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" A guitar teaching tool with elements of Guitar Hero probably best describes Rocksmith, a rhythm action title that ditches plastic peripherals in favour of real guitars. Releasing in Europe this October, Ubisoft&amp;#039;s latest teaches users how to play along to the likes of Nirvana, Blur, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones, courtesy of a special adaptor that turns any electric guitar into a glorified video game controller.   Armed with a copy of Rocksmith and an Epiphone Les Paul Junior guitar - which comes bundled with the game for those without an axe of their own - we&amp;#039;re going to blog our experiences leading up to release to see if Ubisoft&amp;#039;s innovative interactive learning tool can transform a musical novice into a rock god. Lesson One: Learning the basics For those like me who have never played guitar, Rocksmith begins by teaching you how to hold the thing properly, how to strum, what everything on the guitar is and does, not to mention how to tune the strings, something you must do before every song. There are multiple modes and options on the menu screen, including technique challenges, mini-games and multiplayer.  Rocksmith&amp;#039;s career mode actually shares a few similarities with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Users practise a couple of songs, then play gigs in increasingly attractive venues, performing encores if their scores are good enough. Strings are colour-coordinated, while notes fall down the screen, the position of which correspond to frets on the guitar. The game utilises a sliding difficulty scale, upping the challenge and increasing the amount of notes as players improve. On the game&amp;#039;s recommendation, we started off by playing a single note version of &amp;#039;Satisfaction&amp;#039; by The Rolling Stones. Without having to worry about chords, we were able to play the song&amp;#039;s famous riff, performing increasingly challenging fret transitions in the process. It&amp;#039;s also about now that we unlocked our first mini-game in Guitarcade called &amp;#039;Ducks&amp;#039;. Played on a single string, &amp;#039;Ducks&amp;#039; is like Space Invaders with guitars, tasking players to shoot stray ducks by playing different frets. It&amp;#039;s a game designed to improve muscle memory, but has a competitive element thanks to a leaderboard function.      Our first impressions as a teaching tool The first few hours with Rocksmith are a lot of fun and incredibly satisfying, if you&amp;#039;ll excuse the Rolling Stones pun. As somebody familiar with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the action on screen feels instantly familiar, albeit a little overwhelming when the entire fret board comes into play. Being able to play one of the most famous riffs of all time after only an hour feels like a real achievement, and should serve as a motivator for future sessions. Indeed, I couldn&amp;#039;t wait to get back to &amp;#039;Satisfaction&amp;#039; and play it some more. The Guitarcade challenges also seem like a really great idea. Not only is &amp;#039;Ducks&amp;#039; addictive in its own right, but it teaches fret positioning and ultimately muscle memory, something that you can take back and use in the main campaign. My performance definitely improved after 20 minutes with &amp;#039;Ducks&amp;#039;. On the downside, the game&amp;#039;s dynamic difficulty means that things have a tendency to become tricky far too quickly. A good run of notes and you&amp;#039;ll suddenly find yourself in the middle of a solo far beyond your capabilities, which can be quite demoralising. Ultimately, it&amp;#039;s best to ignore the scores at this point and simply hit as many notes as possible regardless of how bad it sounds.  Week One&amp;#039;s Highs and Lows of Rocksmith Highlight: Being able to play the main riff to Rolling Stones classic &amp;#039;Satisfaction&amp;#039; without the game&amp;#039;s helpLow Point: Not only do my fingers hurt, but the failure to play the more complex solos, in Jarvis Cocker&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Angela&amp;#039;, for example, was a little demoralising Join us next month as we put more hours into Rocksmith, hopefully building up our novice skills into something more experienced. Rocksmith is out now in North America and will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in Europe this October. Watch The Rolling Stones perform &amp;#039;Satisfaction&amp;#039; live below:      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a388996/rocksmith-blog-digital-spys-first-taste-of-the-guitar-teaching-tool/>