I never thought about it before but do games like this help to learn the guitar? I bought my first guitar, acoustic, back in October. I still pretty much suck.
The games that have been out for a few years,
the ones that come with plastic guitar-shaped controllers,
do NOT help you learn guitar. Not much at least. This is different.
Rocksmith came out last year with the goal of actually helping people learn guitar and I know a guy that says it worked for him. There are 3 main components to Rocksmith. There are some short video lessons, there are about a dozen games that make you practice repetitious stuff, and then there are the songs.
The video lessons are followed by 'repeat-after-me' components that asks you to do the lesson 3 times, if you can't it slows it down and tries again, and once you get it, it speeds up.
I've only played the simpler video games. One is set up sort of like Tapper where people approach along a number of lines. You have to pick the right string you knock 'em back. I've also played one with zombies approaching you with chords over their heads. You have to hit the right chord to shoot that zombie. There are about a dozen games, all retro 8-bit looking.
The songs are very well put together. You play over a track of the other instruments. At 1st they just give you a few of the notes. As you improve they keep adding notes. Once you've really got it down, they quit showing you the notes you never miss. By the time you score 100 on a song, you're actually playing it. I'm nowhere near there.
There's also a studio setting where you can just play. The game has settings to emulate mountains of effects pedals.
Another important thing. HDMI adds a lot of lag. There's a chart of ideal audio set ups and less ideal arrangements to minimize lag. The best setup for an HDTV is to run component cables with the RCA audio plugs going directly to a receiver and then speakers. Not through the TV. I run mine through the TV via component cables and RCA plugs and there is some lag, and it's annoying, but not as bad as it was with HDMI. It's definitely playable. Standard def doesn't have any problems (I think.)
You should still watch other training videos for technique (I'm told.) For example, it will tell you in a lesson to strum both up and down, down on the downbeats, but it doesn't catch you if you ignore that advice.
There is original Rocksmith and now Rocksmith 2014. I got the newer one. There are lots of youtube videos if you want to see it in action or see what people think.