Guitar Hero has become some-what of a phenomenon for console owners since first debuting on the PlayStation 2. The series then later made its debut on the Xbox 360 with Guitar Hero II which was later followed by the highly praised Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is Neversoft's latest release to grace consoles but does it prove to be as popular as its predecessors or is it quite frankly just too much 'Aerosmith' to handle?

Gameplay:

First and foremost, the game can be played with essentially any of the Xbox 360 guitars available including the Les Paul wireless guitar which the game comes bundled with, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith also comes in a Solus flavour as well, which should do well for existing Guitar-heads who already have a guitar they can use to play. What's more interesting is the support of previously released Xbox 360 guitars, including the Gibson X-Plorer as featured with Guitar Hero II and more notably the Fender Stratocaster of recent Rock Band fame (via. an automatic title update). Guitar Hero: Aerosmith literally 'is' Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, the training exercises are exactly the same and the game plays and looks identical to that of its predecessor, which clearly is familiar and most certainly a good thing. The game however is the same price as any other recent release, including Guitar Hero III and Rock Band (Solus), the downside to this is that the game features far fewer tracks than those previously mentioned. One must be a serious hardcore Aerosmith fan to not quickly grow tired of the songs on offer here, of which 90+% of them are appropriately Aerosmith tracks. On the plus side, GH: Aerosmith is a little more forgiving on the old achievements compared to both the previous Xbox 360 Guitar Hero releases. There is also a practice mode among other recognisable features, though for anyone that has played Guitar Hero III, all these features in the game are exactly the same, the only real difference here comes in the form of the playable tracks, of which there are far few less in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith compared to the previously released Legends of Rock; with no support for downloadable content either, this game looks only to please those who are absolutely nuts about rock band, Aerosmith. The Practice mode enables players to choose parts from the songs and slow the speed down for you to time those notes more precisely and basically learn the song and what notes to expect before they appear. More interesting though is the Tutorial modes, at least for players jumping straight from Guitar Hero II to Aerosmith, which includes Basic Lessons, Star Power, Advanced Techniques and Guitar Battle. These tutorial modes include a voice from up above, as the Rock God himself along with his misguided rock colleague attempt to guide you through the various tutorials. Guitar Hero veterans will understand most of the information that is present here and again this is the same as offered up in the previous game, however it proves to be far too familiar and essentially Guitar Hero: Aerosmith feels more like an expansion pack for Guitar Hero III, and would have no doubt represented more value as a premium downloadable content pack on the Marketplace, or at the very least should have launched at a much cheaper retail price, considering the content on disc. The Guitar Battles offer an interesting and certainly more entertaining experience and even gives you a chance to dish out some guitar attacks to throw your opponents off, whether that be on Xbox Live or local split-screen, Other modes which can be played on Live or split-screen include co-op and face-off, where you can either work as a team to complete a song or versus each other where the player with the most points will ultimately win, and the loser must hang his head in shame. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith proves to be a very familiar experience from Guitar Hero III, in every conceivable way. There's still fun to be had here, as it is essentially the same game we all know and love, it just sadly doesn't really represent good value. New players to Guitar Hero should find that the Guitar Battles when played in multiplayer can prove most entertaining, of which will bring a new depth and level of concentration required to master the game as well as your opponents. The Guitar Battle attacks are earned in the same way as Star Power; by hitting a selection of the highlighted notes in succession to unlock an attack move, you can store upto three moves and you can unleash these on your opponents as and when you please, for maximum effect you can unleash the second stored attack right as the first one ends and so on, just be careful not to waste them though, as each player often has some significant break time in guitar battles where no notes come up for upwards of 10 seconds. Some of the attacks to be used in Guitar Battle include The Broken String attack, which requires the player to hold the damaged fret button down and strum away at it as quickly as possible to get it back in tune, which may be challenging if there are plenty of notes in bound that require immediate attention. This, as proven in Legends of Rock, no doubt brings a new challenge to the Career against bosses, and of course head-to-head local, as well as on Xbox Live, more disappointingly though is that guitar Hero: Aerosmith only features one Guitar Battle boss in the game's single-player, which pits the player against lead Aerosmith guitarist, Joe Perry. Playing through the game's campaign and successfully completing songs will earn you some cash to spend in the game's very own store, here you can buy things such as new guitars, more characters, and some further unlockable songs to rock along too with your trusty guitar. Playing the campaign also offers up short video documentary type segments between set lists, this is basically the Aerosmith guys reminiscing on some old times and commenting on their escapades at the time they were at that venue, of which appropriately sets it up as you are getting ready to perform at these re-modelled arenas that you perform on during the newly unlocked set-list.

Graphics:

Graphically Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is very much on par with Activision's previous release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, as clearly stated already, even to the point of featuring the same playable characters, though GH: Aerosmith does include some unlockable characters which can be purchased from the Guitar Hero store in-game with money earned from gigs. Unlockable characters include the likes of DMC as well as the Aerosmith characters as played as through the game's campaign, including several more. All of the playable characters, arenas and lighting effects, as with previous incarnations have a very distinct and cartoon aesthetic about them, though it's difficult to pay too much attention to these details as you're trying to focus and shred through all of those on-coming notes at lighting speed.

Sound:

While there are the typical expected sound effects for fireworks etc with the introduction of some new fancy venues you'll be playing at, and the usual sounds and bleeps you get as you hit and miss notes or activate star power, ultimately though the sound obviously comes down to the game's playable music tracks. In comparison to Legends of Rock which features 73 playable songs, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith pales in comparison with just under half that with 43 playable songs, and even some of the more popular Aerosmith tracks are absent, which is certainly not a good thing, it's a shame that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith did not go above and beyond the call of duty and include every Aerosmith track, and have them all playable. More importantly though, it's more of a personal preference on the music, you either love or hate Aerosmith. Even if you like them, chances are you may be sick to death of the tracks by the time you get through the game.

Longevity:

The game is ultimately let down by its rather shallow track listing, while there are a couple of non-Aerosmith tracks here and their, there's just not enough variety to keep things different. Chances are that once you've had a run-through of the campaign, you may very well find most of the songs rather tedious, especially if you've played through more than once on the varying difficulties.

Overall:

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith offers up the same gameplay experience that fans of the series have come to expect, the game though feels very much like an add-on and offers very little in the way of value. By no means is Aerosmith a bad game, I just think it would have done well to hit retail at a budget price, or better yet instead of a disc based game, release another Downloadable Content pack to extend the life of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock just that little bit longer before the 'proper' sequel comes, in the form of Guitar Hero: World Tour. If you're a gamer that has dominated both Xbox 360 Guitar Hero games, then you will find some entertainment from Aerosmith, one of the appealing things about it will be for achievement junkies, as it is considerably easier to rack up a couple of hundred more points from this game than it is from previous Guitar Hero titles. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith while entertaining at first, ultimately becomes tedious rather quickly, even for Guitar Hero enthusiasts, though it may be worth picking up once it hits the bargain bins or even right now, though only for die-hard Aerosmith fans that don't mind replaying through the game several times over with little choice of refreshing tracks, this is also dragged down significantly by the fact that the game does not support any form of downloadable content, so no track packs for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be inbound. I'd recommend looking elsewhere for a new guitar experience with much more variety in playable songs, if you've pulled through Guitar Hero III, then perhaps now might even be the time to check out Rock Band, and get some practice in ready for the full-kitted out Guitar Hero: World Tour experience.