Rocksmith 2014 Edition with Real Tone Cable (PS4)

This game is definitely hit or miss with most people.It's quite disorientating at first and awkward to get used to but after a couple of hours you'll have it down & used to which string is which and have good timing.I'd highly recommend watching a video review on YouTube to get an in-depth look before buying though.For me, it encourages me to pick up the guitar and play & learn some new songs and is REALLY handy for learning songs specifically.The skill games are a bit of a funny one. Some of them are brilliant and you can see how they relate to your technique and skill practices whereas others are just a complete waste of time.The biggest challenge you will find with this game is if your guitar is not intonated properly then it won't register some of your notes and this can be exceptionally annoying and frustrating in any aspect of the game. So you will definitely need to get your guitar properly set up if it isn't already, or learn how to do it yourself (there are loads of YouTube videos to show you how).The song list is varied so there's something for most people in the original content, and there's a stupidly big list as buyable dlc. Each dlc track is around £2 to buy so be prepared to spend your money. Unfortunately they're still limited though & some big names aren't on there like Floyd or led Zeppelin due to their mental copyright & you won't find smaller bands or a huge range of metal but you'll find a lot of popular rock songs and many classics.The real-tone cable is great and works on other systems too so you can plug your guitar into your computer and start making music on there too if you fancy mixing it up.Overall id say it's a good buy to have a play with different songs, genres and styles and learn some techniques and inspire you to pick up the guitar but don't expect to be the next malmstein just from this. You will still need to practice other skills.There are a few other cool parts to this game but to save writing an essay, check a video review for more in-depth content.

Getting back in to guitar after a long hiatus, so saw this and figured it would be a good tool to keep practice interesting.It is definitely worth getting, although at first it's quite confusing and hard to get to grips with.The songs run in a similar way to any of the other music games you may have played, such as guitar hero or singstar, with a scrolling tab to follow.This takes some getting used to as the tab comes at you, rather than reading it on a sheet. Obviously this is way more dynamic and gamefied, but at first it's a mind melter if you are used to normal guitar tab sheets.Strings are given colours which allows you to plan what's coming next, by matching the color of the string to the color of the flying tab. It's definitely a skill in itself and is my only real criticism as its so different from traditional tab that it doesn't really help you as a learner. It's basically learning an entirely new tab system.The lag is a little annoying, not too bad though and I think the game accounts for it to some extent.The variable difficulty is very clever. It learns how good or bad you are and very slightly adjusts to your skill level, adding sections, repeating sections etc.The lessons lost is comprehensive but perhaps a little confusing. A total beginner may not know wheres best to start.Bottom line it's well worth getting if you own a guitar and a console.

I found this an odd concept at first, essentially guitar-hero-ing along with my real guitar. I've been playing guitar for a long time, so for me, this was not a product to teach me to play the instrument. I instead, wanted something to make practice fun, with challenges and realistic goals to work towards. For me, that this has proved realistic. With a decent selection of songs there is plenty to choose from. To go about learning a song, I used the riff repeater tool to play back sections of the song, at around 50%. This a really smart tool that places phrases back at the desired speed, but maintains the pitch, for me an invaluable asset. After learning the individual sections and then playing them at full speed, I'd play the whole track a view my final score at the end. I found it satisfying to learn a song from scratch and master it, all on the PlayStation. My only negative for this game was the latency. This will vary on every system I imagine, but for me, I could not eliminate it completely. I would say it's a few ms out. I followed the setup instructions exactly, but still couldn't get rid of it. If I were to purchase this game again, I would probably buy it on PC and hook it up to my analog HiFi, which I should eliminate the problem. Even though the latency can be an issue, I've gotten used to it and can still use the product effectively.