*warning, hilarity in full doses here... *

*Sitkneels and pawsigns... *

Hellos all, Your friendly gryphon here....

Just got my RockSmith for my Xbox1s yesterday from Amazon from wife.

Hobbled out to mailbox (on crutches due to right knee ACL crumbling to dust, yupp ouch... ) and returned inside and triumphant with the white bubble wrapped package.

After a few minutes trying in vain to open the well sealed evil bubble-wrapped package thing, I had to revert to a set of scissors to open, despite a label saying open here.... grumbles...

Opening the package, I extracted the RealTone * cable and the game disc, and the instructions on how to hook up my new 43" inch 4k UHD Samsung tv that's only 2 months old.

Since I had no home theatre to compare to many THX Theatres, I went the cheapest way possible. Running my headphones thru the wired Xbox1s controller, then using a spare port on the back of the Xbox1s freed up the front port for the RealTone* cable. Ok that went better than I thought...

After about a 5 minute download, I started the RS game, fearing my tv would explode in bits, I wouldn't hear any game audio, my guitar getting zombified or something. Wow, it actually works... and as far as I can tell, no lag issues... (Well being partially deaf does hamper some things tho, but what I 'could' hear sounded good enough to me. )

Love the game intro, and one question popped into my cranium.... Is that bluesy-rock guitar playing tune as I'm answering the first questions for RS, is that song available to play? As I LOVE IT.... ^~^ .

After answering the questions, asking for my social security number, blood type, and my first born... waitaminute, that was for my Microsoft account.... heeee.. sorry....

Plugging in my Jackson Dinky JS11, I then did a perfect Michael J Fox impersonation, getting blown backward into my couch... whoops, gotta turn down the tv volume... neighbor's dogs are howling from the noise... don't worry, the playing is only gonna get worse from here on out. Run and hide and all that. ^~^

After my blonde wife gave me a 'look' she gave me a thumbs up, glad nothing had been damaged. I then was successful in tuning my guitar. I like that tuner in game, better than the app on my tablet.

Ok now the game is asking me to choose a song.... ok.... looking looking..... looking..... ehh, lotta songs I don't recognise, hmmm... oooo ok there's one I will try. Rush's Spirit of Radio. But first, minigames...

Ok trying the duck one... hmms... I like it after a few rounds, but I see a slight problem, the frets are off by 1, 0.o mainly the low E string thinks the 5th fret is the 4th... ok that's odd.... tried a few more rounds, then decided to try the song in Riff repeater, on the lowest difficulty.

After a few hiccups, I got started on my epic musical journey... when the song ended after single note plucking and open string notes, I scored well, with only 12 notes missed. Trust me, I never even strummed a guitar before now, and I felt ... accomplished.

Holy Jesus on roller skates... I actually played guitar... 0.o

Now my fingertips ache... I am definitely playing this again, and again... but this will wait until tomorrow.

First impressions with the game and set-up? Butter smooth, no trouble at all. I was hoping I didn't need other audio cables to make sure I didn't have any lag. I did use headphones too, so that is a win as well.

I loved the interface, and how the lessons are shown for my own lack of ability. The game tells me where in the song I had sone troubles, and offers suggestions at which guitarcade games or lessons to try next.

I also downloaded 'Gimmee Shelter' and will try that one next after getting better with 'Spirit of Radio'.

It will be a slow start learning songs with RS, but I'm overall estatic about actually accomplishing something I had wanted to do for a long time.

*****

I made it a goal of mine to fully learn a song and play it well in 60 days, just in time for my birthday on August 10th.


in closing, thank you Ubisoft SF team for putting out a game, teaching aide for us complete guitar noobs to learn to play. You have my sincere thanks...

Cheers,
Kimono Gryphon <><
1 Corinthians 15: 1-4