Return to Castle Chordead is a game focusing on helping you transition from Chord to Chord, while learning the chords. In it, you have a sort of lightning guitar that will shoot the enemies as you play the chord that appears above their heads. If it takes a while, the chords will start showing up in a chart near the enemy. You "fly" through the level in first person mode, stopping at scenic areas while the enemies, in this case they are the undead, come at you. Play the right chord, shoot energy at the undead, destroy them.
This game is based on the old rail shooter by Sega, "House of the Dead". It is said to be "on rails" because you do not really control how you move, it is more like a roller coaster that stops while you shoot zombies. This type of game has already been used in learning, as there is a "Typing of the Dead" series where you typed words and phrases to attack the zombies.
Return to Castle Chordead was a wonderful surprise to me. I played it first because I had a mission to, and it was way back in the beginning days of me playing. I thought I would be horrible at it, since I was horrible at the space shooter game. To my surprise, I did really really well in the first game. The graphics are right up there with the House of the Dead when it first came out, so I think it matches the style very well. Return To Castle Chordead is super campy though, but I think that is very much on purpose. It is almost a parody of House of the Dead instead of an homage.
My main problem with it is that you are not in control of the chords used. I really think it would be much more useful if the difficulty was based on the enemies, not the difficulty of the chords, and you get to choose the chords if you wished. I guess it makes it much more of a "game" to make you progress through though, so maybe its incentive to keep playing. Still, this is a sort of minor criticism that could fit in a few games in the Guitarcade.
Day 28
Something new and awesome happened today. I was at my girlfriend's house and she had the TV on as background noise while she made me a wonderful dinner. I glanced up from my tablet and saw a girl playing the guitar in some commercial for the Disney Channel. The cool thing was, I was picking out the chords she was using. I was doing it by sight, and I was recognizing the way she was holding her fingers. This is really cool to me, and it makes me excited about my musical future. One day I hope I could do that by the sound alone, but biology may have made that impossible, at least I could watch someone play a song and learn it by watching instead of having to look up notation or "how to" videos.
I am finding that saying the chord is really helping me while I do my stuff in Rocksmith. I am used to video games, and there was a time I played some Guitar Hero. The colors come and go and you're not worried really about remembering WHAT the color is, only that you pushed the button are are waiting for the next color. Video games have conditioned my brain to a certain way of learning. Some how, when I say "E minor" or "A minor" its getting stuck in my brain that I'm not playing a game, I'm learning guitar. I also kind of equate this habit with being able to watch other people play and recognize their chords. Instead of thinking "oh that's the part of the practice song here where I do this" its "that's an E minor". I don't know if I'm really describing it correctly ir explaining why saying it helps, you'd think that's be like saying "looking at your fingers helps", that it would be something you'd want to eventually ween yourself off of doing. I guess it is just making it feel like learning and less like performing the correct procedure in a game.
A few days ago I went and bought a few things for my musical stuff. One of the things I picked up was a 1.14 mm gauge pick from Dunlop. When I first started I got the "medium" gauge Fender picks. A few years back I wanted to try picks on my bass, you know... cause sometimes you just wonder. Anyway, I had several left over and I've ended up using a .88 dunlop since I've started the Rocksmith challenge. Well, I have to try the extremes, I can't see myself ever liking anything flimsier than a Fender "medium", so now I need to find the top. This 1.14 has basically no flex to it. The attack this thing makes(the strike through on the string) is really intense. I do not thing I do chords very well using it, but I really like the sound my blues playing sounds with it. I like it, but I really think that .88 is what I'm going to stick with. The .88 picks are still very stiff, but not so stiff they make chord strumming too distinct. With the 1.14 I was almost sounding like I was quickly arppegiating the chords.
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