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Yossarian22
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2009
- Messages
- 1,799
As a preface, you should probably know that I've been playing guitar and bass on and off for about ten (10) years, give or take (such a period I have forgotten the exact time!) and my musical education is all self-taught, with the exception of a music theory class I took ages ago in high school. I got a C, we weren't allowed to play stringed instruments or any in this class, and I only remember the most extreme basic of concepts. For all intents and purposes, I am 100% self-taught. I am not extremely talented at guitar, especially soloing stuff but I know how to play and my background is primarily blues and rock based. That being said, let's snap to it.
Firstly, I had heard about the game a few months ago and then I saw the demo on Steam. Up front you should probably know that this is a game published and developed by Ubisoft. By default, they won't let you play with any soundcard or input device except their own, dubbed "Rocksmith Real Tone Cable". This is complete bullshit. Anyone who has done music production and fed analog instruments to real time VSTs knows that any sound card will do as long as you have a way to do kernel streaming to avoid high latency (ASIO4ALL on Windows). I obtained the game as would Jack Sparrow (arrgh!) after discovering there was a "no-proprietary bullshit cable" fix in the form of a reverse engineered executable bypassing a needless $30 expenditure since I have plenty of sound cards especially USB ones lying around. I used this one for the input. The game is buggy and won't output to the same device, so I simply hooked my headphones to my onboard sound and I made sure to disable every other device and close all applications that would use sound (since the game uses its own implementation of ASIO4ALL/kernel streaming). Also, I buffered my input by feeding guitar into a Boss ME-50 mutli-fx pedal and fed line out to the $0.20 USB sound card. Enough of the technical, lets get into the game.
You start off by creating a profile and the game assumes you're a complete and absolute beginner and you have to watch a little video and go through a little basic tutorial. Okay, cool! The main menu is laid out much like other rhythm games. You must play through the linear "touring" part of the game to unlock many features, including new songs, equipment for your virtual rig (which is both visual and aural aesthetic), mini-games, and certain learning features. By default, the training part of the game has the technique tutorials/playthroughs unlocked (sliding, bending, palm muting, tremolo, hammer ons/pull offs, harmonics, chording, power chords, double stops) however, the scale trainer isn't unlocked and I've played three (3) venues now. Disappointing for someone who already knows a little guitar. One feature I really like is they have chord books for every song (that you have unlocked) which is great, especially if it is a particularly chord-y song.
Anyway, they force you to play the venues/campaign to unlock fundamental features for practice and new songs. A venue or whatever is you rehearse (or choose not to) songs and then you play them. The game play is like any other rhythm game. You have a representation of your fretboard, each string has a color and notes or chords "fly out" at you, like you would expect in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The game has by default a scaling difficulty enabled so when you're just starting out or if you miss a series of notes, the score or song gets very simple and you remain unpunished (I don't think you can "lose" necessarily but I haven't tried). Likewise, the better you do, the higher note streak you get, the song gets gradually more complex. You can always opt to turn on the hardcore difficulty setting which fills in every note of the arrangement. I haven't tried it, but I imagine it would be hard to sight read pseudo-tab flying at you with songs you don't like and are not familiar with at all (lots of your typical new age emo crap songs filled in with sentimental favorites).
My problem with Rocksmith is it has a big identity crisis. It isn't sure if it wants to be a game or a teaching tool and it fails in both regards. Let me give you the following anecdote:
During the third and last venue/set I played, I was forced to play arbitrary/pre-selected n number of songs (and they add a random in the encore or you can get a double encore if you score very well). I actually liked one of them, it was simple but very bluesy. It was a song called I Can't Hear You by a band called The Dead Weather. Immediately upon hearing the sample that's played before you select the song for rehearsal or gameplay, I knew it was in g minor pentatonic (the game lets you play in between loading screens). Sure enough, I was correct. First position g minor pentatonic. It was actually kinda funny because you hear the background guitar track (what your guitar should be playing) and I was filling in the notes that weren't appearing/scaling up due to my accuracy. You don't get penalized for that, the game is very lenient.
Why is this a problem? Because the idea of a scale shouldn't scare anyone away from any instrument and this song is the perfect beginner level piece to introduce someone to scales or at least, minor pentatonic. Did they do that? Nope. Not at all. This scale is extremely common in many variations in rock, blues, and some metal music. It seems foolish to me that instead of introducing a relatively basic concept (hell, the scale consists of five notes, six with the octave) they just hunker down and tell you nothing and expect you to act like a monkey and just watch the ugly colored notes fly at you on the screen.
Besides ignoring building foundations of music like recognizing patterns mechanically or aurally, the game also forgoes ear training. I thought this game was a big success because they built a real time algorithm to decode notes from an analog instrument in real time. Difficult signal processing problem, right? The truth is, they're not revolutionary, they're just very lenient to the input. Example starts with the tuner. The tuner is usually way off when I compare to my dedicated electronic tuner or the tuner built into my multi-fx pedal board. I would play some songs and they'd throw notes at me and I would get false positives or vice versa, not detecting a note. I know what you are thinking, must be the unofficial sound card/input device, right? Nope. I searched before writing this and I didn't see any other reviews (on purpose) but I had noticed this was a common complaint. Oh yeah, the game makes you tune with their tuner before every time you play ANYTHING. Practice, rehearse, go on a set, you name it.
The other hit to ear training is that you're going to have a hard time hearing nuance, developing nuance, and learning nuance. The game has very lenient algorithm for note detection. One of the songs included and unlocked by default is Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love. I realize this isn't a very difficult song by any stretch of the imagination and Eric Clapton is highly overrated, but have you ever heard the song and realized the nuances? The first bits of the guitar riff are full out chords with a simple two note high pitch sort of resolution and then after two bars, Clapton does this tiny little trill from this point forward and just starts playing those chunky parts as power chords/fifths. Sounds trivial on paper but if you choose to use this as your only learning tool, you forgo the ability to really hear yourself and develop good technique and be able to have a good ear and recognize such things. After all, that's what music is all about, it's about the ears.
Despite my knockings, I do admit the game is very accommodating. You can swap at any time playing your guitar like a bass and get to play the bass parts of the songs, and when you select your guitar you select left/right handed, what kind of headstock (3-by-3 or 6 inline, my guess is to help someone know the orientation to turn the tuning pegs to tune the guitar), you have the option to turn on a second microphone so you can sing and play at the same time, the mini-games are actually somewhat challenging and fun, and the technique library has short videos before you actually perform (in case you really hate Flash and YouTube). The game doesn't seem to support seven string+ guitars, it does offer to tune you in several alternate tunings, however.
Is it a fun game? Well, let's look at the songs:
Default songs that come with the game
Available DLC packs
Okay, so between all the default songs, I would say you're not getting a rounded genre/style experience and none of them are particularly difficult. The DLC, it seems like the hardest song in terms of sheer difficulty is probably a tie between:
So, if you already play guitar and you're looking for some fun and challenge, it looks like that's a no-go. Why does difficulty matter? Because it is fun to push your limits. So, if you already know a bit of guitar I don't really see this "game" being fun or educational.
In my opinion, the game is a bit like training wheels (very small training wheels) for those who have absolutely zero experience. I can remember when I started playing guitar and I was teaching my hand to contort into what was at the time painful and weird shapes (double stops, Smoke On The Water). It was hard to start, but there is no easy road to success other than spending time actually practicing. In this case, actually playing guitar without a computer keeping arbitrary score or your attention.
So the price of the game, the special cable (unless you want to grab the work around) you could buy:
tl;dr
In summary, a very weak and fragile set of training wheels and not much of a game. If playing guitar bores you, either alone or along with your stereo system, you shouldn't get this game, you should probably talk to your doctor about ADHD. Also, avoid tablature unless you're really stuck. The training you give your ear will pay off that eventually you will be able to replicate a riff but have no idea what scale or mode it is in, you just know by your trained ear that, well, that's the sound that came out!
So relax, splurge into the hobby if the urge strikes you, crack open a beer, sit down, and have some fun by trying to write music or learn new concepts/your favorite tunes.
Firstly, I had heard about the game a few months ago and then I saw the demo on Steam. Up front you should probably know that this is a game published and developed by Ubisoft. By default, they won't let you play with any soundcard or input device except their own, dubbed "Rocksmith Real Tone Cable". This is complete bullshit. Anyone who has done music production and fed analog instruments to real time VSTs knows that any sound card will do as long as you have a way to do kernel streaming to avoid high latency (ASIO4ALL on Windows). I obtained the game as would Jack Sparrow (arrgh!) after discovering there was a "no-proprietary bullshit cable" fix in the form of a reverse engineered executable bypassing a needless $30 expenditure since I have plenty of sound cards especially USB ones lying around. I used this one for the input. The game is buggy and won't output to the same device, so I simply hooked my headphones to my onboard sound and I made sure to disable every other device and close all applications that would use sound (since the game uses its own implementation of ASIO4ALL/kernel streaming). Also, I buffered my input by feeding guitar into a Boss ME-50 mutli-fx pedal and fed line out to the $0.20 USB sound card. Enough of the technical, lets get into the game.
You start off by creating a profile and the game assumes you're a complete and absolute beginner and you have to watch a little video and go through a little basic tutorial. Okay, cool! The main menu is laid out much like other rhythm games. You must play through the linear "touring" part of the game to unlock many features, including new songs, equipment for your virtual rig (which is both visual and aural aesthetic), mini-games, and certain learning features. By default, the training part of the game has the technique tutorials/playthroughs unlocked (sliding, bending, palm muting, tremolo, hammer ons/pull offs, harmonics, chording, power chords, double stops) however, the scale trainer isn't unlocked and I've played three (3) venues now. Disappointing for someone who already knows a little guitar. One feature I really like is they have chord books for every song (that you have unlocked) which is great, especially if it is a particularly chord-y song.
Anyway, they force you to play the venues/campaign to unlock fundamental features for practice and new songs. A venue or whatever is you rehearse (or choose not to) songs and then you play them. The game play is like any other rhythm game. You have a representation of your fretboard, each string has a color and notes or chords "fly out" at you, like you would expect in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The game has by default a scaling difficulty enabled so when you're just starting out or if you miss a series of notes, the score or song gets very simple and you remain unpunished (I don't think you can "lose" necessarily but I haven't tried). Likewise, the better you do, the higher note streak you get, the song gets gradually more complex. You can always opt to turn on the hardcore difficulty setting which fills in every note of the arrangement. I haven't tried it, but I imagine it would be hard to sight read pseudo-tab flying at you with songs you don't like and are not familiar with at all (lots of your typical new age emo crap songs filled in with sentimental favorites).
My problem with Rocksmith is it has a big identity crisis. It isn't sure if it wants to be a game or a teaching tool and it fails in both regards. Let me give you the following anecdote:
During the third and last venue/set I played, I was forced to play arbitrary/pre-selected n number of songs (and they add a random in the encore or you can get a double encore if you score very well). I actually liked one of them, it was simple but very bluesy. It was a song called I Can't Hear You by a band called The Dead Weather. Immediately upon hearing the sample that's played before you select the song for rehearsal or gameplay, I knew it was in g minor pentatonic (the game lets you play in between loading screens). Sure enough, I was correct. First position g minor pentatonic. It was actually kinda funny because you hear the background guitar track (what your guitar should be playing) and I was filling in the notes that weren't appearing/scaling up due to my accuracy. You don't get penalized for that, the game is very lenient.
Why is this a problem? Because the idea of a scale shouldn't scare anyone away from any instrument and this song is the perfect beginner level piece to introduce someone to scales or at least, minor pentatonic. Did they do that? Nope. Not at all. This scale is extremely common in many variations in rock, blues, and some metal music. It seems foolish to me that instead of introducing a relatively basic concept (hell, the scale consists of five notes, six with the octave) they just hunker down and tell you nothing and expect you to act like a monkey and just watch the ugly colored notes fly at you on the screen.
Besides ignoring building foundations of music like recognizing patterns mechanically or aurally, the game also forgoes ear training. I thought this game was a big success because they built a real time algorithm to decode notes from an analog instrument in real time. Difficult signal processing problem, right? The truth is, they're not revolutionary, they're just very lenient to the input. Example starts with the tuner. The tuner is usually way off when I compare to my dedicated electronic tuner or the tuner built into my multi-fx pedal board. I would play some songs and they'd throw notes at me and I would get false positives or vice versa, not detecting a note. I know what you are thinking, must be the unofficial sound card/input device, right? Nope. I searched before writing this and I didn't see any other reviews (on purpose) but I had noticed this was a common complaint. Oh yeah, the game makes you tune with their tuner before every time you play ANYTHING. Practice, rehearse, go on a set, you name it.
The other hit to ear training is that you're going to have a hard time hearing nuance, developing nuance, and learning nuance. The game has very lenient algorithm for note detection. One of the songs included and unlocked by default is Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love. I realize this isn't a very difficult song by any stretch of the imagination and Eric Clapton is highly overrated, but have you ever heard the song and realized the nuances? The first bits of the guitar riff are full out chords with a simple two note high pitch sort of resolution and then after two bars, Clapton does this tiny little trill from this point forward and just starts playing those chunky parts as power chords/fifths. Sounds trivial on paper but if you choose to use this as your only learning tool, you forgo the ability to really hear yourself and develop good technique and be able to have a good ear and recognize such things. After all, that's what music is all about, it's about the ears.
Despite my knockings, I do admit the game is very accommodating. You can swap at any time playing your guitar like a bass and get to play the bass parts of the songs, and when you select your guitar you select left/right handed, what kind of headstock (3-by-3 or 6 inline, my guess is to help someone know the orientation to turn the tuning pegs to tune the guitar), you have the option to turn on a second microphone so you can sing and play at the same time, the mini-games are actually somewhat challenging and fun, and the technique library has short videos before you actually perform (in case you really hate Flash and YouTube). The game doesn't seem to support seven string+ guitars, it does offer to tune you in several alternate tunings, however.
Is it a fun game? Well, let's look at the songs:
Default songs that come with the game
Available DLC packs
Okay, so between all the default songs, I would say you're not getting a rounded genre/style experience and none of them are particularly difficult. The DLC, it seems like the hardest song in terms of sheer difficulty is probably a tie between:
- Megadeth - Hangar 18
- Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover
- The Knack - My Sharona
- Rush - YYZ
So, if you already play guitar and you're looking for some fun and challenge, it looks like that's a no-go. Why does difficulty matter? Because it is fun to push your limits. So, if you already know a bit of guitar I don't really see this "game" being fun or educational.
In my opinion, the game is a bit like training wheels (very small training wheels) for those who have absolutely zero experience. I can remember when I started playing guitar and I was teaching my hand to contort into what was at the time painful and weird shapes (double stops, Smoke On The Water). It was hard to start, but there is no easy road to success other than spending time actually practicing. In this case, actually playing guitar without a computer keeping arbitrary score or your attention.
So the price of the game, the special cable (unless you want to grab the work around) you could buy:
- A dozen lesson and tablature books
- A pedal or "stompbox"
- 3x pack of strings, body and fretboard cleaner and a spare instrument cable or two
- One of those micro-amps that plug directly into the guitar's output jack
- Inexpensive dedicated USB audio interface with included VST/amp modeling software
- A guitar lesson (or possibly two)
- Decent consumer headphones for playing quietly if electric
- A luthier/guitar technician to adjust and setup your guitar
- A dedicated tuner & metronome
- Ticket to see a local show
- For the love of God, ANYTHING ELSE!
tl;dr
In summary, a very weak and fragile set of training wheels and not much of a game. If playing guitar bores you, either alone or along with your stereo system, you shouldn't get this game, you should probably talk to your doctor about ADHD. Also, avoid tablature unless you're really stuck. The training you give your ear will pay off that eventually you will be able to replicate a riff but have no idea what scale or mode it is in, you just know by your trained ear that, well, that's the sound that came out!
So relax, splurge into the hobby if the urge strikes you, crack open a beer, sit down, and have some fun by trying to write music or learn new concepts/your favorite tunes.
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