E3 '10: Power Gig: Rise Of The SixString

The next step in music videogames appears to be playing with real instruments, as Harmonix is now offering the option to play on a real guitar in Rock Band 3. But they're not the only game in town, as Seven45 Studios is producing a game called Power Gig: Rise of the SixString, which only comes with an actual real guitar with strings that you can also plug into an amp and play for real. "Our mission really is to bring some authenticity to the experience and make it accessible to everybody," says executive producer Matt Sughrue. "So both the software and hardware are built from the ground up to be easy to play and sort of challenging to master." And their E3 booth was selling the authenticity by providing not only the usual demo stations, but also a stage where gamers could sign up for a gig to show off their skills.

Power Gig is compatible with all current instruments, although if you want to enjoy Chording Mode and learn the actual chords of the song, you're going to need their guitar with the strings. The game and guitar bundle is priced at $179, so it's actually not as outrageously expensive as you might think. I played with their guitar, and it's a solid instrument. There's also a band bundle that includes the guitar and drum kit for $229, or just the game only at $59. The disc is set to have 70 songs, with full DLC support starting at launch. "We do have three exclusive anchor artists," Sughrue adds. "We have Kid Rock, Dave Matthews and Eric Clapton, and they're exclusive to our game. They've been approached, but the reason why they didn't like those games was the lack of sort of transferable musical skills. When they saw our guitar controller in particular, that was the linchpin that made them interested."

Oddly, while the guitar is an actual instrument, the drum kit goes in completely the opposite direction, and is a small little thing that sits close down to the floor. You "air drum" with special drum sticks in the space above each pad, not actually striking them. "Bulkiness was a factor," he explains. "As well as the sound of hitting plastic on plastic is really intrusive into the game experience in our opinion. So you lower the footprint. The legs on the bottom can be removed. The whole thing can be stuck in a bag and taken to a buddy's house. And it's not making any sound from the peripheral itself, so all you hear is what's on the TV. There is a learning curve, but within a couple of songs, you find your sweet spot, and you're getting all your cues from the TV and hearing the audio uninterrupted."

That's fine in theory, but I didn't really enjoy the drumming. The guitar was tricky, because without the tactile buttons, I kept losing my place and my fingers would slide up the neck so I wouldn't press the right frets. (The edge of the guitar is color-coded so you know where to press the strings.) However, by the second half of the song, I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it, so with practice, it seems like it would be pretty fun to play a music game on an actual guitar with a pick and everything. On the other hand, with the drums, I never felt like I was getting it. It always just felt loose. My score wasn't terrible, so it does actually work, drumming in the air above the kit, but it just didn't feel right. I understand the idea behind cutting out the plastic banging (which is annoying), but it didn't feel right without physically hitting the drum pads. Especially since when playing Rock Band, I sometimes get so into it that I miss the pads entirely. Imagine how wild I'd swing if there wasn't even anything there to aim for in the first place!

"We haven't really announced our song list yet," Sughrue concludes. "We won't be doing that until closer to launch. But I'd say we have a really killer track list — which I'm sure you hear a lot — but 90% of the songs in our game have not appeared in other games. So it's really fresh content." Well, I guess we'll see for ourselves when Power Gig: Rise of the SixString lands on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October.