Topic: Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

[Tr17]

Review.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is the newest addition to the Guitar Hero series. Its the first one to feature a single band (with other bands' tracks picked out by Aerosmith, included).

Its obviously a spin-off game to Guitar Hero VI: World Tour, so its no surprise thats its very similiar to GH3. No one should slam this game for not having new features or costing too much (the wii versions single game choice, at least). The game has 41 tracks and has slightly new graphics, characters, and career mode, so $49.99 seems reasonable. (especially since theyre charging $29.99 for extra songs alone for Rock Band.)

Review: All of this in mind, I expected to get the same game play as GH3, but with plenty of Aerosmith. My expectations were that the graphics would be more intricate in this game, since its been noted that the graphics for this game are much more suited for the wii. However, all of the "made-up" Guitar Hero regulars had the exact same animations. The band of Aerosmith looked better, for a relief, even though it still looks hideous compared to the Xbox360 version. The crowd is the most eye-catching, when they all are blocky stick figures from behind (this is even worse than the previous version).
More cons: The audio? When I first played some of the songs I noticed that the sounds were all mixed up and it was hard to follow the music. So I started to work with the audio settings in options. It took me hours to figure out why I could never hear any of the words to the songs, even with my volume high. I was starting to think that my copy of the game was faulty. It just happened to be how the game was set, I suppose. I'm able to hear the song lyrics perfectly in "Same old song and dance" in GH3. Not the case for half of the songs in this game.
Last con: The faces that Axel Steel and Steven Tyler make will scare children..
Pros: The songs flow better in terms of difficulty in career mode. It is definitely easier than GH3, (mainly because there's very few triple notes) but there still are some difficult parts and songs. The solos are much longer with the HOPOs tightened, tuning up the difficulty level quite a bit.
There is less variety in the song choice and type of rock, but I enjoy these songs more thoroughly than GH3's selection. 32 of the 41 tracks are songs that I'll play over, repeatedly. (Disappointing that "Dude(Looks Like a Lady)", "Crazy", or "Jaded" didnt show up in the game, though.)
The videos of Aerosmith explaining their experiences between each tier were short, but still entertaining (for fans).

Overall views:
Graphics: They are not good enough for this system and need to be worked harder on. (especially since more wii owners buy these games)

Game Play: GH3 with Aerosmith, obviously.

Entertainment Value: Plenty of hours of fun, with some frustration over graphics and audio.

Audio: Default settings were horrible. Very difficult to hear Steven Tyler's singing.

Concept: Good idea, since so many people like Aerosmith and there's great solos and guitar parts for Guitar Hero. Single band Guitar Hero gives fans what they want and gives GH fans more content until the next addition to the series.

Replay?: Great songs to go back to. The tracks from other bands were disappointing, though (Few were fun to play).

[mottsc]

Are you speakers hooked up correctly with red to red and black to black on both? If one of them was reversed it could cause quiet on vocals which tend to come from both speakers.

[Tr17]

No, its set up fine. The band seems to just play much louder than he sings.

Just a fix: I have a typo, Guitar Hero VI is 6. I meant IV.

[Tr17]

Hold on. I started testing different modes on my TV and I found the right one, where it fixed it, so Tyler is finally singing loud enough to hear. (It didn't matter on GH3 what mode was on.)

But to add to this review, I have noticed some problems and glitches while playing. Throughout most songs, there is some lag that occurs randomly while the notes are streaming down, (which can be distracting and can cause to miss notes). "Bright Light Fright" is where it most frequently occurs.

Also, while holding a long note that is a HO or PO, it may immediately stop if you use the whammy bar as soon as you start on the note. I'm not sure if its a glitch or I might be letting go of the fret buttons without noticing, but its happened many times already.

[Spinnzilla]

Good review, man.  My biggest real complaint was aerosmith rerecording some of their own material for this.  Dream On rerecorded sounds horrible compared to the vintage verison.

[Stele]

Just another quick mention of a con for me.  GH:A is missing one feature that I loved from GH3.  Co-Op Career.  My wife and I were very frustrated with GH:A that we could not unlock new tiers of songs together.  We had to have a single band and take turns unlocking songs for both of us to play.  And then when you're trying to earn cash for unlocking songs, costumes, etc. you can't earn any cash playing multiplayer together.

Really kills some of the initial play and replay for us.

[Khushrenada]

Yeah, the cash accumulation aspect is awful. There's no way you can earn enough cash to buy everything in the shop by playing every song and difficulty level as one "band". You've got open up multiple accounts. What's the deal with that? It seems like they fixed that in GH:WT where you can keep earning money even if you play the same song again. But maybe I'm mistaken on that.

Still, that aspect aside, I still love GH: Areosmith for the simple fact that I like nearly all the songs. It's great to have a game where you like playing most of the options instead of only a few choice cuts in the other versions. And no heavy metal! Or Beastie Boys! That right there makes this one worthy game.

[nickmitch]

In GH:WT, you earn money in quickplay.  That's a huge improvement over previous entries.

[Khushrenada]

Yes, that too.