Game or learning software?

There exists a discussion about Rocksmith over whether it is a game or a piece of music learning software. In my opinion, it sits in some awkward middle ground where it can't really be considered either.

 

The style is undeniably game-like. For those of us who spent much of their teen years playing Guitar Hero and its ilk, Rocksmith is very recognisable - you choose the least objectionable option from a selection of songs, notes scroll down a screen towards you, there's a simulated crowd and background 'band' noise, you hit notes to earn points and progress... But it's missing a lot of the key elements that makes Guitar Hero such a fun game.

 

Mostly, it's the showmanship that's missing. For one, you never actually see the band; there are sounds from them, so you know they exist, but the scenes where you'd see the vocalist screaming into the mike or yourself in pre-chosen pixelated form spinning around whilst playing the guitar are completely missing. It's just endless gazing out into the crowd whilst notes on the on-screen fret keep on coming. And I get that Ubisoft couldn't really include the star power concept - the idea being you create the music yourself - but they could have included the 'fret engulfed by flames' for special occasions, like getting an however-many note streak.

 

Whether because of this lack of showmanship or for some other reason, Rocksmith lacks the group/social activity quality that Guitar Hero has. I'll bring Guitar Hero out at parties, my friends and I will have fun hitting away at the plastic guitar knowing that it is just a game. I've played Rocksmith as a multiplayer, it's no fun (and not just because I keep on having to reassign the controller to trick the system into thinking I have two...) It feels too serious to play as a group activity.

 

And yet, Rocksmith wants to be a game. Indeed, it positively yearns to be played as a game, you have to practically force the mechanics to not whisk you along at an alarming pace so you can beat all of the levels and be finished with it by dinner time. There will be a occasion where you accidentally press 'Continue journey' and find you're being introduced to some new technique before you've properly understood the last one. Possibly several occasions. Because you have to wrangle it before you can properly use it as a piece of learning software, I'm not sure it can be properly identified as such.

 

In case you think I'm being harsh and critical here, I'm not. Not really. Ok, I wish there was a bit more 'pizzazz' with Rocksmith, but that's really a very minor niggle. Mostly, I think it's amazing. It has taught me to play something on a guitar, a feat that two professional music instructors and several friends who play guitar failed to accomplish. I'm just not sure where it sits in the current market. Maybe it's creating its own market?

How to play Rocksmith multiplayer

So, I had a friend over today. This is the Wii gun/beat-me-to-Rocksmith friend. Seeing as we have two Rocksmith guitar leads and two electric guitars between us, she brought her guitar around and we thought we'd play multiplayer. It was not to be... Well, actually, it was, but not until a lot of faffing around later.

 

You see, Rocksmith isn't happy with simply having two guitar leads. No, it also wants you to have two PS3 controllers as well... I don't really understand why, seeing as you merely use the controller to scroll between songs and all the action is happening with the guitars.

 

But apparently the people at Ubisoft don't agree with me. We were about to give up and do something else, until a possible work-around occured to me. And it did work.

 

 

Here is how to play Rocksmith multiplayer on PS3 with only one controller

 

First, you'll need to set up a user for your friend.

 

Each player operates their 'own' controller slot, either 1 or 2. The idea is clearly that you'll have two controllers, therefore each player will have individual control. However it is easy to circumvent this by continually reassigned the controller between the two positions. In order to do this, hold the PS3 button on the controller down, go to 'Controller settings' and go from there.

 

The downside is this is a complete pain in the rear end to have to do, and I really wish someone might have considered that not everyone with two guitars/guitar leads will also want to have two controllers.

Review: Elevation full size electric guitar

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5401336.htm

 

This is the guitar that I purchased to accompany me in my path to rock stardom (well, not quite...) As Argos doesn't allow you to review products on their website unless you bought them online and I instead opted to drag the thing home on a bus in an attempt to keep my musical aspirations hidden from my ever-loving family, I thought I'd review it here instead:

 

 

Good guitar to use as an elaborate controller for a video game

By Rocke Smythe from England/the internet.

Overall Rating                    4 Stars          Good

Recommend to a friend?     Yes

 

"As an electric guitar was both a crucial accompaniment to Rocksmith and a piece of equipment missing from my arsenal of failed musical instruments over the years, I found myself in the position of having to acquire an one for as little money and with as little research needed as possible. To this end, I purchased the Elevation full size electric guitar.

 

It is a perfectly decent guitar. I'm not sure I'd want to play a gig with it - the sound can be a little distorted at times and it is prone to dropping out of tune - but for the purpose of using it as an elaborate controller for a video game (which is essentially what Rocksmith is doing) it is a good guitar.

 

The Elevation full size electric guitar looks pleasant enough in the corner of my room and is also subtle enough to blend into the background, an important aspect when trying to keep it hidden from other people. It was easy to set up, although the slits cut into the strap ends seemed a bit small or maybe that was just me...? Tuning is easy and the pegs don't resist being turned, for which we must be thankful as Rocksmith makes you test the tuning and re-do it with startling frequency. It came with a multitude of accessories, including a plectrum, spare strings and a lead to connect to an amp. Actually, I think that was all of them.

 

Overall, I am pleased with my purchase and would suggest that anyone in the UK who wants Rocksmith but doesn't currently own an electric guitar could do worse than purchase the Elevation full size guitar."

 

Age:    18 to 24

Gender:    Female

 

 

How was that?

So, I've had it a week...

Rocksmith is fantastic.

 

I fully intend to give it comprehensive reviews and analyses throughout the course of this blog, but I think there's one over-riding question which burns in everyone's mind about this game: can it actually teach you how to play the guitar?

 

 

Well, yes and no. Unless it comes in at a later stage of the game (which I somehow doubt), there's no element of musical theory included in Rocksmith. You're not likely to become a celebrated guitarist from hitting notes in time to images on a TV screen.

 

But this lack of background is part of Rocksmith's appeal: you don't have to know anything about music. For those of us who went through years of music classes and failed to retain any knowledge from them, this is a perfect situation. From the start, all you have to do is press the correct string in the correct fret, and pluck it. No musical theory needed, just ability to co-ordinate hands.

 

 

In summary: you won't become the lead guitarist of a world famous band, but with a bit of practice and manipulation of the game mechanics (more on that later) you should be able to play something roughly recognisable for your friends and family.

 

I couldn't play a thing a week ago. I could more-or-less do Sunshine of Your Love now. Progress? I think so...

Rocksmith

My long-buried desire to play an instrument was reawakened in July 2012 with news from a surprising source: the guy in GAME.

 

My friend had acquired a Wii gun and wanted to find something destructive to play with it on for as little money as possible. Whilst she hunted for something in the second hand games section, I mused over buying a couple of Guitar Hero games. She finally found something suitably bloodbath-y for a suitably small amount of money, and when we went to pay for our games the guy at the till enlightened us about the latest addition to the play-along-with-the-screen music game genre: Rocksmith, which uses a real guitar as a controller. Alas, release in Europe was being held up by a legal challenge for the name from a band down in Southend, and I forgot about it for a few months.

 

Then, in January 2013, I was reminded of the game by the fact that my Wii gun friend had bought it. Had a little dabble at her house, then decided to get the game for myself. It was an acquisition that also involved the purchase of a guitar, both of which I got from Argos, and getting it home via a two hour bus ride ... but I had the necessary tools to become a rock star!

 

Well, maybe not, but I might be able to play Three Blind Mice at parties.

The road to Rocksmith

When I was about eight years old, I joined the guitar club at my school; it was imaginatively named Guitar Club. You might be thinking we were some sort of musical prodigies, the guitar gods/goddesses of the future, a gift to the world of rock. Well, don't.

 

Guitar Club was almost exclusively the music club of choice for those pupils who didn't actually qualify for any of the decent music clubs but still wanted to pretend they did. As such, we consisted of about six (technically, there were eight, but one sometimes showed up and another hardly ever showed up) kids with our mothers' badly tuned acoustics that gathered in the mobile classroom to strum away for an hour or so, before going home and not touching our guitars again for another week. At the end of the year, we participated in the end-of-year showcase, playing a very un-melodic version of Amazing Grace. It was dreadful. I have a friend who still laughs about it. The club was disbanded after that.

 

 

Horrifyingly, that is one of my better forays into the musical world. I was denied access to musical education when I was unable to play Three Blind Mice on the recorder when I was five. At the next school I attended, I was famously incapable of doing, well, anything on the keyboards. I once had a triangle taken away from me because I failed to play it correctly. I am not, you may be gathering, musically talented.

 

Which was a bit of a shame, because I otherwise possess a lot of skills a good musician needs. Patience, dedication, happy to repetitively do something... I wanted to play an instrument, I had some good qualities for it; pity, then, that I lacked any sense of tone or rhythm.