Recently, rhythm action games that use REAL guitars have suddenly become all the rage. First, we saw Power Gig: Rise of the Six String, with it's six string guitar and power chord mode teaching players the basics of the instrument. This was then altogether abolished by the unveiling of Rock Band 3's Pro Guitar, which saw you using a guitar with a touch sensitive neck to blast out it's expansive tracklist note-for-note. And now, there's a new challenger...
In order to show you where you were holding your fingers on the neck of the guitar (making it a useful tool for learners), Rock Band 3 hit a major stumbling block, in that you had to buy a (rather expensive) guitar made especially for the game to play the Pro mode. It was basically a controller that could also function as a guitar. But with Rocksmith, your own guitar becomes the controller. Using a special input jack to USB converter, Rocksmith allows you to play using any guitar with a standard guitar jack socket. This means that, while it probably won't be able to tell you where your fingers are before you play anything, the rather large barrier to entry for Rock Band's Pro mode isn't a problem here as long as you've got a guitar lying around.
Plug in. Play along.
Like with any rhythm action game, however, how good a game Rocksmith turns out to be depends entirely on the tracklist, and yesterday Ubisoft announced the latest batch of songs that'll be included on the Rocksmith disc. The full list of songs so far confirmed for the game are below:
- The Animals - House of the Rising Sun
- Best Coast - When I'm With You
- Blur - Song 2
- The Black Keys - I Got Mine
- The Black Keys - Next Girl
- The Boxer Rebellion - Step Out Of The Car
- Cream - Sunshine Of Your Love
- The Cribs - We Share The Same Skies
- The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
- David Bowie - Rebel Rebel
- Interpol - Slow Hands
- Jenny O - Well OK Honey
- Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
- Nirvana - Breed
- Nirvana - In Bloom
- Pixies - Where Is My Mind?
- Radiohead - High and Dry
- Red Fang - Number Thirteen
- The Rolling Stones - The Spider and the Fly
- The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
- Silversun Pickups - Panic Switch
- Soundgarden - Outshined
- Spoon - Me and The Bean
- Stone Temple Pilots - Vasoline
- Taddy Porter - Mean Bitch
- Titus Andronicus - A More Perfect Union
- White Denim - Burnished
- The White Stripes - Icky Thump
- Yellow Moon Band - Chimney
While there's a reasonable number of big name bands in there, and tracks that almost anyone will know, there are also a heck of a lot songs that have already been done, mixed in with a few that just won't be any fun on a real guitar anyway. With any luck, they'll be saving the best till last, as Rocksmith certainly sounds like an interesting proposition,
With Rocksmith and Power Gig launching in close proximity to one another (Power Gig is set for October, while Rocksmith is simply dated as "Fall 2011") it'll be interesting to see which one of these games manages to step up, and take Guitar Hero's place. God only knows something needs to fill it - we're starting to miss getting our guitar on.
