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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
So how does it go as a tutorial? Because I've barely used a guitar before, and I wouldn't mind learning one day.
Or what about how it teaches you Steel, assuming you have some competency with a guitar? Do you feel like the game teaches you well enough that you could confidently play it without the software?
For a complete newcomer, it can be a bit overwhelming. The upside of its approach is that the focus on the game seems to be on getting the player to play the songs from the get-go, which is something good since proper guitar lessons always involve a sizeable amount of exercises that can be really boring, all of this before you get to play even one song. That much is good. The downside of it is that by choosing on not focusing on the more boring aspects of guitar learning, the player can miss critical exercises meant to build strenght, speed and accuracy on both the plucking and fretting hands, and it could be very easy to develop bad playing habits without noticing it. The game is not barebones in the learning aspect, at any rate, since it has a comprehensive chord library and minigames that try to make repetitious exercises a bit more fun and bearable, as well as challenges that let you dominate common playing techniques. I guess it just needs commitment from the player.
If you already know your way around the instrument, it's far easier to squeeze out everything the game has to offer and have fun while at it. And once you have played the songs in it enough times, at a reasonable skill level, you will be able to play them on your own for sure.
Rocksmith is a music game developed by Ubisoft Montreal, released on Oct 18th 2011 for PS3/360 in North America. It loosely follows the same structure than previous music games (such as GH or Rock Band) had, but with one critical difference: you get to use an actual, real guitar in this one.
I picked the PS3 version this weekend and I can't praise it enough. It provides both education and entertainment in a convenient package that has something to offer to both newcomers to the instrument as well as seasoned guitar aficionados. The package includes the game disc and a special cable that allows you to plug your guitar directly to your game system. There's a more expensive bundle that includes a Les Paul Epiphone Jr. guitar, if I recall correctly.
What you do in this game is not really that much different than what you did on GH/RB. Game is about hitting the right notes in order to rack up points as you progress through a career mode of sorts that allows you to play at different venues and unlock gear. The thing here is that you are actually learning the song as you progress through it, starting out real easy and dynamically adjusting the difficulty of the song to how your performance is.
It has a very comprehensive library of videos with common playing techniques as well as tips for everything ranging from how to string/tune your guitar to advanced stuff. It has a built-in tuner that works amazingly and autostarts whenever it detects your guitar is out of tune before starting a song. Another great feature is a technique challenge section, which makes you perform different techniques until you master them, such as sliding, hammer on/pull offs, bending/pre-bending and more. It even has weird minigames aimed to improve your speed, coordination and skills.
Song selection is good, not great, with acts ranging from the Stones and the Animals to Lenny Kravitz and Radiohead. Like I said, the game adjusts the difficulty in a dynamic way to accomodate all ranges of guitar playing skills, and evolves with you in real time, so if you're just breezing through a song, it'll raise up the difficulty accordingly. Strings are color coded and frets are marked the way you would find them in an actual guitar, color coding is a bit confusing at first, but it's nothing that can't be overcome. As you progress through a career mode of sorts, you earn points that allow you to unlock different gear (guitars, amplificators, pedals and different effects) which you can fiddle around with. Progress unlocks bigger venues and more complex songs, but I think all of them are already available in the song catalogue from the beginning. You can practice them, use a riff repeater to work on difficult parts, or try them out in their different arrangements (chords, individual notes, etc).
It is a very well made game, I kind of expected it to be a half-assed effort, but it's really complete. It has a clunky user interface, though, and HDMI users will probably find audio lag, but there are workarounds for that. At any rate, it's a great tool both for learning the basics or honing your skills.