To put it into perspective of how awesome this is, I actually took a pass on Batman Arkham Origins which came out a few days ago. First off, I'm a huge fan of the Batman series and second, I played the demo of the game at Comic Con and liked it. But I just don't see myself playing anything else other than Rocksmith for the foreseeable future (except GTA when my fingers need a rest). Rocksmith 2014 ftw!!

Looking at the last post in this thread, it has been almost a year to the day since I last played Rocksmith. There was a few months devoted to BandFuse, but we all know how they ended up. TOAST. Anyway, I subscribe to Rocksmith on YouTube, and even though I haven't played RS is a long time, I do keep up with what new songs they are adding to the menu and a couple of days ago I saw that they had an Arena Rock Pack that included Dio, Poison, Autograph and Winger and one other song that is eluding me at the moment. I love all the songs, but I chose to download Autograph's Turn Up The Radio song as a stand alone (also cheaper that way to). I went with this song in particular because I loved playing the song back when it came out. I could also play the solo note for note. But it has been years and years since I last played it and thought this would be a fun song to relearn and have the band actually playing behind me. I also grabbed Survivor's Eye Of The Tiger as well.

Ugh. I just paid to get these two songs last night and now I can't even practice them because my TV crapped out. Sigh.

With money in my MS account about to expire, I just paid for Detroit Rock City by KISS. I have enough money for one more song. I'm on the fence of what to get next. I was thinking of getting Heaven's On Fire by KISS. Love the song, but it looks to be a bit too easy in the game. No challenge. The other song I'm leaning toward is Painkiller by Judas Priest. The main riff looks like a good workout, but one that I could pick up pretty quickly. It's the Solo that's going to prove to be challenging. It's going to take a lot of free time to get through it note for note and I don't know if I'm gonna have that much free time. So, it's an easy song that I can play all the way through Vs. Awesome Riff, but incomplete song for the time being. Ack!!!!

My first run through on Painkiller with Guitar was sloppy as f*ck! I need to work on this sh*t! Ack!!!!!

Okay, here's my current progress in Rocksmith since moving over from Xbox 360 to PC, which was about a month ago. What follows is my complete list of songs that I've Mastered or close to mastering (85%-100%). I've been working very hard on a lot of songs simultaneously to build up a Set List for when I start streaming on Twitch.

BASS Songs

Adele - Hello
Adele - Rolling In The Deep
Artic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know
Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face
Bon Jovi - Silent Night
Bryan Adams - Heaven
Green Day - Know Your Enemy
Heart - Alone
KISS - A World Without Heroes
KISS - I Still Love You
KISS - Shout It Out Loud
Magic Wands - Black Magic
Maroon 5 - Never Gonna Leave This Bed
Maroon 5 - Sugar
Michael Jackson - Give Into Me
Miley Cyrus - Party In The USA
Pink - Family Portrait (Radio 1 Live Lounge)
Pink - Get The Party Started
Pink - Try
Pink - Who Knew
Prince - Purple Rain
Queen - Under Pressure
Robbie Williams - Angels
Simple Minds - Don't You Forget About Me
Stillwater - Fever Dog
Taylor Swift - I Knew You Were Trouble
The Beatles - Free As A Bird
The Beatles - Get Back
The Beatles - Real Love
The Heavy - How Do You Like Me Now?
Tina Turner - The Best
U2 - With Or Without You
Wall Of Voodoo - Mexican Radio


GUITAR Songs
AC/DC - Back In Black
AC/DC - Hells Bells
AC/DC - Highway To Hell
Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face
Hollywood Undead - Hear Me Now
KISS - Cold Gin
KISS - Lick It Up
KISS - Love Gun
KISS - Not For The Innocent
KISS - Rock and Roll All Nite
KISS - Rock and Roll Hell
KISS - War Machine
KoRn - Word Up

Okay, now for a bit of commentary about my thoughts and past experiences before and after Rocksmith should you choose to read further. As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been playing guitar since Jr. High School with an extended break when I got into the work place. Around High School, I was actively writing and recording Demos on my little 4-Track Recorder. But since I didn't have access to a Bass player, I went down to my local music store and basically bought the cheapest Bass I could find. Since I wasn't a Bass player and didn't know how to really play it, I wasn't going to spend big money on it. I just needed something that I could lay down tracks for me to record my guitar on. Beyond a a few Stu Hamm VHS tapes I bought, that was the extent of my Bass "knowledge" which wasn't much.

Fast-forward to Rocksmith 2014. I got the "game" because I'm a guitar player, but I knew that you could also play Bass in the game as well, which was a bonus in itself. But I never really bothered to play any of the Bass parts (save for a few times here and there) when I was playing the "game" on the Xbox 360. I stuck with Guitar parts. Duh! Once I finally moved over to PC, I busted out my old Bass and started hitting any song that had a good groove, even songs that I normally wouldn't even give the time of day to (Miley Cyrus anyone?). The list you see above, although "impressive" in the amount of songs I've tackled and nearly mastered on most, if not all, in such a short time frame, there are probably another 20 or so that I had to bail on until I get better accustomed to playing Bass. I won't be playing any RHCP songs for a while, that's for sure.

One thing that really stuck out for me in the past few weeks when moving into Beatles songs to learn is how my admiration for Paul McCartney has gone nuclear. I've always known that the driving force of any Beatles song is his bass playing. But his parts at times seem "simple" so you subconsciously don't really give them much thought. But sitting down and dissecting what he is actually doing is just mind-blowing because a lot of his riffs/parts never repeat the same way. There is always some sort of variation, but he is able to keep the same melody intact in spite of any variation. MIND. BLOWN. Mean Mr. Mustard, Don't Let Me Down, Come Together, Hello Goodbye and Something are just a few songs that sent me running to the hills. But I'm gonna have fun learning these songs for sure.

If you've read this far, my commentary is almost over. I promise. So, getting back to the "game". When you load it up, the Main Menu gives you a few options. You can Learn a Song, which is basically choosing any song you want and rocking out to it note for note. You can go into Session Mode which is a virtual band that actually plays to you instead of the other way around. It's great for improvising and working out original material. There is also Guitarcade which dresses up boring scales and whatnot as 80's style arcade games. It makes tedious practice fun to do. There is also Lessons, which is what it sounds like. You click on that and you have a submenu to choose whatever thing you want to learn, Want to learn chords, click that and a video presentation with an instructor comes up. You want to learn bends? Same thing. Everything from double stops to finger tapping is covered. It's very comprehensive. Now here's the fun thing that I just discovered today. When you load up the "game", you select if you want to play LEAD Guitar, RHYTHM Guitar or Bass. When you have Guitar selected, the lessons deal only with that instrument. But when you select Bass, it's a whole other new batch of video instructions to learn that stayed hidden until I chose Bass and entered Lessons. I've been playing Bass for the pass month and I never bothered to go into Lessons until today to discover that there was new stuff for me to hit. MIND BLOWN. So, that's what I'll be doing the rest of the night.