Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

"Sure it's an enjoyable game, it's just not worth sixty dollars"

Let me preface this review by saying that I was against this idea greatly when I first heard of it. Making a Guitar Hero game dedicated to a single band just seems like a bad idea, not that this stopped Neversoft and Activision from making this game anyway, and indeed won't stop them from doing the same thing with a different band (case in point: Guitar Hero Metallica), and raking in untold amounts of money from fans of the band (or diehard fans of the series). Also, I'm of the opinion that spending more than forty dollars for an expansion pack seems like a fools game (barring of course the Dawn of War expansions, Persona 3 FES, and the Grand Theft Auto games if you want to get technical). Surprisingly this game isn't all that bad, it's just not worth sixty US dollars, or a hundred if you want the edition with the Aerosmith Les Paul guitar controller.

Graphically the game is just like Guitar Hero 3, the only difference is that there's a new rhythm guitarist woman for the non-Aerosmith band. There's also new venues that do look nice, but there are only six of them, and of course there's Aerosmith themselves, and DMC of Run DMC. One of the more noticeable things is that they managed to change the animation of the drummer for this game. In the last one he looked terrible and stiff, but in this he actually looks halfway decent.

The past two Guitar Hero games have been somewhat difficult. They both contained a number of hellishly difficult songs, Aerosmith however has no song like this, and is indeed remarkably easy throughout the entire game. Throughout the entire career mode I only had to replay one song, on expert mind you, and even then I only had to redo it the one time. The battle song was far too easy, taking me about a minute and a half to beat it.

Another thing to consider is the fact that including the bonus songs there is a total of forty one songs in the game. When their asking for the full sixty dollars that other 360 games cost it seems rather cheap on Activision's part to include so few songs.

However of the songs that are included a large majority of them are indeed good songs. As one might expect the majority of the songs included are by the band Aerosmith (shocking I know). About twelve of the songs weren't done by Aerosmith or Joe Perry (guitarist for Aerosmith) and except for four of them they are all the master recordings. Again as with Guitar Hero 3 I can't help but wonder why they didn't just pay whatever fee the record company or band wanted, but at least this time around the cover artists don't sound too bad.

As I touched on briefly a couple paragraphs back this game isn't really very difficult in the slightest. Except for the last two songs in career mode I was able to four and five star every song in the setlist. The thing about that is I was playing the expert mode, yet the game provided next to no challenge. However they did manage to do one thing better than they did in GH 3. In Guitar Hero 3 is was insultingly easy to perform hammer on sequences. You could fundamentally get through those sequences by holding down (for the sake of example) the green button and just tap away on the other buttons and it'd count it as you just pressing the button. What they did in this is they made it so you actually do have to press the damn button, which I think is a nice change. That said however, it doesn't change the game from being super easy. And yes, I realize I didn't describe the gameplay, but if you really need to know what a Guitar Hero game plays like just go look at one of my other Guitar Hero reviews.

I‘d be lying if I said that it‘s impossible to have fun with this game, because for the most part the game is fun, it's just the fact that there‘s just not enough here. The track listing is lacking, the difficulty ranges from super easy to easy. If you really want to play this game, or have an unnatural love of Aerosmith then just rent the game. There's really not enough here to warrant a purchase. The only way I can recommend buying this is if you're interested in the series, haven't played any of the others, and are a huge Aerosmith fan. Even then, I'd recommend GH 2. Hell maybe with the release of this there'll be a Guitar Hero heavy metal version… that'd be pretty cool. Or just nix the make a Guitar Hero based on a specific genre, era, or band and just focus on making better Guitar Hero games… though I sincerely doubt that'll happen.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/08

Game Release: Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (US, 06/29/08)