I placed my order with Amazon. 190 with free shipping and no tax beats out getting the game today and paying 30 more for it.
Played for about 2 hours yesterday. Can’t decide on whether to continue on to new songs or try to perfect a single song first. I kind of want to do more songs because I think that will unlock more mini-games and techniques.
The Riff Repeater is really great. I really like that you can level up a section in practice then have that carry over to the song.
I don’t understand the difference between ‘Performance’ and ‘Rehearsal’ in the song menu (besides the crowd). Scoring seems the same.
There are a ton of tutorial videos under the options section. They even have several on how to restring the guitar. Pretty cool.
I’m not noticing any lag with my Xbox hooked up to my receiver via HDMI. Might just be that I’m not good enough and the notes aren’t fast enough for me to notice yet. The hit window on notes is huge.
Or maybe you’re lucky, or something. I’m not sure if you’re a plastic guitar playing guy as well; if so, do you have to adjust your calibration like most everyone else there?
Asking because I am weakening on not buying this after reading a few more reviews – there are some nifty things about it that are overriding the gross stuff. Having to futz with my HDMI or audio plugs or whatever is a definite minus.
I’ve always done the auto calibrate for Rock Band. I can’t remember what the numbers were but I’m pretty sure they were less than 100 ms. Rocksmith has 50ms set up for the lag out of the box. I left it there.
My hookup is Xbox -> Onkyo 508 receiver -> Vizio LED TV all via hdmi.
I too have been playing this and have been having a great time so far. Some jerk in Asia hijacked my gamertag and spend a couple hundred on points before I noticed, so the tag is locked by MSFT while they investigate and I need to start over.
Grrrrrr.
But, yeah, it’s fun so far. I have not had any issues with audio lag on my LCD HDTV, with the optical audio out going straight to my Sony receiver.
Damn, how did I not hear about this until now?
How does multiplayer work? Do both players play the same part, or is one player lead and the other rhythm? Are there bass tracks or just guitar? I could really see my wife and I getting into this since we play guitar and bass, respectively, in a real band.
Oh good lord. I can only imagine the Ramones-esque spats over who missed their cue :)
Nah, it’s never been an issue. However, in true rock fashion, there has been some tension between the lead guitarist (me) and our singer. Seems like all band have that problem at some point.
I know absolutely nothing at all about playing a guitar and picked this up because the tech looks great and it looks to be a decent learning tool. After thirty minutes with it I have no regrets, but the software is awful. The interface is just a bunch of random crap slapped together, and the devs seems hellbent on not actually teaching you anything or letting you select any options to play the game in any way other than how they’ve determined (apparently by pulling it out of their asses) how you should play. They simply don’t get it.
Amazing tech, whiffed execution.
My copy from amazon will be here Monday! I can’t wait.
The interface is truly awful. Fortunately the game works and hey, obvious improvement area for the inevitable Rocksmith 2!
The important thing is that they got the interface while you are playing right.
That’s a pretty big deal and I think they pretty much nailed it. The only thing I wish it had was more guidance on which fingers should be fingering which strings.
Fuck this:
Video games, by design, are meant to impart fantasy; they let us make believe that we as people are more incredible than we actually are, or that there’s more to the world around us than we realize.
What a joke.
The good.
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Pretty awesome tech. With a 0/0 lag setup it responds great.
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Love the playback feature!
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The playing UI screen is actually pretty good, watching videos it looked a mess. In practice, it works well.
The bad.
- Setlist kinda meh for me.
- Also, no DLC for launch? Shame on you Ubi. I have a feeling we are not going to see much.
And the ugly.
- The menu system however…yeah, it needs major work for V2 (or something patched in, pretty please).
- Come on…$5 to unlock all the pedals? HORSE ARMOR!
Picked this up on Saturday and have put several hours into it so far.
My first impressions (as an experienced “real” guitarist of ~20 years and an Expert difficulty GH/RB player):
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This is what I was waiting for the first time I played Guitar Hero. I won’t be able to go back to regular 5-button Rock Band again after this. I never tried Pro Guitar mode in RB3 because I didn’t want to buy a cheap-o piece of shit Squier, so I hope Harmonix uses this technology (allowing players to use any guitar they own) in future Rock Band games.
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The dynamic difficulty works well, but I wish there was a way to set the baseline for each new song higher than ultra noob mode. It would be nice if I could set the default difficulty setting halfway and have the game adjust up or down based on my performance accordingly. Since every song and challenge starts at difficulty 1/20, I’m forced to play them 2-3 times until the game matches my appropriate skill level.
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I haven’t noticed any real-time audio lag while I’m playing, but during the automatic replays after each song, my guitar-playing is off by a full second or so. Very strange.
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Amp mode is neat, but I already have a Stealthplug with Amplitube 3 and a Pod X3, both of which do a much better job of software audio modelling. For a new guitarist without that gear and/or software, though, Amp mode is a passable way to play around with new tones and effects.
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There are sections of songs where the proper way to play it is to hold down a chord shape and then pick individual notes (sometimes with hammer-ons or other minor modifications). Rocksmith just shows you which notes to play; I wish it would also tell you to fret the entire chord while you’re playing those sections.
I’ll post additional impressions after I put more time into the game, but for now I’m really enjoying it. This should be a must-have for any “real” musician who is also a fan of rhythm games.
- There are sections of songs where the proper way to play it is to hold down a chord shape and then pick individual notes (sometimes with hammer-ons or other minor modifications). Rocksmith just shows you which notes to play; I wish it would also tell you to fret the entire chord while you’re playing those sections.
In other words, it succumbs to “I learned from tab” sickness. It took me forever (and, from what I hear, others as well) to figure out that I should be fingering a chord shape and not just picking out individual notes when playing from tab.
I haven’t played it in Rocksmith yet, but I can only imagine how difficult “House of the Rising Sun” would be to play without fretting the chord shapes first before picking the individual notes.
And now for the $64,000 question: Does it have a left-handed mode?
H.
Yes.
It also lets you flip the order that the strings are displayed. By default, the game displays the low E string on the top and the high E string on the bottom. Guitar tablature is written the opposite way, so if you’re used to reading tab, you can flip it in game.
It’s also taking my brain some time to learn the interface. I’m making tons of mistakes because my brain is hard-wired from years of GH/RB to interpret a yellow to red transition to mean that I need to shift left to a lower fret, not change strings.
Cool! Unfortunately it’s not coming out on PC until December.
H.