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| Rocksmith 2014 |
Immediately, all I can think about is why the game is named the way it is. It's not even the year 2014 yet. Why isn't it called Rocksmith 2013? Also, why even have a year at all? Why not just call it Rocksmith 2, like Guitar Hero 2 or Rock Band 2? It's like the game thinks it's a Madden game or a car model. Though, I guess the full title of the game is Rocksmith: 2014 Edition. Yeah, whatever, still lame.
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| What???? |
Also, the game doesn't seem to know that "Blitzkrieg Bop" came out in the 70s. Not the 80s! I honestly don't know how they could have possibly messed this up! In fact, it's rather insulting to every punk fan in existence that they would make this mistake.
Well, actually, if you look the song up by year in the game it says that it's from 1976. So why does this screen have "Blitzkrieg Bop" for a song to play from the 80s? Maybe it's an Easter Egg. Maybe they were trying to figure out who was truly paying attention.
Well, this is all real nitpicking. Actually, this game is pretty darn good. It does what a good sequel does. It improves on the bad things from the first and keeps the good things from the first. The game introduces a whole new host of songs. A lot of them are pretty good songs too. Like the first game, it has a good variety of genres and has songs from popular hits to unknown indie tunes. Some of the most notable songs that this game has includes, "Say it Ain't So" by Weezer, "Bat Country" by Avenged Sevenfold, "Blitzkrieg Bop" by The Ramones, "Cold Company" by Minus the Bear, "Everlong" by The Foo Fighters, "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse, "Machinehead" by Bush, and "My Generation" by The Who. The list goes on and on. If I'm not mistaking, this game has more songs on it than the first one. You can check out the whole list here.
One of my complaints about the first game was the sluggishness and glitchiness of menus. This seems to be completely fixed in this version. Occasionally, the game will be a little slow loading a song but, in the original, the game had a whole loading screen for this sequence. So, this is also an improvement.
Another complaint I had about the original is how hilarious the crowd looked during performances. Basically, in the original, the whole crowd looked like a bunch of cardboard cutouts and the same 4 or 5 people were reduplicated to make up the whole audience. In this game, the crowd isn't really there so I guess now there's nothing to laugh at. As far as I can tell so far, there is no concept of doing concerts or performing set lists. The exception to this is nonstop mode where you select music in the library and the game randomly picks songs that you play. You do this for a predetermined time.
On top of the previous game's features, the game added a Session Mode. Session Mode is basically a mode that teaches you improvisation. Although I don't think that anything or anyone can truly teach improv, this game gives it a good attempt. It's hard for me to judge how well the game teaches improv since I already know how to improv. However, even if you already know how to improv, this mode is a lot of fun to play. You choose background instruments, the starting key signature, how often the key signature changes, the tempo, and get jammin'! What's pretty nice about playing this mode is that even if you have no familiarity with a certain key signature, the game shows you what notes fall into that particular key so it's very convenient for getting familiar with new key signatures. For instance, I don't normally play heavy metal but I turned on one of the heavy metal presets and got going. Within seconds I was having a blast wailing heavy metal solos on my telecaster; something that I had never tried before.
The only complaint I have about Session Mode is that the fastest tempo you can set is 150 Beats Per Minute. I guess there's no room for punk rock improv in this game...
The game has further improved sound modification as they have more virtual amplifiers, pedals, and soundboards. Also, you can now put 2 pedals pre and post amp opposed to one pre and post amp in the first game. The guitar and bass guitar amplifier emulation is also further improved from the first game. It actually sounds notably good in this game, giving my Line 6 Spider IV a run for its money at times.
The game's riff repeater is drastically improved from the previous game. You can go in and out of riff repeater anytime while practicing a song. Also, you can manually set tempo and difficulty to whatever you want for any section that you want. On top of this, the difficulty that you set certain sections at in riff repeater is also where it gets set when you play the whole song. This is really great because you don't have to prove to the game that you can play something by playing it flawlessly the first time. You can move up to the next level when you feel like you're ready. I like this a lot because playing the first game was rather tedious when playing on these lower difficulties and working up until the game would give all of the notes in the phrase. For those of you that liked working at it until the game thought you were ready, you have the option of going that route as well.
One thing that really breaks my balls is the price for importing the tracks from the first game to play in the second one. They want $9.99 for it. What the fuck? That is robbery! No thanks. I'll just get off my lazy ass and put in the first game, or better yet, learn how to play the song without being reliant on the game (if I cared that much).
Cover Image: http://images.pushsquare.com/games/ps3/rocksmith_2014_edition/cover_large.jpg
Play a song from the 80s Image is from my phone
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