Rocksmith 2014 a "Fully Responsive" Guitar Teacher

[StewShearerOld]

Rocksmith 2014 a "Fully Responsive" Guitar Teacher

Rocksmith 2014 will better identify mistakes and offer a wider range of skill tutorials.

By most accounts music games are <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105488-Analysis-Details-Massive-Failure-For-Music-Games>pretty much dead at this point. It's not like they didn't have a good run. There were a few years where practically every dorm room and family gathering in America sported a lineup of plastic instruments. Nowadays however, after an over-saturation of the market, music games pretty much fell apart with mainstay franchises like <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115974-Activision-Smashes-Guitar-Hero-Reboot-Plans>Guitar Hero and <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122199-Rock-Band-DLC-Releases-Ending-in-April>Rock Band seeing an end to new releases. Despite this, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108486-Ubisoft-Tempts-Fate-With-Rocksmith>one property persisted on, carried by perhaps the ultimate music gaming gimmick: it would teach you to play an actual guitar.

Rocksmith, developed and published by Ubisoft, allowed players to plug an actual guitar into their PS3, Xbox 360 or PC and, through gameplay, learn the fundamentals of playing a guitar. It was fairly garnered enough success to merit a sequel. Announced at E3 2013, Rocksmith 2014 <a href=http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/10/e3-2013-rocksmith-2014-announced>was shown off touting new features like Kinect functionality. Just recently, Ubisoft took to talking up some of the other improvements the new version will integrate.

"In Rocksmith 2014, lessons will be much, much more dynamic and responsive: now we're not just telling you that you made a mistake; we'll tell you what the mistake is and how you should adjust to correct it," said Michael Madavi, senior community developer for Rocksmith 2014. "If Rocksmith senses that you're having trouble with a particular technique, it will pull you out of the interactive portion of the lesson and give you further instructions - this time with additional camera angles and tips." In short, Rocksmith 2014 has "grown to become a fully responsive personal teacher" with three times as many lesson videos as the original game, including tutorials on basics like tuning and "way more advanced techniques like tapping." Would-be guitarists eager to give these improvements a try can look for Rocksmith 2014 <a href=http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-10-rocksmith-2014-out-in-october-announced-by-jerry-cantrell>this October on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Source: Ubisoft Blog


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[MrBaskerville]

Nice, this is the first time i hear about this. I really liked the first one, but i hope they put more emphasis on rhytm and i hope they fix the awful menues. The original was a slow mess that was really fun to play but a nightmare to navigate through. A lot of potential, but it really needed a patch or a sequel.

I hope the new one will work better as a learning tool, Rocksmith lacked so many smart features that would have made it easier to use. Just simple stuff like being able to rewind or slow the speed while playing the entire track in training (i hated that you had to go all the way back into the riff repeater, just to find the segment you failed). And it was really stupid that you could just play whatever you wanted as long as the pithc was correct, it didn´t teach you to play the rhytm guitar sections correctly. I guess more punishment would improve the experience, it should make it clear whenever you do something wrong, else you just learn some bad habits.

 

[rofltehcat]

Wow this could be nice. The original already sounds interesting and if their promises are true, they'll really improve it. I'll keep an eye on this... probably borrow my brother's guitar.

*plays an air guitar reef*

 

[elvor0]

Nice, this is the first time i hear about this. I really liked the first one, but i hope they put more emphasis on rhytm and i hope they fix the awful menues. The original was a slow mess that was really fun to play but a nightmare to navigate through. A lot of potential, but it really needed a patch or a sequel.

I hope the new one will work better as a learning tool, Rocksmith lacked so many smart features that would have made it easier to use. Just simple stuff like being able to rewind or slow the speed while playing the entire track in training (i hated that you had to go all the way back into the riff repeater, just to find the segment you failed). And it was really stupid that you could just play whatever you wanted as long as the pithc was correct, it didn´t teach you to play the rhytm guitar sections correctly. I guess more punishment would improve the experience, it should make it clear whenever you do something wrong, else you just learn some bad habits.

Quite, the menus were so clunky, and the way it dynamically changed stuff mid song was a bit irritating too, a difficulty setting would've been nice with the option to toggle ramps of difficulty mid song. Even Guitar Hero and Rock band let you practice a section straight from the pause menu.

The thing with the pitch I don't mind so much though, especially given the tab they had for Smoke on the Water was completely different to the one everyone who plays guitar uses. Loads of open strings and stuff where it was better to fret, because the open notes just sound too messy or don't have the same meaty sound.

I didn't find too many problems with the rhythm myself, and given part of my ocd tends to lead me to count things in groups of 4, I can usually find the rhythm in songs quite easily,(provided they're in 4/4 time, which was most of them) but I already played guitar before hand. For someone who is just starting out, I can see it certainly being a massive pain in the arse. The arcade mini games were all pretty good though, excellent practice for learning to do things quickly.

 

[Falterfire]

I'll join the "Loved the game, hated the menus" party. I'm definitely on board with this if I don't have to deal with some of the worst menu design in recent memory.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I'll hop on the bandwagon. The menu system in Rocksmith is abysmal. But I had a lot of fun with the game and it got me to come back to playing guitar after 7 years. Looking forward to the sequel. Here's hoping it has a "random song" function.

 

[Mumorpuger]

Bleh. I need an Xbox One version.

 

[WWmelb]

Yah also on board with the menus being some of the worst ever created. lol. However, as i hadn't been playing guitar much in a long time, this was a great tool to get back into the swing of things, and learn some new things while i was at it.

Main problem for me was not having any guitars built for huge long sustain, i could not get the dynamic difficulty to move to top level on some songs because of one drawn out note that my guitars were not capable of sustaining for that long.

But, for what it was, i'm not complaining. My hat goes off to the devs of that because it is a quite amazing piece of software that impressed me no end.

Here is hoping the sequel is even better.

And yes, i heartily recommend rock band to people who want to learn to play guitar, though some basics at the start would be helpful.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I rather liked the original rocksmith. The chord minigame was a very useful tool for learning to form all the shapes quickly and transition between them. Shame there wasn't a chord minigame for bass, as far as I know. Using chords on bass is a way underused technique.

I found the software generally pretty impressive. It's great for learning technique, although the mistake detection isn't amazing, and it doesn't really have any tools for learning improvisational play.

One thing they could really do with adding would be some kind of ear trainer. The game would play a note and you'd have to play the same one, perhaps, and at advanced stages it would start playing chords and you'd have to match those.

If some of this stuff is included along with the tapping tuition, I'll probably get the 2014 version when it comes out. If not, I'll stick with what I'm doing atm.

Edit:

Can we get some non-standard time signature stuff too? Maybe a minigame, + a Tool song? I think Schism would be a great song to have on there.

 

[newwiseman]

The first one had a little lag, if that's addressed I'll be happy. My Strat is awfully dusty...