Rocksmith Catch All

I guess Rocksmith is a game. It gives me a score and sore hands.

I bought a copy of the game for the PS3 tonight and played it for about 2 hours.

My background is that I am a novice with the guitar. I picked up a guitar about 2.5 years ago and probably have put in about 100 hours practicing and learned all the notes in the first position and to pick out rudimentary songs in a Hal Leonard beginner book. By the time that I made it to book 2, I was bored. Reading the music was harder than the guitar.

I played Rock Band 3 with a mustang guitar for about 25 hours. I got hooked on Pro guitar, but felt like using the plastic guitar was not helping my transferable skills. The Mustang is less than full size and mashing buttons isn't quite the same as sliding on strings. I could cheat and count frets by feeling the gaps between the buttons. I was all set to buy a Squier controller, but the quality control problems and the announcement of Rocksmith made me put Rock Band 3 on hold.

My first impressions of Rocksmith are favorable. My PS3 is hooked up by HDMI cable to my TV which is a Samsung DLP HDTV. I have no lag issues and the sound is really good. I will hook the PS3 up to my stereo this weekend because I am looking forward to unlocking AMP effects and tones.

I suck at guitar so I have spent the whole night trying to play Can't Get No Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones on single note mode which is the basic mode. Rocksmith has a dynamic leveling system so once I master a note combination, it levels me up and it gets harder. Thus, the software keeps you on the edge of frustration all throughout the song. This is an interesting approach. I have never played this song before and in 2 hours, I am at about 50% mastery of the song. Mastery of a song is determined in a more complex manner than RB3. It has to do with the complexity of the fingering and strumming that you can master as well as the timing (speed). Both dimensions matter. The low complexity patterns must be mastered at 100% speed before complexity increases. (Note some reviews complain that experienced people find this boring - however, there is an option in the preferences to start at high difficulty).

In Rock Band 3, I could set the speed of the song and just play it over and over and over again until it became easy, and I could slowly increase the speed (difficulty). So I would just have fun at 75% speed, until I got the song memorized or got the hand positioning down. Rocksmith doesn't let you play around like that as it constantly pushes you forward. Once I mastered a particular rift, I could only revel in it for about 30 seconds before it became much harder. I flubbed it and it put me down a difficulty level.

I will see how long the game keeps my attention, but it is definitely aimed at teaching you songs and techniques in support of playing the songs. There is no sizzle, it is all steak. I think of it is as a learning tool with positive reinforcement points.

There is a Guitar Center downloadable content store with nothing in it.

Minor gripes.

1. Loading Screen Hell - After every play of the song, or challenge or doing ANYTHING. Data is saved and loading occurs. WORST PART OF THE 'GAME'.

2. When playing a piece of the song, you get 5 tries to master it...once done...saving screen....loading...screen....play the instrument to check tone....tune guitar....

3. saving screen....loading screen....play instrument to check tone....tune guitar...

4. saving screen....loading screen....play instrument to check tone....tune guitar...

100. saving screen....loading screen....play instrument to check tone....tune guitar...

If the PC version has really fast transition times, I will double dip on this game to get rid of the loading times. And really, isn't tuning the guitar once enough? I understand that different songs may use different tuning which would explain it, but really...

Some of these UI issues should be addressed by a patch, hopefully.

Bottom line: I am looking forward to playing my guitar again tomorrow. Worth the money. The technology is really cool. Hopefully, it will sell enough to get downloadable content, and a refined second version.