So I'm a guitar player, not a very skilled one but I can play. And I thought that Rocksmith would be a fun game to play because I like challenges and learning a few new songs would be cool, as well as honing my technique some with the speed and tech games that the game provides.
At first I thought the game was really good, it has the "story mode", technique practice, mini games and the amp that let's you doodle around and play on your own, which is really cool. The first problem that I noticed was the interface, it's cluttered, inconvenient, it freezes from time to time and it's hard to navigate.
The second problem I noticed is the fretboard, seriously? This thing is crap, the frets are all the same width and as a guitar player you know based on instinct how to move your hands to reach certain frets and the gradual narrowing of the frets the higher you go is printed into your head. Well, forget about that because in Rocksmith the frets are all the same size which creates a sort of disconnect because when you look at the screen you want to put your finger on the fret that is displayed only to be 5 frets away because the visual feedback tricks your mind into thinking the fret is closer than it is, to play this game you have to rewire your head to match the retarded on-screen display, it's a disaster! Or as AVGN would say "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!"
And on to another problem, the difficulty, christ in heaven and everything on the way up there is the difficulty crap. Basically you have two options, either you are crap at guitar or you play with a dynamic difficulty, and by dynamic I mean it's fudged up. Instead of choosing a difficulty based on your skills, it decides to adjust the difficulty IN-GAME to match your skills, it IS a cool idea but it doesn't work with this kind of game. In guitar hero it would be a great feature but in Rocksmith were you play real guitar it doesn't work, because you can't learn how to play a solo on the go, it doesn't work that way unless you are a pro.
The difficulty works like this: You play the song, fairly easy, almost too easy and you hit all the notes. Now the game adjust the difficulty to match what you just played and it's just enough to get you through, and it's fun to play the game, because it's at your skill level with enough challenge to make it feel worthwhile. Then all of a sudden the game thinks you want it harder, it throws in even more notes, it stresses you out and you fumble, only for the game to think you are shit and you play on guitar hero level again, rinse and repeat. This make playing every song a shit experience because the game never reflect your skill level like it's supposed to, and it's annoying.
Playing guitar requires motoric skills, hearing the notes, knowing the box, knowing the fret board (which is fudged up for above reason) and a lot of other things, it's not as easy as a quick time controller button prompt. It's obvious that the developers know nothing about the actual playing of the guitar, only the technical aspect of it, and by technical I mean just that, not the actual technique of playing the guitar, but how it's working. And it's garbage.
This is the biggest flaw of the game, see this image? The upper is what a normal guitar look like. And the lower is what Ubisoft think a guitar look like, it's retarded, like they never let an actual guitar player proof play this thing first? It's totally disorienting to look at the prompt and follow the song. You have to learn the song first and then play along without looking at the prompt, but then the whole purpose of the game is gone. It's incredible how shitty this game is.
Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to share my thoughts on a rather new popular game. What did you think of Rocksmith (if you have played it)
Thanks.
