Rocksmith Xbox 360 Review

I have had this game from the day it was released in the UK, and it was one of my most anticipated games ever. Made by Ubisoft, this is the next generation of guitar music games, and I think that the end of plastic overpriced guitar "games".

I am a avid rocker as people know, I have been playing guitar for 10 years now, spent some time in a band and as a guitar teacher. Over the past few years, I have not played as much as I would like, as life gets in the way it always seems. When Rocksmith was announced, I knew all that was going to change.

Think Rockband, but with a real, bona fide guitar, your own guitar. That is the one thing about this game that I think gives it appeal, you use the guitar you own, not a plastic fake guitar or one made specially for the game, but the one that you have practiced on, the one that you have gigged with... and thats a amazing thing to do.

The game looks ok, nothing terriably special about the visuals, but that does not matter as you will not be looking at the screen much, and all the vital info is there right away.

Songs are transcribed note for note, which means when you learn to play the song in the game, you learn it in real life. The game does up the difficulty as you go along, so a basic notation is presented first, and as you get better, the song gets harder until you are playing the full song.

The notes are presented in a Rockband esqe fasion, with notes coming down the screen. There is a graphic for each of the strings at the bottom, 6 different coloured lines, and you play the note when it reaches the string. The hardest thing for me was to learn that the fretboard underneath this moves, indicating where on the neck you need to be. This is disorientating at first, but soon becomes second nature.

There is multiplayer, but not across Xbox live. This means you need two cables and two guitars, but that should not be to hard to arrange, and brings multiplayer back to a social expericance.

A broad range of songs is on the disc, with something that should please everyone, aswell as some basic lessons on the different techniques that are employed. Extra songs can be downloaded from the store, and there are some quite difficult songs that you can get, Megadeths Symphony of Destruction and Eric Johnsons Cliffs of Dover are available, if you are so inclined, or just want a real challenge.

Overall this is a great game if you do play the guitar already, but also a great way to get into playing guitar if you don't. I would however recommend getting some professional guitar lessons aswell as this game, to stop you from gaining bad habits, and to teach you the proper position for you hands to go in.


It is a difficult game to begin with. Stick with it, and you will soon be rocking out to a wide range of songs, and hopefully this game will create a whole new wave of bedroom rockers that will go on to create some truly great music.

A must buy game.

Available now on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.