Rocksmith 2014 showed up this week, so I played it on Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday. But I ended up having enough to say about it that I wrote about it on my main blog rather than here, so: Rocksmith 2014 first impressions!

One thing that I didn’t mention there: I’m enjoying the songs in game quite a bit, which I wasn’t entirely sure would be the case going in. Yay for more Rush and Boston (are we going to get the rest of that album as DLC?), but also yay for random songs that I’m less familiar with. I’m still worried that there’s going to be a bit more metal than I can like, but the game gives me enough options to skip songs that I’m not in the mood for that that will be fine; between both games plus DLC I’m certainly not lacking in options to play…

Not much to report for the last couple of weeks; the one new song I’ve gotten is Wish You Were Here, which has the distinction of being a little harder than it seems and causing my hand to hurt. Both, I think, caused by its copious use of inverted power chords (or whatever you call them—like power chords but with a fourth on the bottom instead of fifth), I’m probably gripping too tightly and putting too much pressure on my pinky?

And I’ve been playing a bit of guitar outside of Rocksmith, too, trying to learn Itsumo Nando Demo. Memorizing it is a little harder than I somehow think it should be, but tractable.

But really the most distinctive aspect of this week is that it’s the end of this iteration of Rocksmith practice: Rocksmith 2014 is coming out on Tuesday. I’m curious to see what improvements they’ve done; sounds like mostly usability improvements, which is fine with me. And having more songs to play is always welcome, of course.

Pictures from the September VGHVI Minecraft session:

Miranda decided to turn the upstairs room that wasn’t a stable into a greenhouse. We didn’t want to put glass everywhere, but we put glass at the end:

Replacing the wall at the end with glass

Outside view of the glass

Then she started planting:

Starting work on the bed for the plants

The first version of the plant bed is complete

The first plants are added

That was a single-row version, but she expanded it to two rows with water between:

Adding water for the plants

Two rows of plants

Flowers at the end

It took a while for the pumpkin and melon to grow

Roger, meanwhile, was hard at work at his cathedral; that thing is going to be massive.

Roger working in the snow

An arch of the cathedral

Chipping excess blocks away from the arch

And Dan was working on his huge glass structure in a bay:

The glass continues to grow

Inside the glass

Miranda and I thought it would be a good place play hide and seek, at least at night

Closeup view of lava

Daytime view

I mostly just wandered around; the only building I did was helping with getting the glass front of the greenhouse in place.

Staying out of the snow

A loading error

Saying hello to my horse

Dan wandered by our house and Miranda made a stable for him, so he tamed a horse as well:

Dan taming a horse

Success!

Horse armor

It’s been a month since I gave a guitar status update, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been playing Rocksmith: it’s just that I didn’t have anything particular to write about. (Though there was one weekend day where I didn’t practice guitar because we spent the afternoon singing in Rock Band 3 instead.) I was basically just going through the new DLC that I downloaded; some was quite good (the songs from The Strokes and My Chemical Romance in particular), some was pretty boring to play (funk is nice to listen to and probably fun enough on bass but not so great on guitar), and Love Hurts was fascinating enough that I think I’ll write about it on my main blog.

But now I’ve finally played those enough that the game has decided to go back to the regular rotation. I’ve already started being a little more selective in what to play, ejecting songs from events if I don’t think I’ll enjoy / learn much from them, and I plan to do that more. And I plan to get back to practicing specific songs (and even sections of songs) instead of just going through events.

And I might learn a few more songs outside of the game: in particular, I’m thinking this arrangement of Itsumo Nando Demo might be worth learning.

Of course, it doesn’t make much sense to talk too much about my plans, because Rocksmith 2014 will comes out in just over two weeks, and once that’s out I’ll be spending my weekends diving into what’s new there…