easy way to learn the 50 or so songs in this game (featuring some great alternative rock bands including Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, Foo Fighters, Joe Satriani, Nirvana and Mastodon). It would probably be easier to learn these songs without the notes and chords flying across the screen. But as a practice tool, for techniques, and songs (once you've learned the chords elsewhere at your own pace), it is well worth the asking price. A few caveats then, but well worth it in my opinion.

25.11.2013

Yes, this game really can take you from an absolute beginner, and lead you to become... well, I don't know; it depends how much time and practice you put in. A magic pill it ain't, but if you're dedicated and to the time, you can end up pretty blooming good.For beginners, there are a number of nice easy songs to get your teeth into. Before you know it, you can get 100% on Blitzkrieg Bop! Even seasoned guitarists and bassists will find something to challenge them, on-disc or via DLC, with songs such as Satch Boogie and The Trooper.There's no manual as such, so following the lessons is a must for anyone who's new to the interface. Want to know what those empty boxes are? Do the lessons.A note with a cross through it? There's a lesson on that. Or visit the official forums, where there are a load of helpful people.For anyone who has played Rocksmith Classic, this is mostly an improvement. Some of the changes are pleasing (the faster menus, for example), but others feel like a loss or a step backwards. Choosing which arrangement to play is different, and the replays after finishing a gone entirely. Riff repeater has been greatly improved, but even so has some annoying limitations (such as not being able to select a specific section; sometimes you have to play through 16 bars of stuff you know, just to get to the 2 bars that are tripping you up).Score Attack is arcadey down to the 8-bit styled sound effects (you can turn them down), and has echoes of things like Guitar Hero. It can be frustrating due to its "three strikes and you fail" mechanic, but mostly it's good fun. Having high score tables offers a carrot for the achievers, but it's a shame they're not cross-platform.There's a good range of music, although some genres seem over-represented (e.g. indie rock, metal), while others under-represented (e.g. blues, punk, reggae). OK, it's called ROCKsmith, so perhaps they've consciously decided that blues or country don't belong in the game, but hopefully a wider range of styles will emerge via DLC.Personally, I mostly play bass, and I can honestly say I've improved through playing this game. The session mode actually feels like I'm being creative, and being told I've hit every note on certain songs feels great. One thing I would say, however, is that the game doesn't really seem like it's burning to song into my memory. Even with "master mode" (in which the notes start to disappear as you consistently play them correctly), I find that once I'm away from the PC, I fail to recall what should be played. If I just put a song on YouTube and try to play along with my bass or guitar and amp, things tend to go awry. Maybe that's just because I haven't played the songs enough times, and I'm a newbie (50 hours played on RS2014, 150 on RSC).Overall though, this game is great! Don't expect miracles; you'll still have to put in some effort, but it makes spending that time fun.

22.11.2013

I was surprised to see so many negative reviews here - for me, Rocksmith 2014 has been nothing short of excellent. And a hoot to boot.Having enjoyed Guitar Hero back in the day, I bought the original Rocksmith and thought it was a fun game. However, Rocksmith 2014 is a completely different experience.It's not just a game and can really teach you to play guitar - or bass.Before this, I've been learning with Guitar Pro tab. I find Rocksmith 2014 more intuitive. I especially like the ability to slow/repeat a section of the song (riff repeater), which was the feature I missed most in the original Rocksmith.What's neat about RS2014 is there is so much going on to hold your interest.

1.11.2013

The GoodThe note track is much better for figuring out the timing and it requires more accuracy than the original game. I've found myself listening to the drum beats a lot more often to get the timing correct rather than solely relying on the visual cues of the game to hit the notes. Master mode has been thought out a lot better. The original game just threw you into the deep end once you'd mastered a song but i found i couldn't remember the notes with no visual cues. RS2014 fades the notes in and out and still lets you know when you've missed notes so the stepping stones into Master Mode is a lot more fluid and works a lot better as a way of memorising the songs.Gone is the Guitar Hero game elements and just learning songs one after another has been pushed to the forefront.

10.5.2014

I'll start by sharing a little project of mine, which is a 60-day blog-type-thing on my experience with Rocksmith, as an 11-year guitarist. You can find the articles ("notes") on the Facebook page, "Techiebabble", or by using this link:[...]If some time has passed, then you may wish to go straight to the "Notes" section, to easily find them.To save me type out a ton, and simply reiterating what I've already said on the blog, I'll give you guys a pro and con list:PROS:1. Teaches quite well. While I do think it's stupid not to include a standard tab interface, given that it's pretty important in the guitar world (learning new songs is a good way to learn different play-styles, techniques, scale-uses,

19.8.2014

I am learning Guitar and have had group lessons for about two years. My strumming is very weak and although I know many Open chords changing between them is fairly slow. I know Power Chords and have understood the theory of AE Barre Chords but find them tricky. My lead work is more advanced. I have logged about 5 hours over three days so far on Rocksmith 2014 and have chosen the Rhythm path as this is what I really want to improve. Lead playing can wait a bit although the music available is a blend of both and you can swap and change paths as many times as you like...I had a go with the old Rocksmith and this feels better. Much more of a tuition tool and less of a random fret game although to be fair I am also more experienced too.

28.12.2014

I'm giving this great piece of software a 4 and not 5 stars due to Ubisoft messing us about as usual. Their website is useless in relation to getting the 60 day trial working. This beyond me which is a shame I would have loved to track my progress and was a huge selling p[oint of the utility in the first place.Initially on the PS4 the game seemed to bug out before you could get an hour played. However, they seem to have patched this and I have experienced relatively few issues recently.So the software itself...I used to play guitar years ago and got the itch to play again. Much has been made of the lag on the PS4 well there are ways around this so to be fair it's only an issue if you haven't done your research and aren't prepared to do something about it..

26.6.2020

We waited a long time to buy this game/tutorial but I’ve always been fascinated by it.I’m only a rookie autodidact classic guitar player. I know a decent set of chords can play quite some songs with a little practice but lI simply lack a lot of skill.Nevertheless, this game got me interested as it could possible take my knowledge and skills a few steps further without having the obligation to find and visit a tutor.So we recently bought a cheap, entry-level electric guitar. And we opted for the 2014 Rocksmith version as that was much more friendly priced than the remastered version, the Real Tone cable was still included and I wasn’t quite sure about the lasting appeal.The game/tutor looks very good with sharp clips and graphics all in proper rock-style.

22.12.2014

UPDATED REVIEW:Since the last review I made of this product there has been an update to both the game and the Xbox itself. Now in the console settings you can turn the HDMI settings to prevent sound being sent to your TV and only output via optical. By doing this the lag is drastically reduced. It's still a bit laggy on the menus or when trying out different set ups, but once in game its barely noticeable.Pros:- It's a great game for learning new songs and techniques and would fully recommend it to beginners to mid-level guitarists that want to improve their playing- Mini games/arcade mode is way more fun than I expected it to be- Good starting roster of songs- There's some additional Jimi Hendrix song packs which are free to downloadCons:- The song packs are pricey!

11.7.2014

Got this to encourage me pick up my bass again. Wow it is fantastic. I wish I had this when i was 17. I am not a novice but I haven't really played for along time and I can say that anyone thinking of taking up guitar or bass either for the first time or like me after a long break should ABSOLUTLEY get this. It has to be the best music training tool/software ever devised.It won't teach you to be an artist and produce brilliant original stuff - that comes from you - but it will teach you all the tools you need. It makes it so easy and fun - with the little mini games, and the riff repeater and all the other features there is no excuse not to practice.

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