Overview: The title says it all, Guitar Hero + Aerosmith.
Pricing: This one has dropped pretty fast. $15 used seems to be the standard and new copies go for $20. The version with the guitar even dropped to $50 or less, which is ridiculously cheap if you don’t already have the controller.
Rip-Off Warning: Not much danger here. All the Guitar Hero games except for Metallica, Smash Hits, and 5 seem to be dropping in price steadily. Look around and you might see the occasional $25 or 30 price.
Platform: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, XBox 360 (Reviewed), Wii
Is it worth it? This might be my cheap game of the week, but I actually purchased this brand-spanking new with a guitar controller and everything for $100. The release was just a perfect storm of having recently discovered the music rhythm genre, needing a second 360 compatible controller, and actually being an Aerosmith fan. How’s that for a disclaimer?
Unfortunately, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was the sophmore effort for Neversoft who released the incredibly well selling but widely criticized Guitar Hero III after Harmonix went off to make Rock Band. The primary criticisms of Guitar Hero III was imprecise note charts, high degree of difficulty, and the ridiculous “boss battles” that they introduced. Instead of the fun, casual, social gaming experience that previous Guitar Hero games had been, Neversoft had seemingly adopted their usual “2 HARDKOR 4 U” mentality of the Tony Hawk series.
While they claimed to have listened to criticisms, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith feels like one of those non-apologies that are quickly followed by a middle finger when your back is turned. The difficulty isn’t quite as bad, but still ramps up rather quickly about mid-game. They retained one boss battle and made it skippable. That just smacks of a stubborn refusal to learn their lesson while also acknowledging that maybe it wasn’t the best idea. As for the note charts, my favorite quote about GH: Aerosmith was “Neversoft continues to display complete ignorance for the mechanical workings of a guitar or even a human hand”.
Other issues is that the game is incredibly short and there are many other songs you have to play through before getting to each Aerosmith set. That’s too bad because if you’re an Aerosmith fan it’s a pretty good song list, but if you’re not a fan then there is no point to this game. Adding other bands that “inspired” or where “inspired by” Aerosmith is just a lame attempt to pull in people who aren’t familiar with their music.
Final Judgement: This is a PASS. If you’re an existing Aerosmith fan you may enjoy it, but otherwise it’s going to feel like a waste of time and money to most anyone else.
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