Look familiar?
On the surface, it all looks and feels like what you'd expect from Guitar Hero. The opening 'cinematic' features Aerosmith in a comical cartoon run-through of their career in about 30 seconds, and then it's on to the basics, where you can choose to start a career, or quickplay, or jump online for some multiplayer. Once selecting a career, you'll choose a character (including many returning from previous Guitar Hero titles) and will begin playing songs at your first venue - nothing out of the ordinary yet, then. The difference here is that each venue is one of particular importance to Aerosmith, whether it be where they played their first gig or where they had a memorable concert of some kind. This means that before partaking in the songs at each venue, you'll be given a brief rundown of why the venue is important, using real footage of the band themselves talking about the location.
If you dislike Aerosmith, you're probably thinking at this point that it's simply not worth it, but the footage of the band talking about their history is very short and edited in a quick-cutting fashion so that it never really dwells too much on what they're saying. It also does help give the venue a bit of back-story, which previously hadn't been touched on in other Guitar Hero titles. When playing, each venue will initially have two songs for you to play through from other artists (ie: not Aerosmith); once completing those two tracks, the crowd will cheer for Aerosmith to come on stage, and you will then play three tracks of theirs to finish off the 'set'. In a sense, the other bands on the disc are all supporting acts to the main feature of Aerosmith.
Then it's a matter of lather, rinse and repeat from here on out, hearing some details on the venue from the band, followed by playing a set list with Aerosmith as the big 'finale' each time. The gameplay is unchanged from previous Guitar Hero titles, and it's worth mentioning that even though we aren't big Aerosmith fans ourselves, the songs selected for the disc are all entertaining and fun to play through regardless, with the variety of difficulty settings and tempos still just as relevant here as they ever were in prequels. When Aerosmith comes onto stage, it's an odd experience seeing them represented in their cartoony Guitar Hero style caricatures, but they do certainly look like their real life counterparts, right down to the way they move and act on stage.
See? It's not all just Aerosmith!
Despite our initial concerned reaction to the idea of an Aerosmith based Guitar Hero disc, after playing the game, we're nowhere near as worried. While many aspects of the game really are going to give Aerosmith fans themselves a real fuzzy feeling, there is still a solid Guitar Hero game here for fans of the franchise itself. Sure, in terms of gameplay it's pretty much exactly the same as Guitar Hero 3, but the series has always been a case of 'if it ain't broke' anyway, and it's still just as addictive as it always has been. There are a lot of Aerosmith tracks, so if you despise the band, then you may find it difficult to justify playing it, but when it comes down to it, it's the Guitar Hero that we know and love with a bunch of new tracks... so if you're looking for a brand new reason to pull out your plastic guitar, keep a look out for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in the near future.
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