Rocksmith

[spaceyjase]

I can only echo the great comments already posted; it's really very, very good. It captures how a guitarist would learn a song and turns it into an excellent, seamless experience that's great to play. I spent about four hours on one song yesterday, that really dirty number 'R U Mine?', playing with the different options and riff repeater. It's good, real good. I said that already but the way it lets you smash it once a section is completed is brilliant.

Session mode is magic too, all those little digital session musicians on a bit of plastic? It just made me smile the whole time. If there's one negative thing I'd say about it is there doesn't seem to be much about picking patterns. But maybe I just missed it, I can already play a guitar so it's not like I went looking for it. If you're new to guitar, picking and strumming are essential. Not a big fan of the Guitarcade either; I think it's too divorced from the skills it's trying to get across but you're not forced into playing it so it's cool

Quick question: can't seem to find the import thing as I dismissed it when it asked. Can't see for looking; how do I get it back/unlock the original's tracks?

(edit: missed Dandy's comment - it doesn't work for EU PSN yet; it should be in 'Packs')

[fragglerock]

I may just not have found it yet, but as a total noob I don't find it gives any guidence of which finger should be used. The only picking thing I have seen mentioned is that it says you should use alternate picking but not really in detail of what that is or what else you may use.

[harbey]

I've been playing this all day! Fingers now need a rest and I've also developed shoulder ache from playing standing up with a Les Paul for hours. It's great! Fantastic fun, makes learning new stuff a pleasure and the new tracks combined with the imported oldies and my DLC mean I've got a great library .

But... there are still a few issues which I really hope they manage to patch. Most annoying of the lot, and hopefully I've just not found the option to address this, is the arcade stuff. I was really looking forward to seeing how they'd developed the mini games as they had great potential in the last game but just seemed a little lacking in depth. Now I think they've addressed this as there seem to be a lot more levels to the games which I assume mean greater complexity. Thing is, the game wont let you jump in at a level you're ready for (or I can't find how). For example, the scales game could be really useful for me if I could pick the scale I want to work on. But instead, I have to start at minor pentatonic, 1st position, and beat wave after wave of the game in order to progress to, I assume, position 2. Such a shame! And it's exactly the same with the chord game - I spent over 40min's beating the first section of the game and in that time all I played was E5, A5, F5, G5, C5 and D5. There are loads of other chords I can see on later levels which would be useful to where I am with my playing, but I can't bloody get to them without first putting in what I would estimate to be about 8 hours of grinding through stuff I'm already confident with.

Other minor annoyances: Session mode seems to stop working after a while, requiring a reset to get it back; the shop doesn't let you sort by release date so you have to read through the whole lot to find the new songs (meaning I will no doubt miss stuff I would like); Riff Repeater has a much better interface, but seems a little unreliable when changing the settings (could be me); and finally, I've had a couple of instances where the game has frozen, loosing all my progress in the process.

Sorry to moan, it really is a great game and I'll be playing it all year until the 2015 version (hopefully) comes out, just hope they can address a few points along the way.

[feltmonkey]

All existing DLC works with the game, it's automatically listed with the songs from the disc (tagged in the corner as DLC). You don't need to download them again, as long as they are on the system

The songs from the first game can be downloaded via buying a license, but don't seem to be on EU PSN yet. They seem to be on Xbox and Steam though (although some people are having trouble with them on Steam).

thanks for the answer. i was wondering if there was a way of getting the songs from the first game without buying a copy of the disk, then the license, as i didn't play the first game. i'd like to play Gobbledegook, Where is my mind, and House of the rising sun (although i can sort of play that already) but i can't find a copy of the disk for a reasonable price. hopefully they might release some of them as DLC for the second game, but i doubt they will.

anyway, i bought the game regardless! unfortunately i've recently moved house and can't find any of my plectrums! disaster. i have my tuner, my capo, and even my e-bow, but no bloody plectrums. it's a bit infuriating.

[Dandy_Sephy]

This is a great way to review this. Jaz Rignall plays Rocksmith for 3 weeks as a complete beginner with absolutely zero experience with a guitar. Crucially, it's also co-reviewed by someone who has never played guitar but has lots of experience with other instruments. So you get a great comparison between people of different skillsets and not a review by someone who either can already play or has had enough half hearted attempts at guitar before picking up Rocksmith.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/does-rocksmith-2014-really-work-review

[spaceyjase]

i was wondering if there was a way of getting the songs from the first game without buying a copy of the disk, then the license, as i didn't play the first game. i'd like to play Gobbledegook, Where is my mind, and House of the rising sun (although i can sort of play that already) but i can't find a copy of the disk for a reasonable price. hopefully they might release some of them as DLC for the second game, but i doubt they will.

Maybe a forumite loan disc is order of the day. I don't mind posting the first game out if needed, once the pack import works on PSN that is

[feltmonkey]

that would be great! thanks spaceyjase!

by the way, how do you calibrate this to get rid of input lag? i seem to be getting some at the moment.

edit - sadly this is going to be unplayable for me until i can get a little amp and some speakers to connect to it. that's pretty disappointing.

i was getting something like half a second lag, so hitting the notes to play it as a game was pretty difficult, but more to the point it made it unplayable as a musician. you rely on what you hear, and i found i couldn't play Come As You are, for example. the lag was such that i would be playing one note and hearing the last one i played, which threw me every time and has actually given me a sharp pain in the left side of my head!

i have an old surround sound somewhere, i might try to hook that up later. would that do the job?

[StephenM]

that would be great! thanks spaceyjase!

by the way, how do you calibrate this to get rid of input lag? i seem to be getting some at the moment.

edit - sadly this is going to be unplayable for me until i can get a little amp and some speakers to connect to it. that's pretty disappointing.

i was getting something like half a second lag, so hitting the notes to play it as a game was pretty difficult, but more to the point it made it unplayable as a musician. you rely on what you hear, and i found i couldn't play Come As You are, for example. the lag was such that i would be playing one note and hearing the last one i played, which threw me every time and has actually given me a sharp pain in the left side of my head!

i have an old surround sound somewhere, i might try to hook that up later. would that do the job?

I can only speak for the first one but that needed me to do HDMI pictures to the TV and composite sound to my surround sound amp. Or just composite for both would work I guess - HDMI audio and picture made it rubbish.

Anyway. I need this. I haven't got this. So I'm gonna go back and put some work in on the first game, but knowing the neat interface/learning improvements in the new one will make it all the more frustrating!

[Dandy_Sephy]

feltmonkey, there is a thing in options for adjusting the "lag", although offhand I don't remember what it's called.

[feltmonkey]

yeah the problem seems to be if i'm outputting the sound through the TV at all. i'll dig out the surround sound and see if that works, otherwise i'll buy a little amp for £20ish and connect my stereo speakers to it. hopefully i'll have some success with one method or the other. they're what that leaflet that comes with the game recommends.

it's annoying that i bought the game yesterday evening to cheer myself up after a shite week at work and haven't been able to play it yet!

i didn't find any plectrums by the way - i made one by cutting up my wife's old credit card.

[Lochenvar]

Maybe a forumite loan disc is order of the day. I don't mind posting the first game out if needed, once the pack import works on PSN that is

That's a really good idea. I'll contribute my 360 disc for a loan cycle if that would help anyone out?

[feltmonkey]

hooking up the surround sound worked wonders!

as a result, i've been playing this for the past three hours, and can report that it is fantastic. it took me a little while to understand the weird way the game communicates which notes and frets to play. now i've got it, it does largely make sense, although the colour-coding is kind of a memory exercise. if i'm playing predominantly the E A and D strings, then the G or B is suddenly thrown in, i always miss it due to not remembering what colour represents which string. i'll get it eventually, i'm sure.

i'm completely self-taught on the guitar, so the game has spent some time pointing out all the stuff i do that is slightly unorthodox. apparently i hold my plectrum (or bit of credit-card in my case) differently to how you're supposed to. well, i can't change now. anyway, as it happens the proper way wouldn't work for me, as i have a gimpy little finger on my right hand, a result of a very bad break a few years ago.

jumping in to play some songs, i realised that i had picked the wrong difficulty setting, and was stuck with some faintly insulting single-note versions of songs. fortunately, these did serve to ease me into the Rocksmith version of the Rock Band notation guide. i found some weird inconsistencies relating to how well the game picked up what i was playing though. sometimes the game refused to pick up chords i was playing. this was most noticeable in the chords 101 lesson, where during the section where you strum the open strings the game insisted i had some strings held down. i'm not sure what was happening to make it think this. i then had some trouble with Everlong, a song i could already play. i was playing the whole thing all the way through, both their truncated version and the more full version i imagine will appear when i unlock the higher difficulties, but it didn't like it, and wouldn't give me more than 10% mastery.

the session thing looked interesting, and a good way of learning some different types of scales. i'm pretty ignorant on this side of things, shamefully. i've always made it up as i went along. i used to be in a band, but tended to rely on guesswork. it'll be nice to finally learn some proper scales. i still don't know what pentatonic actually means, though.

it's all great fun, despite the problems i had. if nothing else, it's prompted me to pick up my guitar again, something i don't think i had done more than half a dozen times since my son was born six months ago. he seemed really impressed, by the way, but then he's impressed by anything - stuffed toys, fart noises, colours, cricket...

[spaceyjase]

I've been playing on and off most of the day, lazy old me. Thought my eye sight was going, but it's just master mode fading the notes out; threw me for a sec, like some kind of reverse Marty McFly effect

This is a great way to review this. Jaz Rignall plays Rocksmith for 3 weeks as a complete beginner with absolutely zero experience with a guitar. Crucially, it's also co-reviewed by someone who has never played guitar but has lots of experience with other instruments. So you get a great comparison between people of different skillsets and not a review by someone who either can already play or has had enough half hearted attempts at guitar before picking up Rocksmith.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/does-rocksmith-2014-really-work-review

That's an awesome read.

Why doesn't Rocksmith default to showing guitar tab as default, i.e. reversed, with the 'E' at the bottom? While it isn't formal notation, 'tab' is fairly standard in books and downloads so would be more useful if taught in this way.

My comment about picking is rubbish - there's tons of stuff in lessons that's really well put together. Good stuff!

[Dandy_Sephy]

Well as useful as tab is it's hardly the proper way to read music either, although I do agree with you.

As for the way the strings are shown, presumably they went for that option because it actually mirrors the way the guitar is facing the screen. Theres no right answer as such as it's not teaching you tab, but being asked if you would like to flip it during the initial setup and introduction would be nice.

[Ketchup]

In Riff Repeater is there a way to stop the highway until you hit the note like in RS1? In fact the riff repeater options are a bit confusing at first and are strangely missing from the in game manual. Getting slowly better at some songs and actually finding the game more powerful at teaching than before. Still kind of miss the mission mode though as i felt it provided a bit of structure to the overall experience.

[feltmonkey]

argh! i really want to play this, but the baby is asleep in the living room so i can't. i'm having no luck with this game.

[Mentazm]

Patiently awaiting Yodel - strings, cable and game winding their way to me. Hope Steam code isn't duplicate, reading some in comments on amazon saying they can't register on Steam. Anyone else having issues or did others just download it? Or are most on consoles?

[Hoodedclaw]

I think i need this game in my life , whats a cheap guitar to pick up for use with this game ?

[Dandy_Sephy]

The game+guitar bundle is an Epiphone les Paul Junior.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00CMJ1O34

For a beginner it's a perfectly adequate starter instrument. Good brand name that consistently makes quality instruments. If you are open to spending more I can give you more choice. At circa £100 for the guitar you won't find much that is better. £200 would give you more choice but you don't need to spend that much.

[Mike1812]

Yeah get something cheap but playable and see how you get on. Just be warned, you WILL want more.

[Simbo]

Dandy, would be interested in a recommendation for a 200 quid guitar if you don't mind.

I borrowed my cousins learner guitar for rock smith 1 i'm now thinking of getting something a little better for myself. Quite fancy something with a lower action as my cousins guitar had quite a large gap between the strings and the neck which I couldn't get used to.

[Spacehost]

Guitar choice is a very personal thing, so I'd get down a shop and try some out yourself. I've always found Yamaha Pacifica 112s to be really good for the money, and generally well set-up out of the box (and if the one in the store isn't, get them to do a set-up as part of buying it). I prefer Strat-like guitars though.

[ngchol]

I'm a novice player who has improved quite a bit with the original Rocksmith. I tried a few guitars out in GAK with a guitar-teacher friend and ended up buying this, which is currently £228 - he thought it was outstanding value at that price, and it has almost unanimously good reviews:

http://www.gak.co.uk/en/squier-vintage-modified-stratocaster-vintage-blonde/56118

[Parappa]

I really need to get this but been left handed is a real pain - guitar's are so expensive!

May need to learn right handed instead!

[Hoodedclaw]

i'd love a strat - thanks for the advice guys , time to invest

[Mentazm]

So I've got this all up and running and played a song and looked at a few tutorials. Seems like it's going to be hurting my fingers a lot. How do people cope? Softer strings?

Also I'm being told to do a recommended song but there's no rocksmith icon next to any tracks?

[routeburn]

So I've got this all up and running and played a song and looked at a few tutorials. Seems like it's going to be hurting my fingers a lot. How do people cope? Softer strings?

Also I'm being told to do a recommended song but there's no rocksmith icon next to any tracks?

When I first started playing guitar my finger tips really hurt for about a month while the callus formed. Then I had to get used to not feeling my finger tips due to having callus skin

I actually found my guitar (that I bought second hand) infinitely better to play when I learned how to set up the action and put some new strings on. A set up that suits you and a nice set of bright new strings is lovely.

[Simbo]

I remember with rock smith 1 I had to build up my daily play from 30 min slots over the course of a couple of weeks. Still felt like I was running my fingers through cheese wire though.

Thanks to everyone for the guitar recommendations has anyone a good les pauls that they recommend too?

[routeburn]

I picked up a second hand Epiphone Les Paul Standard which I really like. I like the sound and style of the Les Paul, but I would say that it's a heavy guitar compared with the Strats I've played. Also, the neck is a bit longer from what I recall. Playing my friend's American Strat felt like picking up a Fisher Price compared with the Epiphone.

Oh, I should add that I actually have HEAPS of fun playing bass in Rocksmith. Don't think you've got to get an electric guitar. Bass is very fun to play and may be a slightly cheaper (and less chord-focused) way of starting. Think of bass as a cross between drums and guitar (i.e. you're part rhythm and part melody). I picked up a second hand bass (a Cort Action) for well under 100 quid just for Rocksmith and it's in fantastic condition, came with a quality lead and a soft case. Fun times.

[Spacehost]

I really need to get this but been left handed is a real pain - guitar's are so expensive!

May need to learn right handed instead!

FWIW Yamaha do a lefty Pacifica 112 that's only marginally more expensive than the right-handed version. This place is your friend:

http://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/left_guitars.asp?Category=GUEG_lh&order=3