| Rocksmith Thoughts / Mini Review |
| Posted by: AceBHound on Jan 21st, 2012 8:39 PM |
 I had a chance to check out Rocksmith for the XBOX 360 the end of last year. If you haven't already heard of it, it's a unique game which allows you to hook up an electric guitar (or theoretically an acoustic-electric) and play songs similar to the Guitar Hero games. Since it came out it's been reviewed pretty highly. I definitely wanted to check it out since I've enjoyed playing guitar off and on and figured it might be a great way to get back into playing some. It's the first game I've been really excited about in a while.
After having the game for a few weeks, I decided to sell it. It's not a bad game, but it suffers from the same problem anyone will have when trying to learn a musical instrument. You need the time to dedicate to the instrument & if you don't have time, you'll get frustrated at how long it takes to progress anywhere. There are also a few issues others have mentioned like having to tune the guitar before *every* song and the interface/menus being slow. The biggest issue I had with the game play is how they zoom/pan the neck of the guitar -- it's very easy to lose track of what fret you should be on and very frustrating at times. It's not a bad game by any means and if you have time to dedicate to the guitar outside of the game, then it might be a good way to supplement your guitar lessons. Just don't plan for the game to teach you how to play or even keep you motivated if you're just beginning guitar. It quickly gets more complex than someone new to guitar can handle and starts becoming more frustrating than encouraging. For beginners, it's probably better to just print some free guitar tab available on the internet and practice riffs over and over. Maybe Rocksmith2 will address some of the short-comings for the beginner, but at this time it seems like Rocksmith may be better suited for the advanced guitar players who can memorize a song easily and won't have to depend on the note positions shown on-screen while playing the game. |
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