I can't really say that I care all the much for Aerosmith, which makes me
very qualified to write this review. The reason I say this is that if you're an
Aerosmith fan you're probably already sold on Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and can't
wait to pop in the disc and start belting out the tunes. For the rest of us
who've never heard of tracks like Uncle Salty, it's a different experience
entirely. Is it worth it for Guitar Hero fans to by the game even though may
only be familiar with a third of its tracks? The answer is 'probably not'.
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The gameplay itself has remained completely untouched in GH: Aerosmith. You
still use a guitar controller to tap fret buttons that correspond to the colored
notes that come streaming towards you down the screen. It's Guitar Hero, it's
fun to play the songs, there needs to be another difficulty level between medium
and hard. I won't go into all the gory details, for those read the review of
Guitar Hero III because GH: Aerosmith is the same game in terms of gameplay,
minus the annoying boss battles.
The career progression has been changed in this version of Guitar Hero III,
though. In Guitar Hero III you need to unlock all of the tracks in the game by
playing your way through set lists of five songs. Successfully playing all of
the tracks in a tier will unlock the next tier, and you proceed in this manner
until all of the game's songs have been unlocked and made available for free
play. In GH: Aerosmith the tiers are structured a little differently. You play
two tracks, neither of which are Aerosmith songs, you then play two Aerosmith
songs, another Aerosmith song in the form of an encore, and then it's on to the
next tier. Between each tier video plays with the band talking about the next
venue in which you'll play and the place it holds in the band's history. All of
this would be of great interest to someone who's an Aerosmith fan, but if you're
not you may find yourself pushing your way through one unfamiliar track after
another just to see what the next couple of non-Aerosmith songs will be.
The songs chosen to go along with all of this Aerosmtih music are an odd mix.
First of all because they are a strange collection when taken together on their
own, and secondly because the list isn't the kind of music that I'd imagine
Aerosmith fans listening to when they aren't listening to Aerosmith. Cheap
Trick's Dream Police, The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary, and The Kinks' All Day and
All of the Night are just some of the diverse tracks that span decades and
genres to the point where they are all more different than alike. The game's
music store doesn't help this mix at all because it consists entirely of
Aerosmith tracks, and you can't play any of the songs that you downloaded for
Guitar Hero III. Part of the fun of Guitar Hero is in the way that it can make
music that you don't normally listen to fun to play, but that's something that's
missing in GH: Aerosmtih. As I moved from one Aerosmith track to the next, I
found myself thinking that I couldn't see myself ever wanting to go back and
play them again. Without any cross song access between Guitar Hero III and GH:
Aerosmith, it is hard to imagine having the desire to fire up the game simply to
play the one or two tracks that I liked in the game.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
69%. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is strictly for the
hardcore Aerosmith fan or the true Guitar Hero collector. 
