Did anybody pick it up?

I purchased the game for the first time and got the expansion pack to support the bass, since I'm a bass player and don't really care about guitar.

So far I really love it. I had heard of some issues with the way the thing works but my setup runs like butter. It's pretty amazing really, when you think about it. It's just as responsive as Rock Band or any of those other games.

My biggest complaint right now is the interface for playing the game. Selecting songs and whatnot. It's garbage. I have never in my life seen such a frustrating interface. Especially when they could easily have just made a Guitar Hero 2 style interface that foregoes all the garbage on screen for ismplicity. There's all the reason in the world to fancy something up if it doesn't actually make the exerpeince WORSE, but Rocksmith fails in that.

I'm also at odds with teh song selection. Very few songs are ones I want to play out of the box. After playign through them, they catch and hold my interest. Maybe more than songs I would have picekd on my own. That being said, though, only like 5 songs or so make me go "oh! I want to play that!" and that's not good...

ANyways, I'm interested to see if anyone else got the bass pack and what they think about it.

@JazGalaxy: I'm pretty amazed at how well the tech actually works. I have everything running through my TV right now, so the lag is a bit of an issue, but I can live with it.

One thing I'd have like to have seen is a straight up "lead guitar" "rhythm guitar" choice for the charts. If I was ever interested in playing the song for real with another person, it would be nice to learn the actual parts instead of a mish-mash from the combo arrangements.

I disagree about the song selection, though it's completely subjective so I can understand that you might not like the tunes that are in there. It's pretty clear that the developers like the Black Keys and other bands like them, which is great for me because I love that style of music. It also helps that their songs are easy to play, so I feel like I'm really "getting it" the more and more that I play them. There's a lot of stuff that I didn't recognize, but I've found that the tunes are a blast to play for the most part.

I do agree about the song interface; it's really, really bad. RB2 and 3 did a good job at handling a large amount of songs, so I'm surprised that Ubisoft didn't crib a bit from their interface. I really don't like you have to start all the way back at the beginning of the list when picking a new song.

I haven't tried the bass pack. I don't have a bass guitar, and I'm not interested enough to spend $30 on it. I do think that's a really good value for what you get, but I'm not into bass.

It's time.

I picked it up tonight and played it for a few hours. As a would-be bass player (in that i bought a bass 5 months ago and have only learned a few bass parts from tabs, but I haven't had lessons or 'real' practice) I'm really impressed by it. I can see where the interface would be annoying if you just want to play a song, but so far I've just been following the bass career path and it has been working pretty good.

The gameplay HUD/interface is really good though. The way fret position, strings, and techniques like bends and slides are represented are very easy to understand.

I thought about getting it for PC, but I was worried that my A/V setup might be more laggy with the PC. So I got it on 360, thinking the achievements might be a minor push to keep at it. My set up is spot-on as far as screen lag goes (default '50' setting) using the VGA-cable to a monitor with stereo RCA connections to a simple sound system.

Some of the mini games seem like a good way to do rote practice, so if I can make a point of playing them regularly I feel like they will help with quick fret locating and such.

The bass expansion is the reason I bought the game now (I picked it up in the cost-saving 'with bass support' new SKU) and it seems like a lot of work went into building a bass experience. Custom graphics, videos, voice overs, and video were produced to reflect the differences between bass and guitar.

The song selection seems pretty cool to me.

I'll keep playing it and post again, if you have any questions that a rookie could answer, throw them my way.

@Stahlbrand: I've played so many hours of the bass expansion (I don't even want to think about how many hours on the base game), and I was blown away by how much new stuff they added. Something I have been wondering about other bass Rocksmith players, do you follow if a song tells you to play with a pick or your fingers? I play every song fingerstyle, it's the way I learned to play. I just don't have any fun playing with a pick. I will play some of the faster metal songs with a pick though.

Fingers only. I don't actually own a pick :P

Two weeks later, I just wanted to pop in and say I'm still really enjoying this software and think it is great. I've got hella finger blisters though from playing 'pick recommended' songs with my fingers though.

I'm very pleased with the improvements in my playing since I started with this game. Would recommend to anybody else thinking about taking up a bass or guitar, or who already has one but just picks around on it like I did before Rocksmith. I've you already taken some lessons or whatever, I don't know how useful the game would be, so I can't speak to that. The simulated pedals and amps and tone pre-sets are really cool too if you want to play songs you know, or play along to tabs, and try to replicate the tone of the original artist.

I think I'm going to have to buy some of the bundled and discounted DLC soon. I wish I knew when the sale was going to end - I don't really wanna drop 30 bucks on DLC just now, but I don't want to miss the sale either.