Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

Rating Teen Genre music Publisher Activision

In this day of streaming HD video and downloadable content, it’s easy to forget that there are some people who still haven’t taken the jump to current generation consoles and still others who are restricted by unfortunate bandwidth deficiencies. Lucky for them Activision seems willing to market to this demographic in their first artist specific expansion to their popular music franchise with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Having purchased many a song through Rock Band’s music store myself, it’s understandable that there is surely a market for more and more tracks to test your paddle flicking skills against, but does this warrant a full retail release? But, there are a couple of things I can say with certainty. At this point, if a game has the words Guitar Hero in the title it will sell. Secondly, Activision sure picked a big enough band for this release.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that anyone reading this has either heard of and or played a Guitar Hero game at some point. If you haven’t yet, it has already been referenced in all different types of media, from your local Sunday newspaper to South Park, so you must really not get out much…or do I have that backwards. GH: Aerosmith plays exactly the same as the other recent GH games, though the challenge has been toned down quite a bit. For those like me who have moved on to their virtual drum career and have to dust off those spider webs from their 5-fret plastic axe, it won’t be as noticeable. But if you are still trying to best your top score on Dragon Force’s Through Fire and Flames, then you won’t find much of a challenge here.

What does deviate this iteration from its predecessors should be obvious: Aerosmith. If you’re die-hard fan of Aerosmith and aren’t tired of playing your faux instruments, then you will dig GH: Aerosmith. The game’s career mode takes you through some new venues as you live through Aerosmith’s rise. Each venue is even preceded by a video of the band members reminiscing about these specific points in their career. The game has a track list of 41 songs, 12 of which are not Aerosmith tunes. Other artists featured in those extra tracks include The Clash, Stone Temple Pilots, and Run DMC.

Graphically the PS2 version of GH:Aerosmith is what one would hope for a title released in the tail end of the console’s lifecycle, nowhere near the next gen presentation but definitely putting the eight-year old console to work. The animation is also good for a PS2 title thanks to solid motion capture of Aerosmith, with a few exceptions. Though most members move rather fluidly. their neutral standing positions before a song seem quite jerky, much like one might see during the in game cut scenes of earlier PS2 titles. Also, the drumming animations appeared quite stiff compared to the other instruments, making the drummer seem much more like it was mocapped by the keyboarding gorilla from Chuck E. Cheese rather than Joey Kramer.

It’s no secret that the Guitar Hero franchise has sold well and will continue to sell well into the future, and GH: Aerosmith is no exception. It’s a shame that the core gameplay is no different from the previous games, making me feel that this sort of band specific release would be much more at home on Xbox Live or the Playstation Network as moderately priced downloadable content. But, if you are an Aerosmith fan and don’t mind the high price, you will not be disappointed with this stand-alone expansion.