Rocksmith 2014 Day 1

Day 1 saw a lot of frustration and giddy.  First I didn't expect to spend 6 hours on my first day with this but it happened.  After I tore open the packaging with my bare hands I quickly plugged in everything and started the game up.  While I downloaded the mandatory game update is when I actually opened the setup document for Rocksmith and felt my first pang of disappointment.  Apparently there is an "Ideal" setup for play. 

I don't have a fancy theater system setup, just a simple "plug HDMI cable from Xbox to TV." In my determination to be the best, I plan to buy an audio out plug for my Xbox to encounter 0 audio lag.  I tried using the original composite that came with my box, but for some reason there's a plastic mold on it to block the HDMI port when composite is used. However! It's great to note that during my play I didn't really experience too much lag (then again I didn't hit too many notes either).

As the game finished loading I heard the first wailing of the Epiphone guitar as the game booted.  It was awesome.

The first thing the game has you do is play a song.  On the guitar. So I go to "Learn to play" and select the recommended song "All I Wanna Do" by Splashh.

The video above is on Expert I think, I was playing it on Novice. But let's face it, the song on youtube looks easy right? Totally different when you're actually on the guitar and trying to slide from 3rd to the 7th fret and vice versa while at the same time positioning your strumming hand to pick the right string.  At first the picking experience is akin to using a needle to find a tree in a forest while the fretting hand is fighting a long and arduous battle with the board.

Guitarcade. Guitarcade is awesome. It's like an 80's arcade game collection that you play using only your guitar.  My favorite so far is Duck Redux because of the simple look of the game, and ease of play (when it works).

Arn't they cute?

The way it works is that a duck will show up on the fret board, and you have to play a note in the fret to shoot the duck. Too bad it doesn't always read the frets right. When a duck is on 5 and my FINGER IS ON 5, the game shoot in FRET 6.... Very frustrating, especially when you're looking at your own fingers on the correct fret wondering what's wrong. A quick search on Bing/Google says that this may be because I'm putting my finger down too hard on the fret itself, or the guitar needs to be professionally tuned.  Either way, it says its my fault and to fix it. Thanks guys.

At the end of the day (11pm?) I had played for about 5 solid hours.  It was hard to put the game (is it really a game?) down, and I figured it would be even harder to wait through the next day for my next chance to play.

Here's a breakdown of what I had accomplished:

Path: Lead

Songs I worked on:
X-Kid - Greenday - 20%
All I Wanna Do - Splashh - 6%

Lessons learned:
Chords
Shift
Holding the Guitar

Guitarcade:
Ducks Redux
Scale Racer

Looks like I'm on my way!