The best practice game using a real guitar
I'm a big fan of the music genre, and have been wanting to learn guitar for years. Rock Band and Guitar Hero built my confidence, and when RB3 introduced the "pro-guitar" to games, I knew I had to have it. I joke that I can learn anything provided they put it in a video game format. And now I'm learning guitar and bass without paying for lessons. Unfortunately I have fallen into several pitfalls due to only learning through "videogames," and BandFuse has corrected several. Warning: this game is no longer supported and the majority of the DLC has been wiped, so you are pretty much getting a shell of what it sadly should have been. But it's cheap, so hey. With that said, I've spent some time with Rock Band Pro-Guitar, Rocksmith (both releases) and BandFuse. BandFuse has upped my ability playing guitar in numerous ways that the prior releases haven't, and I feel it has had a great concept of learning from the beginning. For those shopping for the best guitar learning tool and can only afford one, here are the most informed criticisms of all three learning tools: Rock Band 3: Using Pro-Guitar mode, if you were lucky enough to buy a specially made Fender guitar for this mode, then I imagine it was a lot of fun. I bought the plastic Mustang model with buttons for frets and metal strings because I wasn't sure I wanted to invest in a full guitar, which I now regret. But these days the price fluxuates, but it is still cheaper than it was upon release. For some reason I'm finding RB3 game disk hard to find for PS3, but for other systems seem to be under $20. The pros are that it is probably the most fun with the most amount of DLC still, but Rocksmith is quickly catching up. For the very beginner, it is good in that you do not have to get your fingers used to strings yet as the fret buttons aren't as painful, and will build the confidence, but know that this is something of a jumping off point to the real guitar. And it is an easy translation to make to the real thing, and has continued to be a good practice tool for me, perhaps one of the best. I still play RB3 weekly to practice the Pro-guitar and Pro-bass parts to try to increase my guitar skills. The cons are, obviously, it isn't a real guitar, and the learning tools are almost nil. Rocksmith: Something I have been getting used to. The thing that has taken me the most amount of time to like this game is the constantly changing difficulty that some may enjoy. Personally, I'd rather learn a part and be able to play it before moving on to the next difficulty - it builds my confidence, and gives me an idea of what the harder version of the song is. Pros: Absolutely the best learning videos and tools, and the Guitarcade is nice for blowing off steam while working the skills and techniques. Also the only option that is still adding downloadable content. Cons: What I mentioned above about the changing difficulty is really the main problem, and for me it is a biggy. It has made the game feel more like work than any other "game" in this genre. There is also the tuner which for me using a PS3 seems to have a problem with the biggest string on both my guitar and bass, at least on 2014. I know it isn't going out of tune that fast, and since it does it for both instruments and I don't have this problem in BandFuse, I suspect the software. BandFuse: I picked this up and was immediately excited. It did several things that I wish Rocksmith had done, which is to have clearly drawn difficulty levels that you pick between and the parts remain static. Plus I've learned tablature, which I doubt would give the average person much difficulty to learn the basics of in 15 minutes of noodling anyway. But since buying this game, some significant things has really increased my ability on the other two games and for making me sound much better on the guitar. Pros: The colored finger system that tells you what finger to use for each. Easy to ignore if you feel you know what is best, but has been a great guide to me as I developed a bad habit of using maybe a finger or two to switch between frets. Since I play a lot of single note versions, I fell into this trap, and I realized that playing and practicing with multiple fingers helps me hit the frets more reliably and more quickly. Not only that, but also it taught me when to mute the strings and when to let them ring out, which RB3 and RS never did. I sound a lot cleaner than I used to when playing songs, and it is nothing I ever thought about as a beginning guitarist. Cons: Bass parts often don't actually have 5 difficulty levels and the tablature reading screen doesn't give as much of a heads up to what notes are coming next, unlike Rocksmith. I found myself playing harder bits in Rocksmith and realized that this was because I looked ahead more, which you can't do as much with BandFuse. The final con I have to report is the teaching videos aren't as good as Rocksmith as they have the people who have been doing it for years teach you instead of an impartial-sounding voice. For instance, Slash is a guitar player and not a guitar teacher. He runs through things pretty fast that will leave most beginners scratching their heads. But there are strange good tips from people, such as "learn to play standing up if you planning on taking the stage," which I would not had immediately thought of. So in review, and have the money to get all 3, the beginner should start with Rocksmith and go through the video lessons, then practice the songs with Rock Band 3 and BandFuse to get the confidence building to progress on to Rocksmith songs, because once you get to the 100% full version of the song, that's when Rocksmith truly comes alive. But BandFuse is usually a lot more fun for actually playing the parts, and does seem to be more in line with the actual song than Rocksmith and RB3, because, from what I've read, it takes more from the master recordings than Rocksmith and RB3 that are composed more by the designers. Read more