Can Love Bloom in an Elevator?
Well, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is here. Care to see what we thought?
Published: August 31, 2008
Experience sure does count for a lot. The boys and girls at developer Neversoft certainly had something of an uphill climb when it was announced they'd be the ones taking the reins of the Guitar Hero franchise after original creators/developers Harmonix Music Systems decided they were heading to EA to get Rock Band made. People on various corners of the internet booed and hissed from the protection of forums anonymity, but Neversoft kept right on keepin' on. They busted out Guitar Hero III in impressive time, and though they didn't quite connect on every level, the game undoubtedly showed promise.
It also showed some rookie mistakes. The track listing was plenty varied, and some of the top-tier songs were as ridiculous as they were awesome to play, but the progression of songs and the note charts weren't quite there. The boss battles were a pain. The difficulty spiked to insane levels at certain points along the career path progression. Plus, there was that other game that was letting people pound away on their noisy plastic pads like drunken monkeys.
Clearly Neversoft was paying attention to naysayer and constructive critic alike. Guitar Hero: World Tour looks like it will honestly upstage not just Harmonix's first Rock Band, but the sequel too, thanks to some seriously killer additions. But what of the space between now and when the next full-blown Guitar Hero game hits? Thanks to the insanely late nature of this review, there's really only a couple of weeks between now and the release of World Tour, but it's still worth noting how far Neversoft has come.
For the record, I don't particularly enjoy Aerosmith songs. Throughout the course of playing through Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I learned that I liked far more songs than I would care to admit, but by Guitar Hero standards, they tended to be a little too lengthy, and not quite as engaging as some of the other songs in the collection. That collection includes, yes, Aerosmith songs (plus little background details on the formation and history of the band as told by the band themselves), but it also counts in its roster more than a few songs that the band themselves likes.
Ordinarily, this could have created something of an unfair disadvantage for Neversoft. Good songs are good songs, plain and simple, but fun to play songs -- especially in terms of video games -- aren't quite so simple. Luckily, it seems the time spent tweaking the formula has been well spent. Neversoft took a little virtual sandpaper to the difficulty curve, grinding down some of the infuriatingly tough spikes and helping to better transition players between the different difficulties. I still feel like the game doesn't quite introduce low-level players to what's so damned fun about nailing the harder sequences -- or even just in making them fun to play at that skill level vs. removing a few notes here and there), but it's certainly better than the first Neversoft product, and it shows they know how to improve on things.
Short of that, though, like all music games, it's going to come down to how you like the actual songs. I could stomach most of them, though there are plenty I'll probably never play again, and of course they sounded great in 5.1. The visuals, too, showed far more involvement than the Rocks the 80s expansion that Harmonix did before bugging out for their own game; Steven Tyler was obviously motion captured for performances (which makes watching the background far more entertaining, I assure you), and the likenesses of the full band are solid, if a little scary at times.
Really, the game looks and feels much like Guitar Hero III, but done better. How much better? That's going to be about as subjective as the track listing the band, Activision and Neversoft cobbled together. I didn't find myself bobbing my head nearly as much as in previous games, but then I'm not exactly the target audience for the game either. I'll be patiently waiting for the Metallica download pack, but in the mean time if you're fiendING for some clicky plastic guitar finger workouts, you really haven't got much of an option. Or... you could wait a couple weeks and be set.
It also showed some rookie mistakes. The track listing was plenty varied, and some of the top-tier songs were as ridiculous as they were awesome to play, but the progression of songs and the note charts weren't quite there. The boss battles were a pain. The difficulty spiked to insane levels at certain points along the career path progression. Plus, there was that other game that was letting people pound away on their noisy plastic pads like drunken monkeys.
Clearly Neversoft was paying attention to naysayer and constructive critic alike. Guitar Hero: World Tour looks like it will honestly upstage not just Harmonix's first Rock Band, but the sequel too, thanks to some seriously killer additions. But what of the space between now and when the next full-blown Guitar Hero game hits? Thanks to the insanely late nature of this review, there's really only a couple of weeks between now and the release of World Tour, but it's still worth noting how far Neversoft has come.
For the record, I don't particularly enjoy Aerosmith songs. Throughout the course of playing through Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I learned that I liked far more songs than I would care to admit, but by Guitar Hero standards, they tended to be a little too lengthy, and not quite as engaging as some of the other songs in the collection. That collection includes, yes, Aerosmith songs (plus little background details on the formation and history of the band as told by the band themselves), but it also counts in its roster more than a few songs that the band themselves likes.
Ordinarily, this could have created something of an unfair disadvantage for Neversoft. Good songs are good songs, plain and simple, but fun to play songs -- especially in terms of video games -- aren't quite so simple. Luckily, it seems the time spent tweaking the formula has been well spent. Neversoft took a little virtual sandpaper to the difficulty curve, grinding down some of the infuriatingly tough spikes and helping to better transition players between the different difficulties. I still feel like the game doesn't quite introduce low-level players to what's so damned fun about nailing the harder sequences -- or even just in making them fun to play at that skill level vs. removing a few notes here and there), but it's certainly better than the first Neversoft product, and it shows they know how to improve on things.
Short of that, though, like all music games, it's going to come down to how you like the actual songs. I could stomach most of them, though there are plenty I'll probably never play again, and of course they sounded great in 5.1. The visuals, too, showed far more involvement than the Rocks the 80s expansion that Harmonix did before bugging out for their own game; Steven Tyler was obviously motion captured for performances (which makes watching the background far more entertaining, I assure you), and the likenesses of the full band are solid, if a little scary at times.
Really, the game looks and feels much like Guitar Hero III, but done better. How much better? That's going to be about as subjective as the track listing the band, Activision and Neversoft cobbled together. I didn't find myself bobbing my head nearly as much as in previous games, but then I'm not exactly the target audience for the game either. I'll be patiently waiting for the Metallica download pack, but in the mean time if you're fiendING for some clicky plastic guitar finger workouts, you really haven't got much of an option. Or... you could wait a couple weeks and be set.
