Next-Gen Reviews

What does Rocksmith 2014 offer?

 

Session mode; A jamming session for when you just want to get creative.  You can put a band together consisting of your favourite sounds and instruments, select the temp and scale and shred away.  Session mode also helps you to learn scales massively because that’s what the mode is all about, shapes and finger placement, sounds and experimentation. Session mode is probably the best part of Rocksmith every guitarist no matter what their skill level because as well as letting you get creative and make up our own riffs, it also allows new guitarists to get past the uncomfortable stretching and pain caused by pressing strings for long periods of time . However, the biggest let down is that session mode doesn’t record your jam and allow you to play it back or even allow you to record over it with another guitar sound or style.  Also, remember this… creativity and unique style is what makes a guitarist great and session mode is where that magic can happen but, Rocksmith doesn’t allow you to get creative in any other mode. Sadly, unique style from being creative on the neck can’t be taught, it comes naturally so make sure you spend a lot of time in this mode if you want to find the real guitarist in you.

 

Lessons mode; A video bible of great techniques and all the knowledge you need in order to become the guitarist you aspire to be. From the very basic – plugging in the guitar to the very advanced – fret-tapping, Rocksmith has you covered. Lesson mode will issue you with a task and then judge your progress and advise you on what to do in order to progress.  Even the expert players should check out this area of the game because you’d be surprised on what you can learn, even if it’s improving something that you already thought you were good at.

 

Guitarcade;  A selection of fun mini-games that teach you important techniques including slides and string location as well as the very important chords.  As you progress through each level so does the difficulty. This forces you to become a better player and is an easy way of seeing your progress due to each attempt being scored. Use Guitarcade to learn important skills the fun way.

 

Learn a song; There are a decent amount of songs on the disk but the set-list isn’t the best, with only a handful of songs being decent in my opinion.  When learning a new song Rocksmith will slowly increase the difficulty depending on how well it thinks you’re doing and honestly, Rocksmith does a great job of judging your skill level as you progress a song, and eventually you can feel, hear and see the improvements. At the end of a song you are judged on how well you did and you will be told where you went wrong. Rocksmith will then take you through each area that you need help with, whether it be chords, single-notes or rhythm and will get you to play that part in the riff repeater at a slower speed and lower difficulty. Not all of the songs are made up of the standard tuning and Rocksmith easily takes you through this process of change. It’s a very simple – play the string specified and adjust accordingly. This is great for a quick song play but I was disappointed that Rocksmith failed to teach you the simple way to tune a guitar without any use of apparatus…. Fifth-Fret method.  In my opinion this is part of the very basic knowledge that you should know as a guitarist yet Rocksmith failed to add it into the game. Overall, yes, the songs are a nice distraction but if you want Rocksmith to actually help you become a guitarist or at least improve your knowledge, ignore the songs and stick to the Guitarcade, session mode and lessons mode until you’re bored and need a quick distraction. Having said that, Rocksmith does allow you to get straight into playing songs but at the beginning (until it knows you can handle more) you don’t really take part much and it’s more frustrating than a feeling of progress.

 

There is a massive list of all the scales and chords which for some could be overwhelming and off-putting. My advice would be to avoid looking at these and let Rocksmith hold your hand and show you how to progress. Once Rocksmith has taken you through the game and you feel that you’re ready to learn something new, head back and check out open chords and easy scales such as the pentatonic minor.

 

There are a few things that annoyed me (mainly at the beginning) such as the coloured strings. I appreciate that the strings need to be different from each other so that you know where your fingers should be but I found myself looking at the strings as just a colour and chords as, coloured shapes as opposed to just chords and strings.  Yes this sounds weird and maybe I’m explaining it horribly but I don’t know how to explain it any better… It was strange!  The other annoyance, the worst of all, Rocksmith crashes A LOT!!! On average Rocksmith crashed every 40 minutes and it would appear that I am not the only unfortunate Rocksmith player. Fortunately, Ubisoft are a great company that support their games brilliantly so expect this to be resolved very soon.

 

I’m not sure if Rocksmith is better for someone new to the instrument or those with experience but for me personally, I felt as though Rocksmith (at the beginning) was forcing me to make silly mistakes by doing things differently to how I feel it should be done or already know, therefore making me feel frustrated and at times confused.  This doesn’t mean that it’s bad, in fact, far from it, it actually became much more enjoyable the more I stuck with it and I can assure you (as a guitar player) that Rocksmith will definitely help you no matter what your experience. And for those of you that picked up a guitar and never stuck to it, Rocksmith will make you fall in love with the instrument again and can very quickly show you what you could be capable off should you stick at it this time round.  Learning guitar is very boring and Rocksmith knows how to divert your attention in order to keep you at it!

 

Rocksmith won’t turn a non-guitar player into Van Halen but it will help you learn guitar chords, neck navigation, technique and finger/picking speed.   If you want to play guitar or you already do, Rocksmith offers so much for the price of a couple of guitar lessons.  You will learn something and you will improve, fact!

 

9/10