If you have Rock Band 3 and DJ Hero 2, the Power Gig: Rise of the Six String for ps3 and Xbox is NOT the game to add to your game collection.  It is a game that despite its competitive alternatives it does not bring anything new to the table, instead its interface is horrible and the peripheral gives a look like it was just placed for marketing purposes.

The most attractive feature of the Power Gig game is the addition of a guitar. Yes, an actual guitar with strings and functioning pickups. Though it is plastic body guitar it has some electronics that allow it to work with your gaming system, basically like a controller. It can be used on other games and also be plugged into an amp. Other than this there is no real use for the guitar, this conclusion comes from testing the game for hours, time that could have been well spent on something else.

This is because the use of a guitar with strings is not so smooth for rhythm games. Unlike the Rock Band 3 Pro Guitar, where there are buttons in the place of strings which allows for easy maneuvering of fingers when fretting in standard rhythm games, the Power Gig requires users to push down on a string, even though any string will register the command, it is simply annoying and not as tactile as playing with a normal controller.

An actual guitar for Power Gig: cool or useless?

Other than this, one would think a game with an actual guitar would teach you some basics of guitar playing, but the game does not take advantage of this. In Rock Band 3, you can learn how to play a song more realistically through lessons that will guide you in learning the fundamentals of guitar playing, but the Power Gig only has the option of Power Chords which is a two fingered chord that plays only in certain songs.

The game would have made sense, maybe even become a hit IF the game was built around the guitar, rather than trying to make it appealing by the addition of a guitar. Moreover, it seems like everything from a superior game was taken and cropped to fit into this game. The 3D effect that has notes spiraling towards you is absent, instead there is a flat area on which the notes come down, the playing field is dreadful, and most other things are poorly thought out and executed. Consequently, it’s better to stick to your Guitar Hero than spend money on this game.