First there was Guitar Hero. I remember the first time I played Guitar Hero the first thought that came to my mind was that it was nothing like playing a real guitar. The second thought that came to mind was that it was awesome to feel the power of playing with other instruments. For a person that had never played in a band it was probably the closest to the real sensation of doing so. Guitar Hero was a great idea, and it certainly was a massive success in the video game market, but for all of us that actually knew how to play guitar, heck even those who didn’t know how to play guitar there was always something lacking with Guitar Hero. It left something to be desired because even though playing Guitar Hero was fun, you always knew that hitting those buttons was not the real thing.
For many burgeoning guitarists the first thing you do when you learn guitar is learn how to play your favourite song. Once you have done that the next step is playing along with your favourite song. I grew up playing along with casette tapes and CD’s. Nowadays computers allow you to create your own music, play the lead track on any song, or replace the guitarist altogether. The downfall is it takes time to find and download the tracks and then actually figure out how to play everything. This is where the genius of Rocksmith comes into play.
Rocksmith not only lets you play real guitar with some of your favourite bands, it can also teach you how to play the songs on the guitar if you don’t know already. In addition, if you already know how to play guitar, Rocksmith can really help you to improve your guitar playing skills with many of the drills included in the arcade portion of the game.
The game starts you off on the easiest setting but is intuitive so as it senses that you are hitting all the notes it will insert more notes and chords to be played. Certainly, if you are a true beginner at guitar it will be a big learning curve but it can be done. The nice thing about Rocksmith is that if you already know how to play guitar and the particular song you are playing Rocksmith doesn’t penalize you for playing extra notes and chords that it doesn’t require you to play yet. This is nice as it allows you to not be held back by the game.
As you get further along in your career you unlock different guitars and pedals that you can use. While I had trouble figuring out what the different guitars that I unlocked did (when I selected them it made no difference to the sound in my opinion) the pedals were definitly cool. If you get tired of playing the songs and just want to mess around on your guitar with different sounds you can go to the Rocksmith amp section and pick different amps and pedal effects to add to your setup. This is actually pretty cool as to physically buy all the pedals to use with an amp would cost a lot of money. With Rocksmith you literally can unlock and play with dozens of pedals and effects.
If you already have a guitar all you need is to buy the Rocksmith game with the patch chord included with it to plug your electric guitar into your game console. If you don’t have a guitar you can buy Rocksmith that actually comes with a real Epiphone guitar. I haven’t played this guitar so I am not sure if it is any good or not.
I especially think Rocksmith would be most enjoyed by the guy or girl that plays guitar but doesn’t have a band or anything to play in. You can really improve your guitar skills and learn a lot of cool licks and riffs that may help you in your own songwriting. If you are looking to expand your guitar skills, learn guitar, or just have some fun with your guitar than I would highly recommend Rocksmith.
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