I recently bought Ubisoft’s new guitar “game” Jam Sessions. It’s really more of a simulator than a game, though I have to admit I was really looking forward to it. I play “real” guitar and have always wanted something small and compact to take with me when I go on trips. Sometimes you get an idea and you’ve got nothing to play it on. For all intents and purposes it really is a pocket guitar, limited as it might be. For one thing it sounds great. The recorded guitar samples are spot on, although they’re only sampled from an acoustic guitar. The effects pedals are kind of weak and not very useful overall. The game boasts over 100 chords so you can play along to most any song, though you’re only going to be playing the rhythm parts and not lead (Sorry, no wicked guitar solos here, the game only supports strumming full chords, not individual strings). It would’ve also been nice to be able to change octaves for individual chords. The click track is more annoying than helpful, it would’ve been nice to have maybe simple drum loops also. Hopefully we’ll see a sequel with some more fleshed out features.

One of the problems with the game is who it’s really for, they say you can learn to play guitar by playing this game. This is sadly not the case. You are going to be very hard pressed to learn guitar from playing this game. It never shows a breakdown of the chords you’re playing and the display of the guitar strings you strum is represented by a single line in the middle of the touch screen. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great game, or whatever it is, but it is not a learning tool and it’s really not even a game. The songs (by songs I mean strumming patterns, no mp3’s or real full version audio songs) that come loaded on the cartridge are mostly obscure/b-sides from some moderately familiar artist.

So, the bottom line is, if you’re a guitarist already and want to play guitar on the toilet, buy this. On the other hand, if you’ve never played guitar before and you think somehow this is your chance to start a rock band, it may be fun for a while, but you’re not going to be rockin’ any sweet riffs any time soon.

Boom!

[rating:3/5]