Ubisoft Slaps Bass Expansion Onto Rocksmith

[Jeremy Wilkinson]

Ubisoft Slaps Bass Expansion Onto Rocksmith

The instructional guitar game will lower the tone later this month.

When it first hit stores in 2011, Ubisoft's educational guitar game Rocksmith was limited to the standard six-string guitar, forcing players to play either lead or rhythm and leaving bassists out in the cold. The company intends to rectify this in the very near future by offering players bass compatibility for the game.

Rocksmith's bass expansion will be available for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game on August 14. It will be priced at $29.99, and will include bass arrangements for every in-game song featuring the instrument, including already-purchased DLC tracks. The update will also offer dedicated bass training, with techniques such as two-finger picking, slapping and popping, and the game will track players' progress on the guitar and bass separately.

Players without a bass haven't been left out either. As the tuning for a bass is simply an octave down from the lowest four strings of a standard guitar, the expansion will allow potential bassists to plug in any regular guitar with a quarter-inch jack to emulate its four-string counterpart.

For those who don't already own the original game, Ubisoft plans to release a bundle on October 16 that will include both guitar and bass segments of tracks, and this release will be simultaneous with the game's PC release. Rocksmith has yet to see the light of day outside of North America, but is tipped for a European release on October 12.

It doesn't look like Ubisoft intends to stop at bass support for Rocksmith. Lead audio designer Nick Bonardi recently told Polygon that he "[doesn't] feel like we've fully tapped the experience to its fullest." The main drive for the bass expansion was a vocal desire from fans, and Bonardi hopes to continue this trend moving forwards. "Depending on what the fans ask for," he said, "we can add other things to it. Hypothetically - anything that creates a frequency can be plugged into Rocksmith and played." Could this mean that we might one day see a mandolin or ukulele expansion for Rocksmith? Only time will tell.

Source: Polygon [http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/03/rocksmith-dropping-the-bass-on-august-14]

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[Fasckira]

Sounds like someone wants to get ... funky...


Glad to see this though, might check it out now. I dont think I have the dexterity to manage "normal" guitar.

 

[RamaTheVoice]

Could this mean that we might one day see a mandolin or ukulele expansion for Rocksmith? Only time will tell.

Or a flute ? Jethro Tull ftw !

 

[Ympulse]

As the tuning for a bass is simply an octave up from the lowest four strings of a standard guitar...

Octave lower.

 

[Auesis]

After self-teaching for 2 years, a little push on the slap side would be cool. I'll wait for the PC release.

Also, if they don't include the Scott Pilgrim bass battle, I'm getting a refund. I can already play it, but I don't care.

 

[Ansem-The-Wise]

Sounds neat. I've been self-taught for a while so this might make me get it. Also, I can't tell whether that title is saying the addition is hastily added, or a clever pun.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

They don't need to add an expansion, they need to revise the concept. It is so frustrating to see them overcome huge technical challenges in the name of such a great concept only to execute it so badly. Their challenge was getting the guitar to work as an accurate, responsive game controller and boy-howdy they pulled it off, even exceeding my highest expectations. The rest should just write itself. But somehow they fucked it up.

They obviously tried to make Rocksmith as accessible as possible, and that's a good idea. But they went completely insane in the name of accessibility. Instead of difficulty levels to challenge you, Rocksmith has this crazy system where the notes you have to hit for a particular riff or whatever are constantly shifting in the middle of a song based on your performance. It's so frustrating to suddenly have the difficulty ramped up at the very moment you are starting to get comfortable with the notes. And you'll break your guitar on your TV set when the melody you are trying to figure out drops back to an easier form because you missed some notes. The whole system undercuts the sense of challenge, reward, and progression. There is never a moment where you feel you are given a fair challenge, nor do you ever feel like you're accomplishing something even when you are getting better at the songs. Did I do good? Did I do bad? No, no, says Rocksmith. There is no good or bad. Just play... That sounds nice I guess but it makes for a really shitty game. The game does set goals for you and punish failure but you have no way to distinguish a good performance from a bad one except the seemingly arbitrary score it gives you.

Even in practice modes, there is no way to set the difficulty to the level you want and there is an utterly baffling lives system that makes the whole thing a chore. It's like they thought it wasn't 'gamey' enough so they just threw in some bullshit so it would resemble Mario Brothers. Look, Ubisoft, part of adapting a guitar tutorial to a video game model is practicing guitar. WE'RE FINE WITH THAT. It's not something you need to fix or get around.

The menus are unforgivably awful. You have a lot of neat options but it's really hard to get to anything except whatever the game is suggesting you do next. I WANT TO PLAY MY WAY DAMNIT. It's kind of hard to describe how bad they are to someone who hasn't played it, but believe me when I say they're worse than you probably believe they could be.

I'll pay $29.99 just for that shit to be fixed. I kept turning off Rocksmith because it was more fun and less frustrating just to practice the guitar by myself. That is major fail. Trying to hold my hand on this one is not working, Ubisoft. You need to let go and let me fly. Don't try to control what I'm doing all the time, make sure I can do whatever I want, when I want it.

They need a better way to tell the player which notes to play, but I think this was a competent first attempt and I can live with it for now. The color of the block tells you which string to play, and the position of the block tells you which fret. This is fine but it means looking all over the screen for clues to tell you which fret to play. I think the blocks should be fret numbers instead, so I can see instantly which string and fret to play just by looking at that one spot. I know that 'numbers' doesn't sound very 'gamey' to some dry executive who has never played a game in his life, but they really need to figure something out if they want to attempt future installments.

 

[ElPatron]

Instead of difficulty levels to challenge you, Rocksmith has this crazy system where the notes you have to hit for a particular riff or whatever are constantly shifting in the middle of a song based on your performance. It's so frustrating to suddenly have the difficulty ramped up at the very moment you are starting to get comfortable with the notes.

This. The weird difficulty and the menus effectively stopped me from buying the game.

Great concept, not going to touch it until fixed.

 

[Brenton Lura]

They don't need to add an expansion, they need to revise the concept. It is so frustrating to see them overcome huge technical challenges in the name of such a great concept only to execute it so badly. Their challenge was getting the guitar to work as an accurate, responsive game controller and boy-howdy they pulled it off, even exceeding my highest expectations. The rest should just write itself. But somehow they fucked it up.

I dunno why you find it hard where to place your fingers I am new to guitar but i can figure out easily where they want me to go on the fret board between the actual numbers written on the screen in-between the frets. The menus could use work though they are not super user friendly and should be able to be set to a permanent setting such as artist or w/e. The difficulty change in song as you play and get better i think is fantastic due to the fact that phrases get harder until you are actually playing what is actually going on in the song. Sure it changes mid song while you are doing well and is slightly surprising but it challenges you to do better. It also does not downgrade back to the phrase below unless you start to do extremely terrible. Just play the song a few times in a row and you'll get the hang of it. The little games are slightly entertaining but i dont really use them that much i just play the actual technique training.

They also let you play songs and do what you want pretty easily so i don't really understand why you can't do that. Just press the start button to go to main menu if your stuck in the career path which is what it sounds like you are. Also just keep playing and you'll get better at reading the screen as well as growing accustomed to when the phrases grow more difficult. And the scoring seems to go up to 100000 i think which would mean you play the song perfectly at perfect phrases as well.

 

[Brenton Lura]

They don't need to add an expansion, they need to revise the concept. It is so frustrating to see them overcome huge technical challenges in the name of such a great concept only to execute it so badly. Their challenge was getting the guitar to work as an accurate, responsive game controller and boy-howdy they pulled it off, even exceeding my highest expectations. The rest should just write itself. But somehow they fucked it up.

I dunno why you find it hard where to place your fingers I am new to guitar but i can figure out easily where they want me to go on the fret board between the actual numbers written on the screen in-between the frets. The menus could use work though they are not super user friendly and should be able to be set to a permanent setting such as artist or w/e. The difficulty change in song as you play and get better i think is fantastic due to the fact that phrases get harder until you are actually playing what is actually going on in the song. Sure it changes mid song while you are doing well and is slightly surprising but it challenges you to do better. It also does not downgrade back to the phrase below unless you start to do extremely terrible. Just play the song a few times in a row and you'll get the hang of it. The little games are slightly entertaining but i dont really use them that much i just play the actual technique training.

They also let you play songs and do what you want pretty easily so i don't really understand why you can't do that. Just press the start button to go to main menu if your stuck in the career path which is what it sounds like you are. Also just keep playing and you'll get better at reading the screen as well as growing accustomed to when the phrases grow more difficult. And the scoring seems to go up to 100000 i think which would mean you play the song perfectly at perfect phrases as well.