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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

Published: Sun 20 Jul, 2008 | On:

With no DLC available for the PS2, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. However, it’s a bit of a letdown. As expected, about half of the songs are by Aerosmith, with the rest by other artists that have influenced or played with Aerosmith. There are some good songs here, but with only 41 tracks it doesn’t take long to play through the whole game.

The game feels like a rushed job designed as a quick cash-in on the Guitar Hero franchise. The game basically uses the same engine as Guitar Hero 3, with some new characters along with some new venues and artwork. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but a couple of things make it less enjoyable than GH3.

My biggest gripe is that you are forced to play as Joe Perry for the Aerosmith songs (both in career and quickplay). He has really bright fretboard artwork, which makes it difficult to see notes when playing (like the first Guitar Hero, but worse). The second gripe is the small songlist and reduced difficulty means you can play through the game very quickly. While the hardcore Aerosmith fan will probably enjoy replaying the setlist again and again, there wasn’t enough here to keep me coming back. A few more big Aerosmith songs would have filled it out much better (there's at least half a dozen other songs that could have at least been bonus tracks).

Overall, it feels like a custom Guitar Hero game that someone put together in their bedroom rather than a years worth of development. Hopefully this means Neversoft are putting all their efforts into GH4. If this was released as a $50 expansion pack then it might be worth getting, but as a full priced game you have to be a diehard Aerosmith fan to enjoy this.