'Rocksmith 2014 is Ubisoft's revamped guitar workout due on Mac, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in October.
The Pitch:
"The all-new Rocksmith 2014 Edition is coming this October 2013 and it's redesigned from the ground up to give you the fastest, most fun guitar learning experience ever created. Rocksmith 2014 Edition includes over 50 new songs, new modes, new features, a completely redesigned interface, and much more."
The Key Features:
- Cleaned-up menus and overall presentation
- Session mode lets guitarists jam with auto-generated, 'living' backing bands
- Tons of new songs
- Lots of new lessons, mini-games and content
Impressions:
About a year ago we declared the real-instrument Guitar Hero-a-like 'Rocksmith' to be the best music game ever made. That's no longer the case. Rocksmith 2014 is. And while the previous version sold surprisingly well all told - about 1.5 million cross-platform units - the new edition has the potential to find the megastardom it deserves.
From our demo at Gamescom, it's clear that everything has been cleaned up, improved and rethought for Rocksmith 2014. Gone are the dark, grungy 'rock club'-style menus, long loading screens and irritating scrolling lists of songs. Gone from the core experience too are the overbearing 'win or lose' game mechanics when you're playing. Instead you get bright, easy to read menus, simplified song selection, tightened up in-game presentation (with clearer notes, more fret signposting and bend up/down visual cues.
Most impressive of all is the 'jam band' section, in which the game recognises from your style and pace what type of music you're improvising, and builds a backing band behind you automatically. It sounds cheesy. It sounds like it shouldn't work. In fact it's pretty stunning. There is a massive range of backing instruments from which to choose, and all are customisable and mix-and-match. Watching a guitarist transition from slow blues to metal, and hearing the band behind him take the cue and burst into life, is haunting.
Ubisoft has also addressed a couple of other issues: there's no lag, and learning songs is easier thanks to the addition of some new modes and common-sense tune-ups.We can't wait to get our hands on it and start playing. All it needs now is some Andrew WK DLC. Party hard.