Living the life of a rockstar is something we've all dreamt about, and thanks to 'Rocksmith+', that fantasy is now ever so closer to reality.
The cliches about music journalists are true; most of us are failed musicians, or in this instance, can't play the guitar at all, but thanks to 'Rocksmith+', we were able to gain a new-found appreciation for our favourite musicians.
2 years of weekly guitar lessons with a cheap Argos acoustic guitar as a teen gave us the bare fundamentals of guitar playing and the EADGBE guitar strings, but the beauty of 'Rocksmith+' is you can be a total amateur like us or a guitar god like Eddie Van Halen and still learn something new.
'Rocksmith+' is equal parts game and equal parts learning tool as it uses the traditional gaming mechanisms of scoring and keeping track of progress as well as teaching you real-life skills about string skipping.
Before long, you'll be shredding with the best of them, and following in the footsteps of Fontaines D.C.
The 'Guitar Hero' and 'Rock Band' games are all well and good and are perfect for party sessions, but if you've ever seen your favourite band in concert or want to know how your favourite guitarist makes it look so easy, 'Rocksmith+', answers your questions and then some.
And who knows - you may come out of the game with the skills you need to take on the world with three chords and the truth.
Running up a tab
'Rocksmith+' is the newest continuation of the 'Rocksmith' franchise that Ubisoft launched in the mid-2010s to great success, and the aim of the newest iteration is to teach you the ins and outs of the guitar, from simple chords all the way up to complex tapping.
In a way, 'Rocksmith+' is like an infinitely cooler version of 'Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing', but instead of learning how to touch type, you learn how to play 'Poison' by Alice Cooper.
The game caters to guitar players of all types, so if you're a metalhead you can learn to shred like your heroes, play along to the pop hits of the day, or add a bit of smoothness to some R&B tracks.
There is an extensive suite of practice modes and options, and the game doesn't treat you like JK Simmons in 'Whiplash' (although that might be a fun DLC option.)
The interface will be familar to those who played a 'Guitar Hero' game back in the day, but the game doesn't encourage you to do anything flashy, and in fact, that may be the greatest strength of 'Rocksmith+'.
It teaches you the basic fundamentals of guitar before moving on to more advanced techniques.
Similar to the driver's theory test, you have to play by the rules before experimenting later on, but the game gives you a good grounding in what is right and wrong in the world of guitar playing.
The beauty of 'Rocksmith+ is that you can progress at your own speed, and and you can dip in and out every day for 15 minutes like a crossword.
There is enough content here to keep a budding rocker going for years, and 'Rocksmith+' is a game we can see being a favourite of gift-buyers for years to come.
Ubisoft very kindly provided us with a guitar and a press build of the game, and even at this early stage, the game is shaping up to be something special.
More songs will be added over time, but even in the press build there were a wide array of tracks available from different genres and bands (although sadly, there were no Limp Bizkit tracks available).
You walk away from 'Rocksmith+' with a decent understanding of music theory, and considering it had been more than 10 years since we picked up a guitar, it was impressive the game managed to teach us about power chords and drop tuning in such a short space of time.
As any musician knows, becoming skilled with an instrument takes time and effort, and while 'Rocksmith+' doesn't use the DuoLingo owl to threaten you to get back to rocking, you will find yourself missing the thrill of the guitar after missing a day.
The main gameplay of waiting for a chord to come down the board and hitting it at the right time is as satisfying as ever, and you can adjust the game to have the tempo or speed at nice and slow learning levels before cranking up the tempo.
'Rocksmith+' makes you feel like a rockstar as opposed to 'Guitar Hero' and its novelty Fisher-Price controller.
In the recent Sex Pistols drama series 'Pistol', the band's manager Malcolm McClaren makes the point that you don't need a formal background in music to make some noise and jam on the guitar, and 'Rocksmith+' follows this punk ethos perfectly.
Anyone can pick up this game and play, and playing along with The Clash is something that appeals to your inner 14-year-old doodling lyrics in your copybook.
