When I first played Guitar Hero, I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. By the end of the song, when I realized how much better I was than at the beginning, and when I realized how awesome it felt to “play” guitar, I couldn’t stop recommending it.
It was the first game I can recall where almost all of the fun of the game just comes from becoming more skilled at the game, and actually, learning. Obviously it’s not an educational game, and all it teaches you (honestly) is how to play Guitar Hero, but in that game I sensed the kernel of something bigger. I’m certainly not the only or even a particularly early person to realize that educational games have huge potential, but I had forgotten how fun it is just to learn something. Obviously it helps to learn something you want to learn, but it’s interesting (to me) that what you learn doesn’t even have to be useful. At this point I’m thinking “holy crap, games could teach you X, Y, Z… even… even how to actually play guitar!”
At this point I sort of realized I was getting carried away, because playing guitar is FREAKING HARD (believe me, I tried to teach myself), it’s actually PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to change from one chord to another as fast as songs require ( or so I was pretty sure at the time), and guitar players are just mutants. There’s no way you could make a fun game teaching someone how to actually play guitar. AT this point I thought you might be able to do something with someone wanting to learn piano, or drums (both of which rock band eventually addressed), but guitar? No way.
Fast forward several years and Harmonix , the best rhythm game studio in the world and makers of Guitar Hero, announces a HUGE upgrade to Rock Band. PRO MODE, you ACTUALLY PLAY THE INSTRUMENT YOU’RE “PLAYING”. INCLUDING GUITAR! Though, with guitar, it’s one of two extremely expensive peripherals, either the 104 button “pro mode” plastic video game guitar, or the $180 six string Fender Squire Stratocaster that has MIDI output that Rock Band can use.
At the time, I’m excited enough about the idea to pick up all the peripherals and I end up with both the 104 button plastic guitar, and the six string. I play with the plastic one for a while, but I’m not getting sucked in. It’s fun, sort of, but it’s SUPER FREAKING HARD, and I can’t really tell what I’m doing wrong because the only feedback is a fakey guitar twang when I make a mistake. The interface is also pretty difficult to understand. The “real guitar” isn’t slated to come out for several months so I sort of practice with the plastic one, waiting for the real one to come. The fateful day finally comes when I can play rock band with a real guitar, and it’s….. disappointing.
It doesn’t function great, there is some bizarre Microsoft requirement reason that I can’t use the buttons on the guitar to control the game, and worst of all? It doesn’t function well! It can’t hear some of my plucks! I am eventually able to adjust it to where it works pretty well, but the experience isn’t that much better, and worst of all? When the MIDI mode for rock band is enabled, the strings on the guitar are muted so I still can’t hear my mistakes.
Life intervenes and my child demands a large amount of my attention so my guitars (real and fake) get put away for about a year.
Then this little game Rocksmith finally comes out. Initially I’m skeptical, given that Rock band 3, and the apparently abysmal Power Gig didn’t really live up to the hype, I can’t believe some obscure Ubisoft studio could manage to put out something that bests the indomitable Harmonix Music Systems. Reviews are pretty good, however, and apparently for newbies the learning curve is amazing. Not taking it too seriously, I throw the X box 360 version of the game on my Amazon.com wish list, thinking that maybe someone could get it for me and I could try it out. Particularly since my birthday and Christmas were coming up.
I ended up trying to cancel the wish list wish and switch it with the PC version because I’ve heard about problems with the delay inherent in modern home theatre equipment and the game, and how it can sound really terrible and be hard to play. Unfortunately (or actually, forunately) I update my wish list too late and the gift is already on the way. I receive it, and take it up to my office where I have a second X box 360. It still takes me quite some time to get around to trying it. I don’t’ have my xbox live profile upstairs… I don’t want to mess around with memory cards… Skyrim is out… Finally Microsoft implements Cloud Saves into X box 360, and it’s easy to have a profile on multiple X boxes. One night I randomly decide to fire up Rocksmith instead of Battlefield 3.
3 weeks and 4 calloused fingers later, I’m not looking back. This game completely delivers on the promise of Guitar Hero. The track list is fantastic, the interface is extremely good (one can quibble but it’s by far the clearest interface I’ve seen of its kind). There are tons of small little nits to pick and it’s clearly not a big budget title, but it nails what it needs to nail and more importantly, the more I play, the better I get at guitar! The first couple of days my fingertips are on fire from pressing steel strings down, but once the callouses are in, I can’t pull myself away from the game at night, I’m mastering “High and Dry”, I’m learning the main riff from “Satisfaction”. I’m struggling to play the main riff from “Don’t Fear The Reaper”, I’m LEARNING FREAKING GUITAR.
The game has a brilliant automatic difficulty selector, wherein, the more you play the part, the harder and more like the actual song it gets. Normally this means chords start out as notes, then two string chords, then possibly the full chord. Solos pick out the highlights and then slowly fill the gaps. It almost always is recognizably the song you’re playing, but usually simpler sounding. I play this way over and over, playing through the surprisingly competent career mode, where the game selects songs to practice and then “perform” in front of a virtual crowd, earning you rankings and points. There are a few great practice modes where you can practice part of a song to increase the difficult, or play it slowed down and then have it gradually ramp up the speed as you learn it. Basically a fully featured rhythm game, possibly the best one I’ve ever played.
I really hope Rocksmith succeeds financially, it’s already succeeded from a creative perspective. I REALLY want more downloadable content, I want there to be a sequel that fixes all the little problems. But if not, I’m going to squeeze all the practice I can out of this one. It’s truly an amazing game experience, and an incredibly important symbol of what video games can be.
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