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This game has finally been released (in the USA at least).
My copy for the PS3 arrived earlier this week.
So far, my impression has been very favourable. It really works as they had described.
It is a game with a similar interface to the Rockband/Guitar Hero games - you get a "highway" of notes defending down the screen towards a graphic of the strings and frets on your guitar. So the notes that you play are represented on a virtual fretboard.
Along with single notes, it can display chords, as well as things such as slides, hammers/pulls, bends, and palm mutes.
To play, you plug your guitar (any guitar with a 1/4 inch jack - I am using my Les Paul Standard) into your console with a cable that is supplied - USB on one end, 1/4 inch jack on the other end.
There is a tuner built into the game, and you are required to check that your guitar is in tune before each song that you play.
The interface can be adjusted for left or right handed play.
When you first start, you only get a few notes from the song to play along with. The first song that it started me on was Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. Initially it seemed that I was playing one note every 3 or 4 seconds. Pretty basic. But it soon realised that I could handle this, and increased the number of notes to play. By the end of the first play-through, I was playing a simplified version of the main riff.
On subsequent play-throughs, the number of notes increased, and now I am playing almost every note required in this song. It has proven a really fun way to learn the song, and I don't think I would have learnt to play it anywhere near as quickly if I had bought a Tablature book. And because you have to follow the things that are happening on the screen, it means that you can't play whilst constantly looking at your guitar's fretboard (a bad habit for me) - it forces you to learn your fretboard by feel.
There are about 50 songs that come with the game - quite a number of these are unknown to me. DLC is already starting to become available - I think each additional song is being sold for $2.99 at the moment.
Some reviews have criticised this game for not being as much fun as the other "guitar games", and feeling "lonely" in that you can't compete online etc. However I think this misses the point. This isn't meant to be a game to pull out at drunken parties where you can get all your drunk mates together as a band. It is meant to be far more serious - it is meant to be about learning to play a guitar in a fun and novel way. The addition of "game" elements is only present to strengthen this purpose.
So in summary, I am really impressed. It actually works as it was promised to work. It makes learning guitar more fun, and (for me at least) is speeding up the process of learning new songs.It also gives you a backing band to play along with, which is great if you don't have a real band to play with.
It is not for people who want to be bedroom guitar legends with minimal effort by playing a plastic guitar controller. It requires effort and persistence to get the most out of it.
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