Rocksmith Guitar and Bass - Xbox 360 Reviews

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I have been messing around trying to teach myself bass for a few years now.

My problem is that I love the instrument but playing it along to youtube or a cd gets boring after awhile. Of course I would love to join a band but as a work in a job which means I travel a lot I could never commit.

I was thinking about selling my bass and try acoustic guitar. Then a friend of mine told me about Rocksmith and the new Bass version that was coming out.

To be honest I was apprehensive, I mean plugging my bass into the Xbox? Also I wondered if it was a gimmick and it would not improve my playing at all. Lets be honest at least on Rock Band/GH the drums resemble an actual drumset the guitars do not so that wont teach you. (Not that is it meant to)

I read about lag issues and being a non techie had expected issues but no it was pretty much plug and play. I do not have a complicated set up.

I have only played it a few hours and like the events, the set lists, the downloadable content and the technique exercises.

Will it help me to play Bass? Yes for sure, it won't teach me too much theory but it will help with fingering, shifting and plucking for sure. It will also give me a lot more confidence in my playing.

I will update this review the more I play it. I wanted to give this game 5 star for any budding bassists out there who are also thinking of giving this up. Try Rocksmith first!

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I originally started playing guitar when I was 12. I became fairly good at it by the time I hung it up at 17. Now, 22 years later, I purchased Rocksmith to help me pretty much start all over again.

After spending hours playing it, I can tell you, I LOVE it! The way it teaches you is awesome. Between the games and tutorials, it really helps you learn and hone your skills.

It also teaches you songs. The game gives you a few notes to begin with. It then slowly adds more as you progress, by seeing how many you can hit in a row. Before you know it, you are playing the entire song. And don't worry if you don't play for a little. It will tell you are struggling and give you less notes until you get back to where you were.

I really wish this was available when I originally started playing. It is a fantastic way to learn , or even re-learn!

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So happy about this "game".

I wanted to share my experience with lag.

In the beginning, it's pretty bad if you are using HDMI. The good news is it's fixable by grabbing one of those Xbox AV splitter dongles.

I originally ran HDMI from my Xbox to my receiver then the receiver passed the HDMI video to the TV. That caused lots of audio lag with this game so I changed my set up to this. Xbox HDMI straight to TV for video. For this game I ran RCA cables from the dongle to the CD input of my receiver. Audio lag was gone after that. Now running my receiver in this mode cuts out my subwoofer. I wondered how to bring the bass back and I ended up using an ART CoolSWITCH ABY Pedal to route sound to the Xbox and my bass amp from my bass guitar simultaneously. It worked perfect with no added lag. I also use quality Spectraflex cables.

Here's the tidbit that I would add. I was worried about losing my surround set up for other games but the cool thing is that the dongle passes S/PDIF and RCA audio signals simultaneously so I just attached that to a different input of my receiver for games like BF3. Now I have the best of both worlds.

This worked great but was really made possible by the fact that I have a beast Pioneer Elite receiver with tons of connection options. Also, all cables are available really cheap on Amazon so don't stress. I also use a low-tier Harmony remote to keep track of the different settings. Finally, as I now run HDMI video straight from the Xbox to the TV, I found that the game's video lag setting is too high. I simply backed it down from 50 (MS?) to 0 and the video lag went away and I was all good.

Honest reviews on Rocksmith Guitar and Bass - Xbox 360

Rocksmith is a pretty awesome tool for guitarists of all levels. I consider myself an intermediate guitarist. I am self-taught and mostly play acoustic/fingerstyle guitar. I caught Rocksmith on sale and decided to pick up an electric guitar to give it a shot. So far, I am not disappointed. The games main premise is to teach you songs. Learn the songs on a real guitar, score high enough and you unlock rewards and even more songs.

PROS:

+Rocksmith magically adjusts to match your skill level. It catches on pretty quickly to how many notes or chords you can handle. You never have to worry about never getting to the end of the song because Rocksmith constantly adjusts the song difficulty.

+Different rehearsal modes help master songs. I really enjoy the riff repeater feature. It takes a section of the song and you can either play the section slowly, gradually picking up speed each time you complete the section perfectly. My favorite is the Leveler mode. Each time you complete the section, it adds on more notes until you reach 100% mastery. If you feel that rehearsal mode doesn't give you enough credit in attempting more complexity you can manually adjust the settings in riff repeater.

+Song selection is varied. While i'm not familiar with a lot of the songs, it was a great way to get to know other genres of music and gain appreciation for them. I think for added variety they can add some jazz and blues types of songs.

+Virtual amp & cable: You only get one tone until you start unlocking custom tones and other gears. The virtual amp is pretty awesome and is one of the biggest reasons I invested in Rocksmith. I didn't want to invest in an amp, and for a beginner, I think what Rocksmith has to offer is more than adequate. Once you start unlocking gear, you can mess around and create your own tones. Score high enough on songs and you get that song tones as well. The cable is cross-platform so you can also turn your PC into a virtual amp if you have the right software.

TO BE IMPROVED I found the game really innovative and interesting that it's difficult to really find anything that I absolutely didn't like. Here are a few points that could be improved upon, though.

-Rhythm/Strumming There is zero instruction on rhythm and strumming patterns. Beginning guitarists will have to go elsewhere to learn how to create appropriate strumming patterns. For strumming sections, you can get away with all downstrokes.

-Finger placement I think that Rocksmith could have easily added an option to display suggest finger placement on the fretboard. It already shows you, quite uselessly with fingerprints, that you should move your finger from one fret to another. However, it doesn't suggest which ones.

-Guitarcade Guitarcade is a bit of a letdown. Some of the games can be useful tools such as Ducks/Superducks which lets you practice finding the right note on the fretboard. however, for many of the games, they are just that, games. I think there could have been more added value with a bit more focus on learning or another mode that was focused on learning scales/chords rather than playing (yes, I know it's a game).

-Audio latency This really wasn't such a huge issue for me since I knew about it beforehand. We have HDMI audio set up and there is a pretty significant delay from when you pluck a note and when you hear it from the speakers. We left our HDMI set up as is and plugged into the standard audio port of the Xbox 360. When I play Rocksmith, I mute our HDMI audio and just use the audio coming out of the regular port through a separate set of speakers or headphones. Our HDMI set-up is still in tact and we don't deal with latency issues. It's not a huge deal to get around but for some of you may have to go a little out of your way to get it to work.

-Visual display The Rocksmith display is innovative but as someone with a bit of experience reading music and tablature, it was confusing. Standard tab is read so that you look at the tablature or chord diagram and then project it onto the guitar fretboard. The Rocksmith display, however, is read as if the notes are coming towards your guitar. This may be simple for absolute beginners but for guitar tab readers, it looks backwards/upside down and downright confusing. There is an option to invert the display so it more closely resembles tab (high e-string on the top rather than the bottom. Honestly, I recommend that you immediately start playing the game with the inverted setting as it will be easier to read standard tab when you want to play outside of Rocksmith.

On top of that, the display moves around unnecessarily at times and can be a bit disconcerting or distracting.

-Tuner Before every song, the game asks you to pluck each string so it can check the guitar's tuning. Unless it's absolutely off, it really won't care or ask you to adjust the tuning. It's a pretty useless and tedious feature since it doesn't really check for precision. I recommend using the built-in precision tuner or your own guitar tuner at the start of each game session to ensure that your guitar is well-tuned.

Conclusion

If you really want to give guitar a shot, this isn't a bad way to start out. Rocksmith has its faults but it can be a really great tool for learning songs. I want to remind buyers that is a game/tool. There are still a lot of missing elements that you won't get from Rocksmith (like how to strum a guitar) but for it provides, it's an excellent practice and learning tool, especially if you want to simulate playing guitar in a band-like environment.

If it's important to you, I am using a short-scale Ibanez GRGM21 Mikro Electric Guitar (Black Night). If you also get a cheap guitar to play Rocksmith, I recommend getting it profesionally set-up as having good intonation is key to playing this game. Out of the box, the guitar did not work that great with the game. After getting the intonation fixed, it works like a charm with the game.

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Bought rocksmith just out of pure interest of the concept. I really enjoy it, the game is not easy,learning an instrument is never easy but it is fun and a cool change from using sheet music and scales. The free play mode is worth buying alone it lets you use all of the different FX pedals and equipment right on your Xbox (instead of buying all the expensive real equipment) so once again for $30 buy this game

BTW the game does come with one cable.