I enjoy the game overall, Rocksmith 2014 Remastered for my PS3. It is hard to deal with some issues such as playing Bachsmith songs that require certain chords shapes, and looking at the fingerboard and then looking at which notes are being played in what order takes some time to get used to. I am more familiar with reading music scores, chord charts, and tab, or just learning from friends. So it is a period of adjustment on that front.
But, for learning scales, I am working with session mode to learn the different scale types, currently Ionian, and I am having some trouble with it. The game is set up to emphasize practicing only the tonic scale shape, not the other inversions of the scale where the root note is not also the first note of the scale. For instance, I am practicing Ionian E major scale. The phrasing box sits firmly on the 12th fret for the tonic pattern of Ionian E. I can press the right or left shoulder buttons to shift to another pattern, another inversion of the scale, but within a few seconds it always shifts back to the tonic pattern no matter what. I have tried selecting different bands, I don't want to zoom in and out all the time because that isn't a box, it is an extended pattern and that defeats the purpose of zoning in on a certain box and practicing that pattern. Why can't I lock the box into the fret board position that I want and just practice that scale inversion, move on to another one, lock it in place, rinse and repeat. This is beyond annoying that it so user unfriendly.
If there is a way to make session mode lock into a different phrasing pattern so I can play it as long as I want, please let me know.
Each Scale type has 5 patterns that are common to it as it moves up and down the neck of the guitar. There are 11 scales available in Rocksmith. There are 12 keys to choose from when practicing scales and where to put the tonic note of each pattern. That is 55 different patterns that can be learned across 12 different arrangements of fret positions, to get technical that is 660 different scale pattern arrangments between the open position and the 12th fret. That is the minimal amount of work that the Rocksmith team could put into this game to extend it ability to teach guitar and music theory, instead of just adding new songs and fixing a few bugs and calling it a day.
Scale Racer addresses this with exiting the highway into a new position on the neck and playing a different position. But, I can't practice that position as much as i want in Session mode without having to continuously press the shift buttons to move the focus back to the area of the neck I want to focus on. (again if there is a way to make this work, please let me know)
Scale Warriors doesn't even bother with it. Instead of moving between the 5 different positions and patters for a particular type of scale, it only addresses the tonic shape and changes keys and scale type. It is like Rocksmith put minimal effort into building the Guitarcade games just to say they have them, not caring how functional they are as learning tools. As a student of game design for most of my life, including college, I would use the Guitarcade games as a perfect example of how not to design games if you wanted to encourage people to play them a lot.
That being said, I have played the String Skip Saloon over 1000 times and I currently have the second place score with 29,490,289, and it only a matter of time before I take #1. My system doesn't seem to recognize faster double plucks to shoot the big bandits so I end up shooting out of order, even though I played it properly and the game goes haywire and it is game over. My current record seems to be about 175 bandits shot, but they were not all front runner's because of the game misreading my picking or my score would have been closer to 32,000,000 putting me in #1. I accept the limitations of the game to detect rapid tones, that is fine and I will work to overcome it.
What I think would make these tools much more user friendly, and just better for teaching, is if Scale Warriors had more levels to play through, not repeating the same game 3 times (the same way as Castle Chorded lazily does). Instead of moving through different types of scales, it makes more sense as a teaching tool to set it up like Scale racer and either, let the player select their key and then work through the five patterns as the player kills bad guys, or more challenging, keep the shift between keys and add in the shift between patterns to make sure the player is familiar with all the patterns. conceivably the game could have at least 60 (11 scales x 5 patterns + boss levels) different levels, if not 720 (11 scales x 5 patterns x 12 keys + boss levels). Setting up a few more baddies that require different scale skills, like needing to shift in between patterns to kill them, would be fun. The game shouldn't be too difficult to extend, especially if the levels become more procedurally generated, still having little story line animations and new enemy instructions at specific intervals. I would play the hell out of that game if it could take me through all my scales, keys, patterns, and I got to kill bad guys.
None of these topics I have brought up even begins to deal with the more practical theory side of guitar scales. Figuring out how to implement an instructional section that explains guitar theory in the way that Frank Gambale does in his DVD Modes - No More Mystery. He explains how to use modes beautifully, how to shift any key into any mode and then play over any backing track to create a different feel or different emotions.
http://www.alfred.com/Products/Frank...00-904225.aspx
and yes you can find it on Youtube as well.
If Rocksmith wants to actually teach how to play the guitar, and not just how to bang on the strings and play songs (there is a huge difference), in my opinion these would be some very useful upgrades to Session mode, Guitarcade, and possibly expanding the Lessons section.
Thanks for the game, please take some time to improve the Guitarcade and session mode as good technique is often more important to improving guitar playing overall than song repertoire.
And, I will slowly start building up my highscores in every Guitarcade game until I can get as close to #1 as my skills and my system allow. So far, I have only focused on the String Skip Saloon and took a break once I got to #2 and the system had difficulty dealing with playing two pickings on one string to shoot the big bandits. but I am slowly working on the others, taking breaks to learn songs along the way.
"-" egoproctor