Guitar Hero: Aerosmith review (PS2)

Guitar Hero is a brand we all know and love, well established and now in its third main iteration. In fact is there anything that could make this air guitar lovers dream any better than it already is? Well how about handing over a full iteration of the game to arguably one of rocks greatest bands – Aerosmith.

The same but different

Taking the stable base that is Guitar Hero 3 the developer has tweaked, twisted and reworked things in order to deliver an experience which they hope will be suitable for both kings and queens. Initially not a whole lot feels different, apart from a slight Aerosmith theme the menu characters etc presented to you are all just what we are used to.

However when you first start your career you are presented with a good little video featuring the band members of Aerosmith telling you about the venue in which they played one of their first gigs. In reality this appears to be simply a collection of sound bites from various interviews cobbled together in a way that doesn't always make sense.

Dude! Where's my song?

The remit for the game is that you as a budding guitarist play the opening two tracks to an Aerosmith performance, after successfully completing these the main attraction take to the stage and you play through a further two tracks from their extensive back catalog.

The interesting thing being the for such and extensive back catalog the song list focuses heavily on the bands early work, with a smattering of tracks form later albums. Although classics like Love in and Elevator and Walk this way are included (the latter complete with Run DMC front man) song tracks are notable by there absense, Dude (looks like a lady) being one clear example.

Even the tracks by other artists are a bit lacking in punch, All the young dudes by Mot the Hoople being one of the few tracks to really get me excited.

Distraction on stage

Still, this is Guitar Hero and so the play experience and delivery is solid, well mostly. Due to the focus here being on the band and not you as a guitarist, the camera movements on the band whilst playing are done much more in style with a live performance, meaning many fast moving and zooming shots, these can be very distracting, causing you to look away form the stream of notes pouring in at you and making it easy to lose the flow. In fact the distractions don't stop there, when playing as Aerosmith the background of the fret board changes to a skull and crossbones pattern, which is yellowish in color. I am not sure whether it was the settings on my screen but I (and others) found this sometimes made the yellow notes difficult to see until the very last minute.

Aside from the standard set list there is of course the ability to use the cash earned form performing to purchase additional songs, there are a few Aerosmith tracks and a number of tracks from Joe Perry's solo work, although again none of these really jumped out as outstanding.

The fact of the matter is, this is Guitar Hero and as such was never going to be a bad experience, but i can't help but feel it could have been so much more. I like Aerosmith but i am not the world's most avid fan, and for me the set list seemed lacking, and when there are a number of tracks from other artsiest included that is even more disappointing, in many ways the tracks also felt easier, none of the easy tracks really felt like they were offering up a challenge at any point and increasing the game through medium and hard was the same.

One for the die-hards

If you are both a die hard Guitar Hero fan, and an avid Aerosmith fan than this is a no-brainer, if you love Guitar Hero, and have played all the other tracks available to death and are desperate for more than you will probably buy this anyway. However if you are looking for the next installment of guitar hero, then this isn't it, if you have never played Guitar Hero and are looking for a place to start then go buy GH3. This Is an offering to a niche and one that doesn't really have the greatest appeal to people outside that niche.