Rocksmith

So, I'm not sure how long ago this game came out but it didn't come down to a reasonable price until a couple of months ago so I'm finally gonna give it a try.  I will admit that this game pleasantly surprised me.

At first, you think it's gonna be the biggest piece of shit in history.  The main menu controls lag like no other.  It's a pain in the ass to work with.  It takes an effort just to skip the intro movie.  There's also serious programming issues in menus as well.  For instance, if you get done playing a song and select the retry option, it takes you to a loading screen and....and....and...then you have to turn your Playstation off because it doesn't do anything after that.

So, don't choose retry, it's a beginners trap!  lol

What also frustrates me is that for gigs, you can't choose your own song order.  C'mon man!  That's just laziness.  How hard could that have possibly been to program!?  Sometimes the song order is in an order where you have to constantly be tuning between drop D and standard tuning.  It's annoying.  Especially considering that you could have put them in a more convenient order if the programmers would let you.  Sheesh.

Well, beyond all of that (and the fact that the audience during gigs looks like cardboard cutouts), the game isn't so bad.  I would go as far as to say that it's a good game for learning the notes for all the songs.  Rhythms:  not so much.  It doesn't do the best job with techniques either.  Some of them work and some of them don't.  It can detect palm muting pretty well.  However, if you're slapping on a Gibson or Epiphone bass, forget it.  Too much snap and not enough texture for the game to know what the fuck you're doing.

Sometimes the game will tell you to play a song in a way that's incredibly inconvenient.  However, if you already know your way around a fretboard, you can figure out easier ways to play songs and the game won't know the difference between playing a middle E on the D string or the A string.  One song in particular this kind of thinking will greatly help you out if you're playing bass.  The name of the song is called "A More Perfect Union" by Titus Andronicus.

Probably one of the best aspects to the game is the difficulty system.  It's drastically different than something like Rockband or Guitar Hero.  Instead of choosing a difficulty and trying to master that difficulty before moving to the next, the game gives you easy phrases to start and automatically raises the difficulty as you perform that particular phrase of the song well.  I think this is not only innovative but way more effective than just having straight up difficulty levels.  Especially if you are someone first learning guitar, this is a great way to be guided through learning the song.  There's that difficulty system along with other lessons built into the game that would be very useful to someone who wants to learn about playing guitar or bass.

 Another great aspect to this game is the soundtrack.  It's phenomenal!  Not only are there classics like "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Sweet Home Alabama," there's also some more obscure songs that you wouldn't expect to come with the stock version of the game.  Songs such as "Islands" by the XX, "High and Dry" by Radiohead, or "Unnatural Selection" by Muse.  Actually, for that matter, this game also has "Plug in Baby" by Muse.  How about that?

The whole list of songs is here.  Check it.  It's good.

There's also a lot of room for customization.  I hate to sound like a commercial but you can choose between various pedals, amplifiers, cabinets, whatever to customize your sound in game.  I think that's pretty awesome!

Overall, I think this game is good and I'm having a lot of fun playing it.  While writing this review, I actually realized that there's a new Rocksmith game coming out in the fall so I pre-ordered it.  This game is more fun and way more worth your while than Guitar Hero and Rockband.  That you can be sure of.

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