It's weaker than its predecessor in many areas, but it still does Guitar Hero right.
The Bad: Graphics are weaker for no real reason, even worse than before; a few cover versions of songs sound awful; if you can do the toughest GHIII songs, this'll be insanely easy; only 40 songs; co-op career is gone.
Guitar Hero III sold best on Wii, by a mile. Therefore, you'd presume that Activision will be putting in extra effort in the forthcoming Guitar Hero games for Wii.
This isn't exactly one of the major franchise titles, but still, it's clear that this version didn't get any more focus than the others, possibly less. It has the exact same flaws of Guitar Hero III, and it's worse in some areas. It's still a solid game, mainly due to the Guitar Hero formula still holding strong, but it clearly isn't as strong an entry in the franchise.
The game allows you to choose your band member, and it works the same as Guitar Hero III. The same characters are there, albeit with new costumes in some cases, and you'll have the same singer, drummer, and bassist in the background. This is only for the songs that aren't actually Aerosmith songs, which is by far the minority. Still, there are maybe ten, fifteen where this decision is relevant.
This is because otherwise, you'll be Joe Perry, and the other band members will be none other than the members of Aerosmith. This is kind of a cool feature, if not unexpected. They mapped the faces of Steve Tyler, Joe Perry and co. to the characters, just as they did with Slash and Tom Morello in Legends of Rock. But it feels like there wasn't much point in buying the guitars, basses, clothes, and such for your other characters. You will unlock Perry to play in the other songs, of course, but it's just strange how it went down.
The graphics are a little chunkier and weaker than they were in Guitar Hero III, which already had god-awful graphics. I'm sick of Wii getting the shaft graphically, as is every other Wii owner. These are PS2 graphics, and the Gamecube could beat that. And the Wii is twice the Gamecube's power. If the 360 got weaker graphics than the PS3, it'd be no different, and just as annoying to 360 owners as it is to us. I docked both Legends of Rcok and Aerosmith a full point for that.
I also docked .5 for lack of originality and no downloadable content in both. That brings them to an 8.5, which was the final score of GHIII.
Aerosmith, however, is weaker, if not exactly bad. Those graphics being even more pathetic are just part of the problem. The co-op mode is gone. They did at least keep the battle and face-off modes, but co-op is awesome for friends who know one of them is far superior to the other at the game. Major disappointment.
That would subtract .5. But to bring it back up a bit are the venues- not as stupid as the Guitar Hero ones, possibly because they're actual places- that were well chosen from Aerosmith's history. There are even interviews with the band when you unlock a new venue, far more interesting than the weak cutscenes between the venues in GHIII.
On the downside, big time, is the extreme lack of songs. Guitar Hero III had about 70. Aerosmith has 40. You're getting a lot less bang for your buck. 40 isn't a terrible number, and you can still get a new bundle with a second guitar (a better choice than buying them separately), and of course the new instruments work with Guitar Hero III, but otherwise, it's a large disappointment. That's another full point, since the songs are the whole point of the game.
Obviously, don't buy the game if you don't like Aerosmith. I think you can figure that out yourself. But for an Aerosmith fan, the songs are really good, even the ones you haven't heard. Naturally, all the hits are there- Walk This Way, Dream On, Train Kept-a-Rollin, etc.- and the guitar part Joe Perry wrote for the boss battle is playable outside of the fight as one of the hardest songs in the game.
Meanwhile, there are some solid choices of songs not played by Aerosmith, which you'll probably have heard back in the day while Aerosmith was popular. Dream Police, I Hate Myself for Loving You, and Cat Scratch Fever are all there, awesomely enough. On the downside: although there Aerosmith songs are obviously not covers, quite a few of the other bands' songs are. All the Young Dudes, among others, is absolutely awful done by the cover band. Joe Perry, on his own, does a lot of the bonus songs though, which is pretty fun to see, since they're some greats too. However, the version of Walk This Way in the main game is the remix version, not the original (which is far better). That's annoying for me, since the rappy (crappy) version isn't Guitar Hero, or halfway decent to me. That's the last half point.
I can't exactly complain or like the difficulty. If you can do the hardest stuff in GHIII, this'll be a cakewalk. I was in the expert career (but couldn't beat about ten songs, which were insane), so this did improve my Guitar Hero-ing skills though. That's pretty nice. And it can help you build up to Guitar Hero III, because of that much lowered difficulty. If you're not good at Guitar Hero, in other words, you'll appreciate it. It's a toss up.
There is still Wi-Fi, so it's kind of nice that they didn't take that out, but there'd be major bonus points for DLC, but they're saving that for Guitar Hero IV, aka World Tour.
Should you get it? If you dislike Aerosmith, no. If you do, yes, generally. However, get Guitar Hero III first, so you have 70 songs and a guitar. Then get this guy, so you get 40 more songs and another guitar. It's a much better deal than buying either of those guitars separately, and it's not as if this game's BAD- it's just disappointingly a bit weaker. If you got GHIII already and dislike Aerosmith, wait for World Tour. Or, if you don't need an extra guitar, just get this without the guitar and get the new guitar coming with World Tour. As confusing as that was...
Whatever, just get the game. It's fun, obviously, being Guitar Hero. The 7 is judging by Guitar Hero standards- which, this gen, include better graphics, DLC, and more songs- but the gameplay, as ever, is out of this world.