Rocksmith

I mentioned a while ago on my Chess blog that I'd like to see Rocksmith available in the UK. Well it was released a while ago now. I've been playing it ever since. I learned to play guitar as a teenager. I did have some lessons back then with a guitar teacher. I'm no Eddie Van Halen though. :)

I've played the mini games on Rocksmith and they are fun. But I've spent most of my time trying to learn the songs. I have to say I don't know if I see much point in the Ranking system. I've reached rank 10 (Super Elite Guitarist). I would say I'm not much of a guitarist and given enough time and points everyone could reach that level without getting high scores for each song. At least I think they could. I don't know if they would have the patience to grind out the points though. :)

I have to admit I have played one of the Guitar Hero games and the Rockband games. I'm not really into button mashing though. Which is why I was thrilled when Rocksmith was first announced. I love being able to just plug my guitar into my computer and play. :)

One of the first things I did which I imagine anyone who has any experience with the guitar would also do is invert the strings. You see tab is upside down the heaviest E string is the bottom line on a tab. So your used to seeing the music setup that way. Having the heaviest E string at the top in the game just messes with your head if you already play.

I liked practicing the techniques getting gold for all of them isn't hard if you already play. I would have liked to have seen tapping and sweep picking included but maybe they can't do that? It doesn't really matter since you still have to be a good player for quite a few of the songs. I liked being able to buy new songs since playing the standard ones would get boring after a while. I don't know if anyone else likes the Rockband/Guitar Hero's feel to the software. I do though, the coloured strings and everything are nice. I find it a bit difficult figuring out what fret I'm playing but that's probably because I sometimes learn the song while playing. Which isn't a good idea. Your better of using the riff repeater for practicing small parts of the song.

I bought quite a few songs for it. The Offspring ones as well as Queen, Megadeth, Judas Priest, Europe - Final Countdown, Living Colour - Cult of Personality.

Ubisoft are releasing a new version called RockSmith 2014. According to Amazon UK it will be coming out in October. It looks very interesting.