Well gamers... I know it's been about a week since this game came out but I've been holding off to see if my opinion about the game would change... maybe Aerosmith might grow on me... I thought... NOPE!

Before I get into my total opinion on the game let me tell you why they even made this. Guitar Hero Aerosmith was chosen because while we were all busting out butts trying to beat "Raining Blood" and Lou on Guitar Hero 3 our parents were online filling out a survey about "What band should be featured in the next Guitar Hero expansion pack?". See what we did? See what our gaming addictions get us? Target demographic: Adults between the age of 25-40... so in other words, we got screwed.

Now as an Aerosmith fan you may love the fact that buying the bundle gets you a custom Aerosmith faceplate for you to show off to all your gamer nerd friends at work... or that you actually get to play as the band for the 40 some odd Aerosmith songs that are in the game. What you probably WON'T like is that if you fit in that target demographic you've probably never played guitar hero before and trying to play along probably makes you want to take the guitar and smash it into the tv if you hear one more *Plink* noise when you're trying to sing along to "Dream On". Also, you may notice that the hits that everyone who does love Aerosmith has on their top 10 list is not included in the setlist. "Janies Got a Gun", "Dude looks like a lady" and "Crazy" are just some of the songs that should have been but aren't in the game. Reasons behind it go from "Well there's not enough cool guitar parts in the song" to "We couldn't get the rights to do that song". Oh well... and it seems like to make up for the lack of really good Aerosmith songs they'd put in some of Joe Perry's side work to make us appreciate the Aerosmith songs more. Not really a fan of his side work but I did like how they actually made Joe Perry more like a real guitarist in the game giving him animations like running down the catwalk for a solo or jumping off a speaker and the ever so awesome "Help I've fallen and I can't get up" move where he just lays on the ground rocking back and forth for a part of the song. lol Pluses include interviews with the band in between set lists giving you behind the scenes info on the band and being able to play in the same venues that the band played it from Max's Kansas City to the Hall of Fame and you can even select the band members as playable characters.

As a guitar hero fan you're probably pretty pissed about this game. Honestly it's probably the worst game in the series, and yes I'm including Guitar Hero: 80's Edition in the mix as well. With less than 60 songs and most of them being Aerosmith or Joe Perry songs the setlist pretty much sucks. The best songs in there are non Aerosmith songs like "Sex Type Thing" although I do have to give them props for adding the Run DMC version of "Walk This Way" in there. You'll also notice the difficulty level has been dumbed down quite a bit. Playing on Expert is now like playing on Hard and people who used to play on Hard in GH3 will notice that they can 5 star or gold star most if not all of the songs now on GH:A. In order to make up for making the game so easy, they decided to make the hammer ons and pull offs harder like they were in Guitar Hero 2 so no it's not that you suck at doing hammer ons and stuff now... it's just a bit harder to do.

The achievements to this game are pretty ridiculous as well. You basically get achievements just for every venue you unlock, beating the game, unlocking Aerosmith as a playable band, playing with a female character, playing with Izzy Sparks (dude looks like a lady achievement... lol I admit I thought that was a whitty one!) and playing a ranked match online whether you win or lose taking the challenge out of the game. Just beating the game on Expert will basically give you half the achievements! Good new element they added though is the ever so needed stacking system to the difficulty achievements. Now when you beat the game on Expert you unlock all achievements for beating the game on Hard-Easy mode as well. No more hours of suffering for you Expert players trying to get that Easy and completed the game on all difficulties achievements!

As I said before this game is an Expansion of Guitar Hero 3. No you don't have to own Guitar Hero 3 to play it, it's a standalone expansion that will still cost you a whopping $60 for the game alone and $100 for the special edition bundle. Crazy I know! It's basically like what Harmonix did with Guitar Hero: 80's Edition. Honestly my opinion is do not buy the game unless you REALLY, and I mean REALLY, want that custom guitar. Other then that this game is a rent at best not even a "If it makes it to greatest hits for $20 I'd buy it"... because it won't. The game takes a total of about 4 hours to complete on Expert mode if you play and beat every song the first time through, and under 6 hours to complete the game with all bonus songs included and has no replay value really. The songs aren't that fun to play honestly and you'd be better off saving the $60 and putting it toward Guitar Hero 4. Lets just hope GH4 lives up to the hype and that the GH:Metallica pack that is rumored to be out by spring of next year will more than make up for the suckiness that is GH:Aerosmith.

Well if you already made the mistake of buying the game I say your best bet is to try to trick one of your friends into buying it for $50 off ya cuz GameStop knows what's up. The day Aerosmith was released I walked into the store to see a big sign up that says "Trade in value for GH:Aerosmith = $20" yeah... they knew you'd be bringing it back in the same day. lol

GH Tip of the Day: Did you beat Lou on Medium and try to move up to Hard just to find that the game seems way WAY too hard with that damn orange button? Well here's a little trick. Now that the orange button is involved it helps if you move your hand down so that your pinky in on the Orange at all times and your index is on the Red. With this new hand position hitting the oranges (which will become even more frequent on Expert) is easy and moving your index finger is super easy for when the Green notes pop up (which will happen even less on Expert). Try starting your hard progression from the beginning playing with this new hand position and after an hour or so of playing you'll start to get used to it and you'll be rockin' your way back to Lou again but this time on Hard.  Good luck!

*Have any questions about Guitar Hero 3? Just ask me on here and my next posting will be dedicated to helping you guys out with tips and tricks to rock out hardcore with the top players.
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