Like ACTUAL Love in An Elevator, this game is short and a bit clumsy. For the most part this game does what it sought out to do, which is please fans of the band, Aerosmith. If you are not a fan of the band, don’t expect this Guitar Hero installment to convert you. There really is no innovation here, its just Guitar Hero III with Aerosmith slapped on the cover. And seeing Stephen Tylers mug in the game is not exactly appealing. The development team really captured Stephen’s facial expressions, but they made him and Joe Perry look creepy as hell.

Many people say, “How can they make a game with nothing but songs from one band?!” Well, to answer that question, each teir actually has 2 songs from other bands (most are covers, sadly) and the final 3 are Aerosmith. The layout of each tier is that you play as the opening band. You start out the game by doing the bands first gig ever, performing at a local high school. As you progress through the game you play at a famous bar, the Super Bowl Half-Time show, and eventually the Hall of Fame. My main gripe with the game is the difficulty, which never really gets any harder. I played through the game on Expert, and did not even fail a song. In fact, the only songs that pose a challenge are “Toys in the Attic” and “Train Kept A Rollin’”. If you can finish Guitar Hero on Hard, you should be able to tackle this game on Expert with ease.

The choices in music are alright, nothing speacial. My personal favorites include; “Walk This Way”, “Livin’ On the Edge”, “Sweet Emotion”, “Back In The Saddle” and “Dream On”. These songs pose no challenge to veteran “Hero’s” because of how repetitve many of the songs chords are. For instance, as epic as “Dream On” is, it is ridiculously easy. I think they should of held off and kept all of these Aerosmith songs for Guitar Hero 4. This is a band that is much more fun to sing along to, rather than just play the somewhat boring chords.

The old addage, “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” is true in most cases, but for GH:A, it really seems to drag it down with how stale it feels. One thing I did enjoy, was as you go from tier to tier you are treated by interviews with the band. These videos are short and sweet and just a quick little tidbit of what the band was feeling at that point in their career. Oh, and remember those annoying boss battles you hated in GH3? Well, you only have one in this game, and it’s with Aerosmith’s guitarist, Joe Perry. Its quite easy, actually, but to this day I still do not understand the point behind these infernal boss battles, they are just an annoyance.

Overall, the game is really just worth a weekend rental, defintly not worth your hard-earned cash. However, this game has acutually got me excited for Guitar Hero: Metallica. That is something to look out for in 2009, because instead of being insanely easy and repetitive, it will have you in tears on expert (mmm…Fade To Black, Master of Puppets, the list goes on of good songs they could use). I will say one good thing about this game, which is some of the better Aerosmith songs, you will REALLY get into as you play them. This is not going to tide you over till the 4th installment, but is a dream come true for hardcore fans of the band. It should be a no-brainer for a fan to pick this game up and play the living crap out of it. I just have a hard time seeing any average gamer really showing much interest in the band…better luck next time Activision.