The display borrows a lot of its design cues from Guitar Hero-which is probably a good thing, since so many players are already familiar with that system. That requires a more complicated visual setup. Because Rocksmith is teaching you to play a real guitar, it has to tell you which fret and which string to play simultaneously. Those games got off easy-they only needed to relay which of the colored "frets" to play. Here, Rocksmith has a major challenge: It must provide considerably more information onscreen than competitors like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. You use the ordinary console controller to navigate menus. It's a cable that plugs into the output jack of any guitar or bass and connects it to your console via the USB port. The thing that sets Rocksmith apart from other rhythm games is the "Hercules" adapter. In the Popular Mechanics lab, we played the Xbox 360 version of Rocksmith 2014 with a pair of Epiphone guitars: The Les Paul Junior that comes with the game bundle, and a $1000 Les Paul Custom that the company sent us for testing, and which, sadly, we have to send back. It turns out Rocksmith has something to offer not only beginners but also intermediate players looking to take the next step.
So, has the virtual guitar teacher truly arrived? To find out, two of us tried our hand: Andrew, who has been playing for 16 years, and Carl, who wanted to take up the 60-day challenge. The box bears a fat label proclaiming "The fastest way to learn guitar," and Ubisoft launched an ad campaign promising that Rocksmith 2014 could teach prospective shredders to play guitar or bass in just 60 days. But Rocksmith 2014 is considered a replacement rather than an update: The company is trying to rebrand the franchise not as a game but as a teaching tool. Last fall, Ubisoft released a new version. If gamers went nuts for playing real rock songs on plastic guitars, why wouldn't they swoon for a game that let them score fake points with a real axe? After years of development, in 2011, Rocksmith was born. Following the phenomenal success of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Ubisoft sensed an opportunity.