Rocksmith

Moosedrool

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I’m putting this review in the music section as this truly isn’t any normal PC or Console Game.

rocksmith_guitar_and_bass_pc-50p.jpg

Well if you haven’t heard of it and still laugh at music rhythm games as being completely inaccurate and a total waste of time you’ll have to look a bit deeper into this piece created by Ubisoft. It is practically the result of the Rock Band/Guitar Hero franchise but has a very special in your face twist. It actually teaches you the real thing with any real guitar that has pickups. Acoustic, Bass or Electric.

I Purchased the PC game from Look and listen Clear water mall, it was on pre order as they ran out of stock on all platforms during December. No one actually stocked many copies according to some guys at BT as the full package obviously had a guitar included and the price threw people off a bit. I bought the standalone with the USB cable because I own and already play a bit of guitar.

Installed and activated via steam (Unfortunately) and fired it up. Plugged in the true tone cable and we're off. Yay! Skipped some intro stuff and noticed the game really starts at the beginning. Like guitar lessons should. Video teaches you how to hold the guitar, how to hold the pick, how to press down on the fret board and so forth. You start playing the event and the game starts off by letting tune the guitar. I was amazed at how accurately the software reads what snare you’re picking from e to e. It’s a bit of a raw tuner but the game has some precision tuning tool I still need to check out.

Your first song starts.
You look at a highway similar to that of guitar hero except you see the strings on top of each other colored low E (Red) B (Yellow) G (Blue) D (Orange) A (Green) High E (Purple). And much more lanes obviously. The camera automatically moves around the lanes to the more prominent regions showing you the dot numbers similar to on your guitars fret board i.e. 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15 etc…

A little 3d block thingy colored red starts to appear in the distance on the 3rd lane, elevated up to the snare height. The game pauses just as it’s about to hit the snare. The tutor explains what to do… durr, after that little conversation it continues and you miss it anyways. Lol and the nest one comes, you start playing. The game uses modular control to adjust the sound of your guitar thus there is no recorded samples running when you hit the snare, it plays the backtrack but you are actually playing your part of the track. It starts of slowly only letting you hit certain key notes but don’t be fooled it immediately tries to let you use the whole fret board but only on some strings. So those guitar hero freaks that thought it was an accomplishment to hit orange fret think again!

Rocksmith-InBloom-wide-620x349.jpg

The game has no difficult settings but rather monitors how well you are playing and starts throwing more and more eventually giving you double stops, palm mutes, muted notes, hammer ons, and full chords. It won’t progress in difficulty unless you progress in skill. You go on the event, practice and play then it repeats with a different set.

Weird but fun mini games are also included where you have to shoot ducks by pressing the correct single notes or learn chords while killing zombies. I don’t play games since 6 years ago but found these insanely fun.

Overall:
Pros:
1. Teaches you to play guitar and understand music and keys in general.
2. Is addictive that makes you pretty good quite quickly.
3. It didn’t give me any tuning issues or audio problems.
4. Good song selection especially for beginners and some pro ones.

Cons:
1. There’s no gap in the easy to hard progression. Literally in a single song starts throwing more and more at you if it sees you’re getting the hang of it. It doesn’t feel as great as getting 100% on guitar hero on the lower levels then cause 100% means you can play the actual song.
2. It flows extremely quickly through the events but I have yet to finish it.
3. They could have made the song selection much better for guitarists.

This is a must buy for anyone that has the lack of patience in learning tabs and the hard chords once off. It doesn’t teach you how to be original in methods but that is what being original is for, it’s really a game set out to teach and make it cool.

More info:

http://rocksmith.ubi.com/rocksmith/en-us/home/index.aspx
 
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I can vouch for this an awesome game which makes learning FUN!!!

Plus it really teaches you to play guitar!!!
 
Let me add some pros/cons from my experience with Rocksmith:

Pros:
* Riff Repeater (with the updates) makes practicing sections of a song (along with a backtrack) convenient.
* Easier arrangements keep your confidence/motivation up; especially for new/unknown songs.
* [As soon as I get custom track imports working...]

Cons:
* Menu design is a bit crappy. Navigation feels unintuitive at times.
* Personally, the whole interface becomes pretty much a visual cue as I find sight reading quite hard on complex tracks.
* BIGGEST GRIPE: Why can't I just listen to the song while having a look at the sheet music (or TAB)? This goes for the skill challenges as well.
 
How much does the stand alone option go for? I already own a guitar
 
How much does the stand alone option go for? I already own a guitar
TAKEALOT has them for R625 (PC) and R800 (XBox/PS3) this is the game and the cable.

If possible, going for the PC version is probably safer as you can tweak more stuff if you happen to have sound issues. But then again, I've read about so many people having compatibility issues on PC... Luckily I'm not one. :D
 
TAKEALOT has them for R625 (PC) and R800 (XBox/PS3) this is the game and the cable.

If possible, going for the PC version is probably safer as you can tweak more stuff if you happen to have sound issues. But then again, I've read about so many people having compatibility issues on PC... Luckily I'm not one. :D


Shoe ! I think I'll wait for a mayor price drop or secondhand one but differently on my wishlist:)
 
PC can cause one big problem and I’ve seen this with my own audio card.

Latency. Some audio card interfaces aren’t designed for low buffer values due to the higher CPU usage required. Basically they’re not built for live recording and on spot playback. You might get some serious delay issues due to that.

I use a complete audio interface where the buffer size can be manually adjusted to produce low latency playback.
 
I use a complete audio interface where the buffer size can be manually adjusted to produce low latency playback.
As a matter of curiosity, what are you using? I'm using a XFi Xtreme Audio and the latency isn't bad.
 
no no, the usb interface actually makes the latency almost perfect. The problem was when running it with the stupid on-board Soundmax audio card.
 
no no, the usb interface actually makes the latency almost perfect. The problem was when running it with the stupid on-board Soundmax audio card.
I think we're missing each other here. I was asking how you connected the Xone4D to the PC. I'm not big on sound tech but I'm curious.

Guitar ---(1/4"/USB)--- PC ---(?)--- Xone4D ---(RCA or something)--- Speakers/Amp

Or am I completely misunderstanding what's going on here? :)
 
Ah

For the game the setup is:

Guitar -> USB -> PC -> USB -> Xone 4D -> (amp)Speakers. The device is practically a sound card.

For any other app i use for modulating the guitar tone its:

Guitar -> Xone 4D (Line in) -> USB -> PC -> Same USB -> Xone 4D -> (amp)Speakers
 
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