Publisher:
Activision
Developer:
Neversoft Entertainment
Release date:
Jun 28 2008
Reviewed on:
XBOX360

I bought this game by mistake, literally. Who could have realized one innocent click of the mouse would cause me so much grief. I am normally a big fan of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band franchises ,but I had no desire to play this one. Earlier this year, Activision and Neversoft brought us Guitar Hero Aerosmith. It is not necessarily a bad game, because it doesn’t really do anything wrong, it just doesn’t do enough.

Game play is the same as in the other entries in the series: Hold the corresponding buttons as they scroll down the screen and strum the guitar. The career track list is a paltry thirty-one songs, plus one battle written by Joe Perry. This is supplemented by only ten unlockable tracks and no downloadable content. While this meager offering amounts to only one song less than Guitar Hero 3′s set list, it still doesn’t feel like enough. Of these songs, a little over half are by Aerosmith which is no surprise and not a bad thing for fans of the band. The unfortunate thing is that two of these songs we have already played in other games such as “Dream On” which is downloadable in Guitar Hero 3, and “Train Kept a Rollin” from Rock Band.

This may seem like bashing, but what I’m trying to point out is that there is very little at all to this game and it still retails as a full priced title. On a positive note, as you progress through the career within the game you get a brief distraction through interviews with the band which are pretty entertaining. The career mode plays out as a kind of Biography special about the band with short videos at the beginning of each set list, which then can be purchased and viewed later. I was glad to see the guitar battles return for this game and playing them online is pretty fun, but once again nothing new here and the real fun comes from playing with someone there with you.

Within one sitting you can get through this game and then it will just sit on a shelf collecting dust. Guitar Hero Aerosmith would have done a lot better with a cheaper price tag, or merely as downloadable content for one of the franchise’s many other games. With Guitar Hero Metallica now on the horizon, let’s hope Neversoft can bring us something worth spending our hard earned money on.

Grade: D