Disapointing
After playing Guitar Hero 3 (GH3) to death I could not wait to get my hands on a new Guitar Hero game, unfortunately this wasn’t what I expected. I would not say that I was a big fan of Aerosmith, but I have enjoyed some of their catchy guitar driven songs. Forgetting the fact that I just wanted more songs to play on my now dusty guitar I really thought this was the game for me.
The basic game format is the same as GH3. You start on the first section, which is where Aerosmith started their career. This contains 5 songs, 3 Aerosmith songs, and 2 songs that Aerosmith really like or have influenced their playing style. Unfortunately you have to play these 2 other songs first before you can access the songs by Aerosmith – this is true with all 6 sections which is a bit annoying, but it is not all that different from the previous games. There was just a bit more choice to start off with and you only needed to finish 4 out of 5 songs on previous versions to progress, on this version you have to finish all of them.
The graphics have not really improved compared to GH 3, and Steve Tyler looks, well, ugly. I know he does not look that bad in real life and I am sure they could have made more of an effort on the front man of the band.
The sound is better on this version; it actually plays in stereo. That was a down point for GH3 as they shipped it in mono only. Now that the game supports stereo it is quite surprising how much difference it makes, it sounds so much better, especially when its loud. They have changed the sound that the Wii remote makes when you miss a note, now it’s a horrible screeching sound like nails on a chalkboard. Maybe it is an incentive for you to get better?
The sound is better on this version; it actually plays in stereo.
If you buy the bundle pack (£60) a brand new guitar is included with the game, as well as some stickers to embellish your instrument, but the faceplate now has Aerosmith plastered all over it, so to put stickers on it would cover the band name pretty much completely. Bit odd I thought, why put the band name on just to cover it up with stickers? The guitar is almost the same but it seems to be a lot harder to activate “star power” this is done by deftly swinging the instrument up, which was easy on GH3 but I found myself trying it many times to no avail. Most of the time I have to swing it around wildly trying to get it to activate, all the time missing notes and making me look quite mad.
The difficulty has been toned down to such a low degree that even after a 15 hour shift and falling asleep I was still able to get 100% on easy. If anyone has played previous versions of GH I think they might be a little disappointed. Its not until you get to hard difficulty that the game actually gets to be a challenge.
Guitar Hero Aerosmith is a good game in itself, however they have messed about with things they should have left well alone, I only hope any future band branded releases are better and more in line with GH3.
If your bored with playing GH3 and really want some more songs to practice with then this is a welcome edition, just don’t expect it to take up too much of your time.
The Bad: You really need to be an Aerosmith fan; Very easy; Not many songs in total
