I'm totally blown away by Rocksmith. I had high hopes, and I was still amazed.
A few days ago, I stumbled on Rocksmith while at a game shop picking up some random used games to kill some time. I don't follow rhythm game news at all, being more inclined to make fun of them, and I didn't recognize what it was until I got home with and idle suspicion of what it might be and looked it up. I went back and purchased it the next day.
So far, I've only played it for one night, but it's remarkable how well it works. I've been playing with one of my guitars, not the Les Paul Junior that comes in a pack with the game, and there have been no problems, though I'm not sure why there would be, since the LP Jr. is just a regular electric guitar.
The game starts off by having you tune your guitar with a decent tuner interface that seems to make it pretty easy for novices to understand. There's a lot of initial handholding that bored me, but it's understandable. When the game itself actually starts, it gives you two songs to practice. It initially has you play individual notes, pretty slowly, and without much variation. As it sees that you are doing that well, it starts adding more notes during the song. This can sometimes be surprising and cause you to lose your place, but it's nice that you don't have to go through a whole song playing only two notes.
Once you feel comfortable with those two songs, it sends you to a gig where you play in front of a crowd. (Before, you were playing for a sofa.) If you do well with those two songs, it gives you an encore to play, which, at least at this point early in the game, is a song you haven't seen before. If you do well enough with the gig in general, you unlock other venues (the first is a small club) and effects pedals.
The tracks are real recordings of the songs, and your playing is layered on top of it. It automatically selects the proper effects for the song.
I haven't gotten very far yet, but, for me, it quickly progressed from single notes to hammer-ons, slides, palm mutes, and power chords.
I have only a couple of problems. The first is that it sometimes threw new techniques at me before it explained them, and I was trying to figure out during a song what that new symbol was. Some are obvious, like slides. Others not so much, like hammer-ons. The second is that to navigate the game outside of the actual guitar playing requires using the PS3 controller. It's a pain to pick up the controller after every song, and I don't see any reason why you couldn't use the guitar itself as a controller, at least as an option.
As a side note, as a regular guitar, I'd far rather have the Epiphone LP Junior "made for" Rocksmith than the Squier Strat made for RB3; the LP Junior is a guitar you can buy at a regular guitar store, and is a reasonable instrument; the Squier Strat is specifically made for RB3, has only one pickup, and has a plastic fingerboard. While both may be played as a regular instrument without the game, the Squier Strat is far inferior. (Incidentally, the design of the Squier Strat, with its six metal contacts, one for each string, on each of its frets, bears more than a passing resemblance to the Vox GuitarOrgan of the late 60s.)
There's a good bit more to the game that I haven't gotten to yet. For one thing, my playing is still very sloppy after years of disuse. For another, I've only played for about two hours, but I see myself playing this a lot. A LOT.