Mild Dissatisfaction in an Elevator
Driving home the other day, I got the spontaneous notion to drop by Blockbuster and see if they had the new Guitar Hero yet. I was a little cautious to buy it because of the $50 price tag; I wanted to make sure it would be worth the money before taking the plunge. I hadn't read any reviews on it but I thought it was possibly something that would get old quickly. And since Blockbuster is extraordinarily lax on late fees, I thought there was a good chance I would be able to get enough GH goodness to satiate my appetite with just a rental. As it turns out I was right.
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed by the game. There are a few glaring faults that make me feel like this should be more of a $30 game than a $50 game. It's too bad, too, because I have always loved Aerosmith's music. I'm also a big fan of Guitar Hero, so I was pretty excited when I heard it announced. My disappointment comes from the following faults:
- No Co-op career mode
- Short track list
- Presentation is rehashed from Guitar Hero III
- Difficulty is significantly reduced
- Crowd claps off the beat during Star Power segments
The rehashed presentation was the first thing that I noticed. The menus look the same, the default characters are all the same, the menus and game structure are all the same and even some of the messages that appear on the loading screens are the same. This just shows a lack of effort on Neversoft's part, which is discouraging. In fact, the one thing that is different from the main menu is that there is no option for Co-op Career mode. Debbie and I really enjoyed playing through GH3 in Co-op Career. There is still a co-op mode, which is good, but we were limited to 8 songs (and not great ones at that) until I spent some time unlocking songs. It may be something that people don't care about, but I certainly did.The track list for single player is reduced to 31 tracks, which is a little more than half of Guitar Hero III. About 19 of these are Aerosmith songs. I was glad to see "Dream On" and "Rag Doll" make the list, but there are some glaring holes as far as I'm concerned, including "Cryin'" and "Janie's Got a Gun", which are great songs. There are some decent selections in the vault, but it still leaves me wanting more. Couple the short track list with the decreased difficulty level and it makes for a short experience. I still haven't been able to beat the last 4 songs in GH3 on hard, but I ran through GH:Aerosmith on hard in about 4 hours without having to retry any songs (save the guitar battle, which I suck at). This is particularly disturbing because I hadn't heard of a lot of the songs on there, I was site-reading.
The last point might sound a little nit-picky, but it actually gets extremely frustrating. Neversoft has added a clapping sound to Star Power segments of the game. The idea is that the crowd is clapping along with the beat. The sucky part is that the crowd doesn't clap along with the beat! They clap at the same tempo no matter what song you're playing! The result is that Star Power segments end up being extremely difficult, having to try to pick out the actual beat over the sound of the crowd. I really find this to be a huge problem and I won't be happy if I see it in the future.While I wasn't satisfied with the game, that isn't to say it was an unpleasant experience. I'm definitely glad I rented it and I will be playing it a considerable amount over the next couple of weeks (sorry Blockbuster :-P). I love Aerosmith and there are some great songs in the game. In addition to the Aerosmith classics, there are one or two great songs by other bands, including Cat Scratch Fever and Sex Type Thing. Another cool feature was the interviews with the band and the history lessons. But, like, 10-minute-VH1-segment interesting, not $50-video-game interesting.
Will I be buying it? No, at least not until it's $20 and probably not even then. It's not an experience worth $50 as far as I'm concerned. I like the idea of band-specific Guitar Hero games (as long as they're as good as Aerosmith) but I hope Neversoft spends a little more time on the next one. Until then, I'll keep renting.
