‘Rocksmith+’ Review: Ubisoft’s Guitar-Teaching Subscription Service Will Rock You

Here’s how much Ubisoft has invested in Rocksmith+, its guitar-learning subscription service. Within the first few minutes of plugging your electric guitar into your computer, you’ll see an introductory video that states: “If you’re just starting out, chances are that you’re probably realizing that playing guitar can sometimes be physically uncomfortable.” Which is to say, Ubisoft isn’t looking to appeal to the casual gamer who wants to pick up and play a plastic peripheral, a la Guitar Hero. Rather, they’ve doubled down on an audience of actual guitarists, and they’re honest about the hard work that entails.

That isn’t to say that Rocksmith+ is severe and unforgiving. For one, the songs on the service have special effects in the background, and there’s a Noteway that helps you visualize when and where to strum, how to finger the various chords, and whether you’ll need to mute, slide, sustain, or ideally hammer on a note. There’s even an adaptive difficulty designed to allow players to jump into just about any song with simplified tracks that gradually add more complicated fingering as you successfully progress through each section.

Alongside these elements are also videos on cooldown exercises to relax your wrists and arms and guided instructions on how to properly hold and shift between the frets, to say nothing of deep-dive “Discovery” videos that break down the physical components of and maintenance of your guitar. That is, should you want to learn more about the magnetics that drive your pickup.

Elsewhere, there are pretty, gamified elements, like an experience bar that fills up based on how long you spend on any dexterity-building exercise or using the Riff Repeater to go note-by-note through a section until you nail it. But there are no high scores to set, no multiplayer competitions, no arcade “world tour” mode. You’re here to learn, first and foremost.

For a beginner guitarist like myself, Rocksmith+ is a godsend. It’s self-paced, always available, and a lot cheaper than in-person lessons would be. It strikes a decent compromise between a live tutorial, where a teacher could adjust my fingers directly, and an online video, where I can emulate without any sort of feedback. Here, I can instantly select any chord from the song I’m playing, see the fingering chart (and sometimes even a live demonstration of the grip), and get instant feedback as to whether I’ve strummed it correctly or not. The process isn’t perfect, as you might get stuck trying to interpret how to skip a certain note on a barre chord, or what you need to adjust for the proper palm mute, but it’s targeted enough to get a would-be guitarist there with practice, or at least that’s the feeling I get after spending weeks with the service.

Would that you were offered a bit more guidance. You can sort songs by their overall difficulty (i.e., how hard they’d be if you’re at the highest adaptive level, with every note available), whether or not they require accessories (like a capo), and whether they’ve got lead, rhythm, or chord-heavy notation. But Rocksmith+ doesn’t recommend songs for you to tackle based on your lessons. That is, if you’ve completed a Basic lesson that has you swapping between A-minor and E-minor, there’s no suggestion of full-length songs that feature those chords.

That this feature is missing is especially odd given that the game does make suggestions after each song about specific measures and skills that you should focus on improving. In short, while you can’t fail a song, you can find yourself flailing your way, even at 50% speed, through content that’s way beyond your ability, and that can be frustrating to a novice in need of direction.

So far as the library of songs goes, it’s perfect for novices willing to play anything, but probably less so for experts who may be disappointed that the specific song they want to learn isn’t there. New songs are added regularly, as part of the base subscription fee, and there are enough genres there that you shouldn’t ever feel pressured to play a track from, say, the Wiggles or NSYNC (unless you want to), but you don’t need to be a math expert to know that even with over 5,000-plus tracks, there are bound to be some major omissions. Still, the game’s adaptive method ensures that on every track, whether it’s the Circle Jerks’s “Beverly Hills” or Boston’s “More Than a Feeling,” it’s still possible to learn something new and have a good time in the process.

This game was reviewed with code provided by Ubisoft.