Playing a song on rocksmith is good, the rest of the interface, as you point out, is pretty horrible. The rocksmith song library is also pretty small compared to RB3 … even when you just compare songs with guitar-pro support.

You suggest the rocksmith feedback is good, and it _can_ be, but it is entirely visual and IMHO does not work well as you get more advanced. It took me a number of passes through Rebel Rebel to realize I _must_ be getting it wrong because I the indicators showed I was no-where near mastering it, yet the difficulty wasn’t advancing. As you get into more difficult parts you basically can not be reading the score off the screen, you have it memorized and you start looking at the guitar… now your visual feedback doesn’t work at all.

Crikey, dozens or hundreds of hours in, and I’m not sure if there is a native guitar track. In RB3 you can tell that the sound coming off your guitar doesn’t match the one on the soundtrack… And of course the volume gets muted when you botch it… but the other thing is that the RB3 tablature is much less ambiguous (sp?).

Now, someone with a better ear than I have, might not notice these issues.

The RB3 squire is not a good guitar. That plastic fretboard has some real issues. In theory you’re supposed to play it with that ridiculous string mute on…. and I can get better scores if I do that, but it doesn’t feel right, nor sound right. But if you don’t then you have issues with the strings ringing… seems like it should be simple enough to fix in software.

Anyhow, I have both games, I still play both games, and I still buy DLC in both games. I worry that RB3 pro guitar support will eventually get dropped. I keep looking for alternate sources for alternate pro guitars… that’s how I found this comparison

Most of the artists featured in the playlist have less than 5% of a say in which tracks get included in the game, that decision is made by the record companies, and comes down to the negotiation of royalties.
Less popular tracks by an artist are featured because they are cheaper. The artists name is enough of a draw to buy the game in the first place.
Also, we all share a wide and varied taste in music, like mentioned above, the game would have to include 1000+ songs to please everyone.
DLC will satisfy most people if they only want to learn to play tracks by more obscure artists, its thier ears and if they like them bleeding, then rock yourself out i say! but do it from the comfort of your own wallet.

RS is an amazing well put together game, i mean come on, they are sampling guitar harmonics in realtime here and playing that back with the extra overhead of processing for the game dynamics, on a games console!! If that isnt awsome enough for you, then there something wrong with your brain.

Learn to play something new every day, and your reportiore will make you a more rounded individual. sweet home alabama, once it permeates your cerebral cortex has the power to change the world.

WILD STALIIONS! MOST EXCELLENT!

Give us some Machine Head, give us some Pantera, I don’t want to only play music with normal tuning because it must be played by everyone!

I want some Bloodbath, Entombed, some dirty stuffs tuned low! Maybe they could do a rocksmith for band tuned in B. That would be great…

And I’d loooove to play Converge, even if it will be very painfull cause it’s hard to play, but where’s the fun if it’s easy???

I don’t say they should try to please only metalheads. But if they do a songlist for people who do like music (so exit black eyed peas), that will be a succes for sure. And they will, they don’t have the choice. It’s just such a shame it’s not the case since the beginning…

I’ve been playing guitar as an amateur for the last 20 years or so and do play RB3 pro with the squier since the guitar is out (something like 1 year ago, maybe more, don’t really remember).

For some reason I really don’t like RS :
- I don’t believe I will manage to adapt myself to the way the music is presented during gameplay, the problem being that every note, is displayed on the same line and that you have to remember which color is which string. And, being used to tablature notation I do frequently move string when you just have to move the finger.
- Chords are given names only when you must play them with all strings, if you play power chords on 2 or 3 strings the name is not given… It would be so simple to tell us it’s a F5 or a D5, with the base string and I would automatically put my fingers on the correct strings, but the way the information is given I have to think to where I should put my fingers, often leading me to miss a strum.
- the automatic difficulty is very strange in its behavior and is very frustrating when you know how to play a part of the song but the notes are not given, or other notes are given instead.
- the UI design is poor, as you said the library is a nightmare to use, I would not imagine using it with 200+ songs !

I could talk of the song library but this is mainly a matter of taste so I won’t.

All in all I’m a bit disappointed, I have been waiting for Rocksmith for one year before it does arrive here in Europe and finally after 3 weeks playing it a lot my pleasure is to switch back to RB3 and to play the music I love, at the choosen difficulty level, and in a way more compatible to tablature reading (as other did mention be sure to activate chord notation in the options, it’s really a must, it’s a shame that the setting is not remembered when you switch the console off).

So for me RS is a no go in this version and RB3 is still the best way to play music games with a real guitar (of course if you do have the Squier, for my part I bought two of them when they where still available and do not regret it…)

1) Dynamics. In real life, it matters how hard you hit the drums. If you hit the hi-hat really hard, but the kick or drum is soft, you may play all the notes correctly, but it’s not going to sound the way it should.

2) There’s no using your left foot to open and close the hit-hat. Another really important skill that you’ll never learn in Rock Band.

3) Moving around the set. Hitting across 4 surfaces that are right next to each other is much different than actually having to do a fill from snare to tom-tom to floor tom and back to a crash, for example. Even if you play pro drums, it’s not that close either. Also, it doesn’t really matter where on the surface you strike, as long as you’re not way out on the edge, you get the same result. Not true in real life. Go hit a snare drum right in the middle and then more towards the edge (but still on the head) and you’ll see a big difference in sound.

4) Timing. On RB, you can hit a stream of notes out of time and many times still get credit for it. For example, take “Tom Sawyer”. I’ve noticed that in the beginning section with the 16th notes on hi-hat that I can vary the tempo and still hit all the notes even though my audible strikes are way out of time.

5) Playing from memory. It’s much easier to play a song when you have the notes streaming in front of you. Many times, at that point, you’re not drumming, but just using hand-eye coordination to hit notes. For example, think about how hard it would be for most Expert drummers who get Gold Stars on everything to even 5 star those same songs without a note chart.

So yeah, playing RB drums gives you somewhat of an advantage in some ways, but it’s foolish to say that you can go from being even a great expert player with no RL experience and play the drums at anywhere near the same level.