REVIEW: Guitar Hero Aerosmith (Xbox 360)

[hot_turkey_ed]

In a marathon session last night into this morning, I bitchslapped Guitar Hero Aerosmith. It's a MUCH easier game than Guitar Hero III to the point that Aerosmith Hard difficulty felt like III's Medium. With a couple of exceptions, I five-starred Hard and the first two tiers of Expert. Fatigue started to get the best of me, so I began achievement whoring. I'm standing at 34 out of 49 Xbox 360 Achievements (600 points) with just that one sit down. That's not right!

The really good things:

* I like the venues and the characters a lot. Well done! It's hard to watch the animation when you're playing but what I saw was pretty neat.

* The highlight of the game? DMC! One of my personal favorite Guitar Hero moments EVER.


My primary complaints:

* The tour book is fucking lame. I was expecting more than a gloried instruction manual containing the set lists. My last Aerosmith album was Permanent Vacation, so I actually had an interest in what would be in typically tour book to bring me up to date. As a celebration of Aerosmith, I wanted more depth.

* I haven't unlocked all of the Vault's content but I'd really like to know why some of the non-Aerosmith tracks were placed as they did were. I don't know what exactly Joan Jett, The Clash, or Ted Nugent have to do with Aerosmith. I'd really like to know. How about a little postcard during the Load screen before the song or something?

* I shouldn't have been to work through the game in one sitting. A lot of the songs are short, and there's only around 40. I needed a new guitar, so I picked up the bundle at Costco for $84. I don't feel so ripped off but this isn't clearly not a $59 title based on the amount of play time I've gotten from Oblivion, GTA IV, MSG4.. hell, even past Guitar Hero titles.

I read in many places that the game is great for hardcore Aerosmith fans, not so great for the rest of the us. I don't know if even that is true. It feels very light and fluffy for a tribute game to a single band. Maybe the venues mean something to Aerosmith fans but if I were a harcore fan, I would want more than I got in this package. A lot more. A lot fucking more.

Rating: Three groupies out of five.