Pros and Cons of Rocksmith 2014

[Shalissa]

I am planning on buying this game within a week. Let me know what you think of the game, pros and cons

[GuitarDan]

Pro. It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome.
Con. Not enough time in the day to play it.

[Tiger88]

Pros: Really fun and teaches you a lot about how to play your guitar.

Cons: Limited song selection (should improve with time). Also, it can be tricky getting the game to work with all your hardware, but once you do get everything working the game is amazing.

[Anthem TD]

I've been playing guitar for 12 years and make some of my income playing gigs in bars and restaurants. I've put about 15 hours into the game so far, here's my take:

Pros: It's great for learning lead guitar, perfect for the complete beginner who's interested in playing rock, metal, blues, etc. The session mode alone makes this game worth buying, having built in bands at your disposal to practice with really encourages jamming by yourself to work on licks and scales. The lessons are very useful and the mini games are so good for getting you to spend hours practicing without it feeling like practice. Also, if you're a bass player, this is the absolute best thing to get going, hands down.

Cons: starting out on an electric guitar will hinder your development as a guitarist if you're also wanting to play an acoustic and be a really well rounded player. I'm not sure whether or not you can plug in an electric-acoustic but the game seems to be intended for electric guitar only. If you play this game as your introduction to playing guitar and try to switch to an acoustic later on down the line, you'll find playing the acoustic difficult because you have to push down a lot harder on the string to get a good tone. If you want to learn to play jazz, latin or classic guitar, this game will not help you.

Of course there are only so many songs that come with the came. They'll be releasingmore and more DLC later on I'm sure. You can also unlock more songs by completing "missions" which are what the game suggests as your next move. The real value in this game, in my opinion, comes from the guitarcade and session mode because the games make you practice certain techniques over and over and the session mode allows you to implement those techniques. I haven't really dipped into the rhythm guitar stuff yet so I can't say for sure that it's effective.

One thing I think that's missing from the game right now that maybe they'll add is a library of rock and blues licks to help people really learn how to play solos.

TLDR: It's perfect for learning lead guitar and bass (don't know about rhythm guitar yet) but doesn't support learning acoustic guitar or styles outside of rock, metal and blues. All around, it's worth it.

[GuitarDan]

Originally posted by Hep87:

I've been playing guitar for 12 years and make some of my income playing gigs in bars and restaurants. I've put about 15 hours into the game so far, here's my take:

Pros: It's great for learning lead guitar, perfect for the complete beginner who's interested in playing rock, metal, blues, etc. The session mode alone makes this game worth buying, having built in bands at your disposal to practice with really encourages jamming by yourself to work on licks and scales. The lessons are very useful and the mini games are so good for getting you to spend hours practicing without it feeling like practice. Also, if you're a bass player, this is the absolute best thing to get going, hands down.

Cons: starting out on an electric guitar will hinder your development as a guitarist if you're also wanting to play an acoustic and be a really well rounded player. I'm not sure whether or not you can plug in an electric-acoustic but the game seems to be intended for electric guitar only. If you play this game as your introduction to playing guitar and try to switch to an acoustic later on down the line, you'll find playing the acoustic difficult because you have to push down a lot harder on the string to get a good tone. If you want to learn to play jazz, latin or classic guitar, this game will not help you.

Of course there are only so many songs that come with the came. They'll be releasingmore and more DLC later on I'm sure. You can also unlock more songs by completing "missions" which are what the game suggests as your next move. The real value in this game, in my opinion, comes from the guitarcade and session mode because the games make you practice certain techniques over and over and the session mode allows you to implement those techniques. I haven't really dipped into the rhythm guitar stuff yet so I can't say for sure that it's effective.

One thing I think that's missing from the game right now that maybe they'll add is a library of rock and blues licks to help people really learn how to play solos.

TLDR: It's perfect for learning lead guitar and bass (don't know about rhythm guitar yet) but doesn't support learning acoustic guitar or styles outside of rock, metal and blues. All around, it's worth it.

An electric accoustic will also work.

As for the acoustic. It's a good idea to have one besides the electric for this game. Its easy and fun to just pick up and strum some tunes on whenever you want and is great for practice.

[Anarchic Flame]

I agree with Dan about Session Mode...that's worth the price of the game alone. The song selection is not too shabby, they've tried to cater to a well rounded audience and as such there'll be songs you'll want to skip over. In this version even the arcade games are fun (RS 1 arcade games were...uh...interesting, these ones are kinda fun).

There's so much stuff you can actually do with RS2014 that at first glance it can be pretty overwhelming. So buy the game, take a couple of days to set up your own things you want to concentrate on...and start learning guitar!

[Stargorn]

Pros: The game is awesome! I've been a professional musician for the last 8 years, I've bought a lot of software for music and this is the best value I've ever found in a guitar software package. It's insane. So, so much for the small price you pay. Think Guitar Hero but with an actual guitar, so the skills you develop are gonna stick with you and actually be useful for making music outside the game. I taught guitar for years and the lessons that I have been through so far are well laid out, concise, and really do teach you vital skills for being a guitarist. A huge trap you can fall into when you play guitar a lot is just wanting to do the fun things like playing songs - the arcade portion of this game solves that problem flawlessly. Never before have I enjoyed practising technique. Now I am.

If you are a beginning guitarist, a long time vet like myself, or just like to tinker a bit in your spare time, you would be INSANE not to buy this game.

Cons: At times, the game will lag before lessons/games and has frozen on me a few times. Also, there are times where I am playing a song and I KNOW I am nailing the chord/note and timing but the game still gives me a "miss". I record guitar all the time and I have played some of these songs hundreds of times before in bars, so I am certain it's the game detection and not my playing. The most noticeable so far has been playing rhythm in "We Are The Champions" by Queen. I sat there going over and over a few sections trying to get 100% but in order to do so I had to play way out of time with the actual track.

Don't let those cons put you off - the positives FAR outweigh the negatives. None of this is game breaking and a lot of it probably won't even bother you until you start trying to get 100% in the songs you are playing.

Honestly, if I was a beginning guitarist I would just skip guitar lessons and buy this game. It's way more fun than lessons and costs thousands of dollars less than guitar lessons will.