Rock This Way - Guitar Hero Aerosmith

Author's Rating:

Pros: If you're a fan of Aerosmith, this is your Guitar Hero

Cons: If you're not a fan of Aerosmith, this is not your Guitar Hero

The Bottom Line: 
I guess this is more like 3.5 stars.

Author's Review
Legend has it that when Joe Perry, guitarist for Aerosmith, discovered the original Guitar Hero, he was crushed to find approximately zero tracks from his band in the game. I'm sure he's happy now though, since Activision has delivered a game that's completely about the band with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Something of an "expansion" to Guitar Hero III, GH:A is built off the GHIII engine and thus looks and plays the same, just with a heaping helping of Aerosmith tunes and lore about the band and their 40 something years in the music business. This makes the game quite polarizing; if you're a big fan of GHIII, it's more of the same, yet the narrow focus on one specific band might be off-putting, especially one that's not exactly front-page news in 2008. Also potentially off-putting is the price; $60 for a disc that contains far less music than its predecessor, with no downloadable content coming for it whatsoever. All told what we have here is a game that will be instantly appealing to fans of Aerosmith and Guitar Hero die-hards, but not many others in-between.

The Setup
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith can best be described as a celebration of the band and all their history. The single player career mode is a retelling of their rise from playing some high school gym all the way to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, just with several liberties taken...such as leaving out the whole being high all the time and nearly killing the band thing. Progression is familiar to GH veterans, with tiers to defeat, but in the case of this game, it's designed to be like a concert. While Aerosmith is the focus, there's still a handful of tracks from other bands that are dubbed "opening acts", from bands like Cheap Trick, Stone Temple Pilots, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts (with I Hate Myself For Loving You, also known as the NFL on NBC song) and The Kinks amongst others. Beat them and Aerosmith comes out for three songs, one of them an encore. Peppered between the music are brief videos of the band talking about their rise and the specific location your next tier takes place in, adding some backstory to the proceedings. Not that we need a 2 minute video explaining how cool it was to play the Super Bowl halftime show. Along with the career, there's the usual quickplay and online options, both of which are fine, and if they worked for you in Guitar Hero III they'll work here.

The Game
Guitar Hero is Guitar Hero, so don't expect a whole lot of evolution with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Even the in-game interface is exactly the same as GHIII, lending credence to the glorified expansion feeling. That said the gameplay is as sharp as ever, and perhaps not as challenging as III was at times. The final song, Train Kept a Rollin', is difficult but not absurd; there's no Through the Fire and Flames here to terrorize your dreams. Perhaps knowing that a game about a specific band would draw in a more casual audience, things just aren't as challenging this time around. Which is a good thing; Rock Band has proven the guitar music genre can be mildly tough and succeed. The important thing is many of these songs are enjoyable to play, and not a chore. As always, GH:A uses the PS3 Les Paul guitar, or, if you're weird, the Dual Shock 3 to hit colored notes and try not failing and shaming your family. For newbies the training mode still exists, explaining the basics to you; you'll probably need it just to get the basic understanding of how to make the guitar work right if you bought the Les Paul bundle. GH veterans of course need not apply.

Where Guitar Hero: Aerosmith falls short is content; while the songs presented are the best of the best in Aerosmith's catalog, and the bonus unlockable songs are worthy (mostly, if you were to set fire to the Joe Perry solo tracks anyway), you can plow through the whole career mode in a few hours and see everything. With roughly 40 tunes to choose from, this is a real weak point, especially when Guitar Hero III (and Rock Band in particular) is offering a ton of downloadable songs to this day. Charging $60 for a game that would probably have been better off as an expansion via PlayStation Network, or at the least, a budget priced release in light of bigger and more varied music games is a hard sell. Don't get the wrong idea that GH:A isn't fun, since if you're a big Guitar Hero fanatic it will be, but the limited focus towards one band and a few token hits from other ones makes this a tough game to nail down for everyone else. The tepid sales of the game should probably be a hint that Activision has to rethink their strategy for releases of these "off-season" releases between their major fall entries.

The Presentation
Already I've said that the engine is basically Guitar Hero III's - and it's really true. The front-end interface is the exact same thing, just with different colors and backgrounds. The in-game interface is the exact same, with the only difference being the addition of a rhythm guitar player to make the band a five-piece to match Aerosmith themselves. This actually, for some reason, cuts back the framerate of at least the PS3 version; the difference is obvious if you go back and forth between them. The GHIII characters are playable here, using their old models and outfits, but more importantly, Aerosmith themselves are here, adding authenticity to the game. Also present is Run-DMC for a pair of songs, most importantly their version of Walk This Way. Obviously none of this really matters to someone playing the game; after all we're to be focusing on the notes, not the background. The only thing that's easy to notice is the change in framerate.

Of course, the soundtrack shines; dozens of great Aerosmith songs, with only a few being "covers"...from the band themselves. Guitar Hero III owners probably know what I mean; the free Dream On download showcased these questionable remakes, apparently due to the inability to find the original master track. But the collection shines, and thankfully focuses on their most rockin' songs - you'll find a bunch of stuff from Rocks, old hits like Draw the Line, Kings & Queens, Pandora's Box, Rag Doll, Love in an Elevator, the aforementioned Train Kept a Rollin', and Sweet Emotion, for starters. The other bands bring you stuff like Sex Type Thing, Dream Police, She Sells Sanctuary, Cat Scratch Fever, and others (including an awful cover of Hard to Handle from The Black Crowes). In other words, there's not much "modern" music around, unless you were a teenager in the 1990's, anyway. As always these songs sound great and make the game even more enjoyable since it's basically like playing the real thing.

The Finale
Price aside, if you a) really enjoy Guitar Hero, or b) really, really love Aerosmith, or c) both, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is a decent pickup as a holdover until Guitar Hero World Tour releases, as a compliment to Guitar Hero III and its frequent DLC additions. A more casual fan of the franchise can easily pass if they don't enjoy Aerosmith, since while the songs presented are fun to play, the constant focus on the band might get tiring to those not devoted to the cause. For a lower price, sure, it might be worth checking out, but $60 is a gamble for a game you might not even play much after finishing it. This focus on a specific band doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon - a Guitar Hero: Metallica is apparently in the works. As a Metallica die-hard, I can only hope it turns out a bit more fleshed out than GH: Aerosmith did - it's a fun game, just one that doesn't have the lasting appeal of a traditional Guitar Hero. It's great to pick up every once in a while, but with GHIII and Rock Band also in the house, it's 3rd fiddle.