Rocksmith

Rocksmith has finally made it to UK shores after having been delayed for just shy of a whole calendar year. While I only started getting excited about it towards the start of this year, the wait has been no less agonising. For the benefit of those who don’t know, Rocksmith is a music game akin to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Where it differs, however, is that while the latter two use plastic guitar-shaped controllers, Rocksmith uses an actual guitar – the premise being that the game will teach you how to play.

And teaching you how to play is definitely something that this game does. While it’ll probably be a little while yet before the very sound of my name could make Yngwie Malmsteen shake in his boots, I’ve already noticed an improvement in my guitar playing skills. Where once stood a man who could barely play a solitary note to save his life, now stands a man who’s definitely a wee bit better.

This may be down to the fact that Rocksmith offers a very different approach to being taught how to play the guitar – where a human being might teach you a few notes and get you to play songs based around them, Rocksmith turns that on its head. Instead you simply strap on a guitar and the game lets you loose on a bunch of songs; an adaptive difficulty tracks how well you’re doing and appropriately adjusts the frequency and variety of the next few notes.

There are a variety of ‘Guitarcade’ mini-games and technique challenges as well that are extremely fun in their own right, and designed to help you nail specific guitar-playing techniques. Every so often when you encounter a new technique in a song, you’ll unlock the technique challenge and the relative mini-game afterwards. Want to work on bending the strings? Do the Bends technique challenge to see how it’s done, then play the Big Swing Baseball mini-game until you can do it blindfolded. It’s very well presented and stops you from feeling overwhelmed when something new is introduced.

It’s all great for teaching you how to play the guitar – unfortunately, I can’t see how any of this could really be worth the time and money of someone who already knows how to play. While Rocksmith does include an Amp emulator so you can play without the need for an actual amp, surely someone who plays guitar would already have an amp? I’d also be willing to bet that very few people who know how to play guitar already will want to go drudging through the adaptive difficulty to “relearn” everything, just so they can play the game at their skill level.

To be honest, there are even times when I’ve not been a fan of the adaptive difficulty. On too many occasions have I found myself scrabbling to try and hit a note on a string I’d never used before, only to end up taking so long that by the time I find the note I’ve already missed it. It’s times like those where I wish Rocksmith had traditional difficulty settings more like its button-based brethren; an adaptive difficulty is all well and good for constantly encouraging you to do better, but sometimes I just want to learn at my own pace.

All that aside, Rocksmith ultimately succeeds at what it wants to do provided you’re willing to put in the time, which is teach you how to play guitar. Ubisoft have successfully taken the next (and let’s face it, only) logical step up from plastic instruments and given music game fans a reason to fall in love with the genre all over again. Who says video games can’t teach you anything?