Teach Yourself Guitar with Rocksmith 2014
Ever since I was a little kid playing Mattel handheld football people have been talking about how to use video games to get kids to actually learn something. The old trope is, kids waste time playing video games but if they could just learn something while playing then it would be a win-win.
The problem is that kids see right through this, and games that are "educational" or teach something "useful" aren't particularly fun. Some learning games are great, and as a Dad I often make my kids practice their math facts (for example) using apps on their iPods. But my kids know they're memorizing arithmetic and not really playing a game.
I think comparing Rocksmith 2014 Edition, a "game" from Ubisoft that teaches you to play guitar, to a game like Rock Band or Guitar Hero does both a disservice. People play Guitar Hero to relax, have fun and fantasize a little about playing guitar with a band on stage. Rocksmith uses some of the principals of this type of game but instead of a video game controller in the shape of a guitar the player uses a real electric guitar. The learning curve might be a bit more steep, but before you realize it you're actually playing the guitar.
To be fair, I have been playing guitar for many years and although I'm not great I do have some abilities. If anything I think that ended up being a bit of a hindrance in using Rocksmith. Anyone who learned guitar the old fashioned way by reading books and looking at chord charts might find this method difficult to grasp at first. Like Guitar Hero Rocksmith uses a sort of moving "track" to show you which notes are coming up next, except the "track" is broken down into the individual strings and frets of the guitar. For someone who has played before it's not the most intuitive thing to grasp at first, and I have to admit that my 40-something brain found it hard to translate but eventually I got the hang of it. For someone who has never played guitar or only has very rudimentary knowledge I think it might be much easier to master.
There are 50 some-odd songs to choose from (main list is here) and teaching those songs is the core of the experience. When you start to learn a song the first time through it starts so simply that it almost seems like you've misjudged the settings somehow and made it too easy. But each time you go through the song it gets a little more difficult, and pretty soon (if you've taken the time to go through the individual lessons) you're playing the song you've been working on.
There is one BIG issue that anyone thinking of buying it needs to consider. If your audio from your video game console travels over the HDMI cable with the video then there is definitely going to be some audio lag. Basically there will be a split-second between when you strum the guitar and when you hear it over your TV. The audio lag pretty much makes the game unusable in my opinion so before you buy please check out this web page to see if your setup is compatible (Ubisoft also smartly includes this exact thing as a huge one-page sheet packed inside the box). Split seconds don't seem like a big deal, but when you're trying to play along with the music on the game a split second can be infuriating. I used an audio adapter for my XBOX 360 and output the audio to a separate speaker which worked great. Again, check out this page on the Rocksmith website before you buy to make sure your setup is compatible or that you can do something to make it compatible.
There's a lot more to Rocksmith that I'm leaving out - like fun mini-games that help you drill chords, notes and scales; and a very thorough step-by step lesson section with videos. The whole learning experience is very comprehensive and in my opinion it does a great job.
If you've got a child with a video game console and an electric guitar then it seems to me that this is something you should definitely consider. And for us Dads who always wanted to learn how to play the guitar (or get better beyond the three chords you learned in college) it's also very much recommended.
And it goes without saying, no one ever impressed a girl because he was great at Guitar Hero.
Rocksmith 2014 Edition is available for PC/Mac, XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 for around $79.99 with the cable included, and $59.99 without.
Guitar, Music, Playstation 3, Rocksmith, Rocksmith 2014, XBOX 360 | in Playstation 3, XBOX 360 
Battlefield 3 Is The Worst Best Game I've Ever Played
Battlefield 3 multiplayer is awesome. It looks awesome, the gameplay is awesome and the maps are awesome. It is also the absolute worst multiplayer experience I've ever had in a video game. And for those of us who tried playing Gears of War 2 multiplayer, that's saying something.
For a great overview of how EA completely messed up the multiplayer launch of Battlefield 3 (as well as all of the other multiplayer Battlefield games in the franchise), definitely check out Ben Gilbert's great editorial in Joystiq last week. The back-end server stuff clearly has issues, and although EA rolled out a server "upgrade" a couple days ago, finding a game during peak times can still be very difficult, especially if you want to play with friends.
But even if the servers were working perfectly it would still be the worst multiplayer experience I've ever had. Why? Because of the utterly baffling front-end design that users are required to navigate in order to get into a game with their friends. Battlefield 3 is a game that is so beautifully designed and well thought out in so many respects and it's hard to fathom how the user experience of matchmaking could be so terrible.
Actually, it's not hard to fathom, because it seems like it was designed by engineers who are used to playing games on the PC. For the most part console gamers aren't used to having to "browse servers" or "bookmark servers" that they might enjoy playing on later. In my opinion this is how matchmaking works best on a console:
This is essentially the multiplayer matchmaking experience of Bungie's Halo franchise, and compared to Battlefield 3 it was flawless.
Currently in Battlefield 3, if you want to play a game with more than four people, one person has to go to the server list, wait to find a server with a game that has enough openings for your entire party, then jump into that server and invite his friends. Then the friends have to jump into that game as quickly as possible before other people join and fill up the game. If you've got more than 5 people, someone almost always gets left out, and it's profoundly frustrating.
Without outright acknowledging the bad design, EA seems to realize the matchmaking experience is frustrating their console gamers. Yesterday on the Battlefield Blog they posted a "Quick Guide to the Battlefield 3 Server Browser" which is basically a walk-through of the completely obtuse Server Browser screens. If you've got to publish directions on how to navigate the matchmaking process, you've failed.
There are other big failures too. If you accept a game invite from a friend who isn't currently in a game, it will place you in that person's squad, but it won't send you automatically to the squad screen (the pre-game lobby). Then, once in that squad, one person (the "squad leader") has control of the matchmaking, though there is no way to know looking at the list of names who exactly is the squad leader. And then, once that player uses "Quick Match" to start a game, the squad is, more often than not, broken up.
And the concept of playing in a game with players of similar skill level seems to have been completely thrown out the window. If you want to play in a game with more than four friends, you have to pick a server with openings. In my experience those servers are full of shut-ins who have been doing nothing but playing Battlefield 3 since it launched. Players shouldn't have to choose between playing together with their friends or playing in a game that is evenly matched. It all seemed so simple in the Halo days.
I know launching a multi-million dollar video game with millions of players all demanding perfection isn't an easy thing. I get that. But if EA had just spent a fraction of all the pre-order money on a couple of user experience designers and some independent user experience testing before launching the game, things could have been a lot different. Or better yet, maybe they just should have hired someone from Bungie to explain how to do it correctly on a console.