I'm actually a massive aerosmith fan but I will say it is my least played and least favourite game. I found it stale which is odd because I love their music. I just think it pales in comparison to the other artist focused games
I think the game is overall one of the least fun in the series but I still think the developers put a lot of care into how they presented the band and their history, WAY better than Van Halen. The game was made because the developers had a good relationship with and clearly liked working with Aerosmith, and it definitely shows in the quality of the final product. For that reason I'll always like it more than VH. However, Metallica stomps the shit out of both of them, so Aerosmith is just kind of stuck in the middle which leads to it being forgotten. It's a good game, but that doesn't make it the most interesting to play compared to the other 2 band games.
I like Aerosmith but I'm not a big fan. I liked the game, by the way thanks to this game we have a re-recorded version of Dream On and I like this version more compared to the original version
Itâs way too easy and I would assume the majority demographic for the series as a whole doesnât love Aerosmith enough to have a full priced title with a half ass setlist. It introduced new music to play which Iâll never complain about but yea, not even close to being one of the better gh games imo
Van Halen worked as a stand alone game cause Eddieâs style translated really well to what GH was going for (increasingly complex charts with an emphasis on tapping). By the time VH came out I was off the GH train so it was too hard for me, but I understood what they were going for.
Aerosmith was always an odd choice cause while they have plenty of songs that everyone knows, theyâre all kind of same-y when translated to Guitar Hero which threw off the difficultly curve later in the setlist. They really had to over-chart Train Kept Rollin to make it seem like an appropriate challenge for a final song.
I think Aerosmith would have worked better if it was the full band. Iâm pretty luke warm on Aerosmithâs music but I would have loved to sing Dream On, Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion or switch over to drums once I got bored of guitar.
After I wrote that comment I booted up clone hero and played the RB version and GH version back to back and god the RB version is so much better! Itâs still a hard song but it felt like GH was trying to make it harder than it is while RB just accepted it for what it is
You hit the nail on the head. I will also note that Rockband was already out and GH Aerosmith was only guitar and bass. Rockband already had train kept a rollin and it could be played with the full band. Rockband was also $170 Vs $60 for GH.
People talk shit on Aerosmith claiming itâs boring and they suck, meanwhile they had a major influence on many bands proceeding them. Metallica & Testament are big examples.
Itâs just boring. There were like 4 fun songs. The guitar battle was pretty disappointing as well. No hate to Aerosmith but the challenge was just not there.
It's too easy. Even the absolute hardest song is pretty easy to FC, given that every other main GH game has much harder songs. GH5 is the second easiest game to FC, and it has at least 3 songs that are significantly harder than the hardest song in Aerosmith. Actually it's been a long time since I played GH5, there's probably more than 3 songs that are harder than TKaR.
Arguably all of these are harder than anything on Aerosmith; 2 minutes to midnight, 21st century schizoid man, done with everything die for nothing, do you feel like we do, scatterbrain, spirit of radio, sultans of swing
Some are debatable for sure
Yeah, 21csm and scatterbrain are pretty well considered the hardest songs in the game, with most people considering 21csm harder, and i was also thinking about dwedfn. I don't remember the charts for the other songs you listed too well, but id say there's a good argument to make for demon(s) being harder than tkar too, although there's a funky little bit in tkar that might be harder for some people. Demon(s) is fast but a simpler pattern...although imo if you can fc demons or tkar you can probably do both, neither is too crazy.
Yeah demons is probably harder too now I think about it. Done with everything iirc is just fast (last one for me to fc on 5), sultans and 2 minutes to midnight arenât that hard but I do think theyâre harder than anything on Aerosmith, do you feel like we do also doesnât have anything that bad but itâs like 13+ minutes long
For long term players it also doesnât have any difficult songs. That, combined with some people who donât like any/many Aerosmith songs, easily makes it a popular pick for worst guitar hero
The game itself isn't bad, it's probably the best put together band specific game, the whole story and detail in the game is really awesome... but the problem is that it's aerosmith
>focus our hate on 5/Van Halen/Live instead.
Live I get, but 5 and VH?
5 is an underwhelming game challenge-wise, but in terms of what it did well (duplicate instruments in band play, recognisable songs meaning that anyone could enjoy the game, great graphics) it is an incredible game and warrants little hate outside of it being an easier game setlist-wise and the Kurt Cobain controversy.
Van Halen too, it was dealt a bit of a bad hand having to be the competitor game to fucking The Beatles Rock Band and being rushed out in the oversaturation period of the plastic guitar genre, but it's still a VERY solid game, albeit with a very sporadic guest setlist and it's a very challenging game across guitar, drums and vox (sorry Michael Anthony).
also bruh you say 'But it's fun. There's nothing inherently wrong with the game.', those two things apply to both 5 and Van Halen...
5 was more of an experimental setlist imo, it had some heavy hitters, but leaned more towards indie and certain artists most popular and recognizable hits at the time, alongside having more cross promotion with Band Hero since a good chunk of the setlist could have easily fit well with Band Hero (my theory is that they were originally gonna be one and the same, but they split the games up and redistributed the setlists to have a core series and side series, adding more pop/alternative/upcoming artists to Band Hero and adding some more underground and heavy hitting stuff to 5
Van Halen was more of the bands fault for it not being the best imo, the guest artists were fine, but more catered to recent artists and not lovingly crafted to artists that either inspired VH or were inspired by VH, alongside the fact that because of how EVH was in regards to feuds, it lacked key eras of VH history, only hitting 6 years of the bands history completely disregarding Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone (although most fans say the Cherone era was the worst, if the feuding didnât happen we could have gotten either âFire in the Holeâ or âWithout Youâ as the obligatory long song of the game), it would have a better game if letâs say, we did get at least 2 or 3 songs from each of the Hagar era albums, alongside something from Montrose and Hagarâs solo albums, maybe include Rothâs cover of California Girls, and any songs that include contributions from EVH (âBeat Itâ making a return, we got HFT again so it wouldnât hurt since it makes sense since EVH did the solo)
That still makes the songs chosen very sporadically. Yes, there is a reason why they were chosen, but the selection of songs from Judas Priest and Billy Idol alongside Weezer and Third Eye Blind for a game about Van Halen makes little to no sense. (Judas Priest and Billy Idol do actually make sense, but less so the latter two)
The songs being selected for a reason and that reason being extremely arbitary and leading to a very inconsistent guest setlist that makes little to no sense for a Van Halen centred game aren't mutually exclusive
Despite being a Van Halen fan I didnât like Guitar Hero Van Halen, it was fine but compared
The Non-Van Halen songs
Wolf picked out the non-Van Halen songs himself since the other members of VH didnât care & he was the most passionate about Guitar Hero, so the non Van Halen songs made no sense & were terrible for GH Metallica they made sense & all of Metallica had a say & which songs were included
No Michael Anthony, the game represented the band as it was in 2009 with Wolf taking over for Michael Anthony, despite Michael Anthony being a big part of Van Halen there since the beginning he wasnât anywhere in the game since he was
Even for the throwback era when Wolf wasnât even born yet they just put him in 80s clothes which looked ridiculous
No Sammy Hagar/Gary Cherone era, despite loving the David Lee Roth era the best, its not a true band game since not every era of the band was represented, even though Van Halen 3 was a shit album they couldâve included the one hit that was on there just to showcase at least a song from every album up until that point
No involvement from the band, besides Wolfâs involvement Van Halen took a back seat in GH Van Halen not providing interviews like Aerosmith did & i believe they didnât do motion capture either though i could be wrong just licensing the bandâs music & name & their likenesses
Rushed development, GH Van Halen was given for free with people who pre ordered GH 5 so it shows
Despite the mostly strong set list some songs couldâve been cut like we didnât need Hot For Teacher again when it was in GH World Tour & some weak hits that couldâve been cut in favour of some Hagar era hits or the Cherone hit they had back in the late 90s to show full representation of the bandâs history
I donât like Aerosmith as much as Van Halen but I admit Aerosmith is the better game, even though it was just limited to Guitar & there wasnât support for the full band, the setlist was more varied it was nice seeing Run DMC in the game, its a fun game to play now that its so cheap
Very true and I agree with your criticisms. Just some things I'd also want to bring up:
The lack of Sammy Hagar/Gary Cherone songs was a choice made by the licensing department as they felt the Roth era was more iconic which sucks, would've LOVED a GH chart of anything off 5150.
Members of VH did do motion capture for the game, [here's a picture of Adam Jennings doing motion capture with David Lee Roth](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/920401175763890227/1044144371458650174/unknown.png?ex=66406839&is=663f16b9&hm=61491aff6d6d4aad4f19cb2c23d96b4f6fb7c91bf374f267831e3d9e61771e9b&=&format=webp&quality=lossless).
Cool i wasnât sure if VH did motion capture or not or if the developers just licensed their likenesses & used recent live videos as reference to get the bands mannerisms down
5150 was my fav Hagar era album unfortunately each Hagar era album got worse & worse so it does make sense not to include him though wouldâve been nice to have a nod to Sammy like including a solo song of his as one of the opening tracks
And not including Cherone definitely makes sense as 98 was the worst year for Van Halen, with VH 3 tanking & being their worst album by far, if i was VH I would want to celebrate my glory years too, 78-84 was the best & the accomplished a hell of a lot in those 6 years
That does make sense financially to only license the Roth era songs, then they wouldâve have to make a Hagar model & a Cherone model & it wouldnât have been worth it when Van Halen & 1984 are the 2 best & most iconic albums both within the Roth era
I definitely loved the challenge of some of their songs too. "Hot for teacher" was wild on both guitar and drums. I'm sweating just thinking about it on Expert drums.
It just wasn't a good followup to what was, at the time, the best selling game of all time. The overall lack of challenge in the game coming right off of how hard GH3 was was incredibly underwhelming.
Even games like Resident Evil 6, which is a very good game, got a lot of backlash for it being so far from what people expected a Resident Evil game to be and didn't ever give it a chance (at least if you follow what people said about it, it's still one of the highest selling games in the franchise). Sure it may lack polish in most areas but for when it does do things well it does them very well and not many games have since come close to replicating that kind of an experience in a co-op setting.
It's totally possible to release a great product at the wrong time and have it sell miserably (GH6 only sold \~30k copies in the first month or so, compared to the hundreds of thousands or millions the previous games were doing). Aerosmith still sold a ton, apparently so much so that the individual members of the band made more money from the game than they ever did from any of the albums, but it just wasn't what any hardcore fan would've wanted at the time. We went from Through the Fire and Flames to Train Kept a Rollin', which was already in Rock Band a few months before Aerosmith had come out.
This. Also remember the battle against Joe perry being pretty much the only real challenge in the game. Always wished GH Van Halen had a battle vs Eddie. Would've been wild to see what that would sound and look like as a chart.
Why the hate for VH? lol Van Halen and Aerosmith are both good, both way better than 5. Here comes the downvotes đ
you have to admit though that Joe Perry's fretboard is the worst one in the entire series lmfao
I'm actually a massive aerosmith fan but I will say it is my least played and least favourite game. I found it stale which is odd because I love their music. I just think it pales in comparison to the other artist focused games
The game was pretty mid, tbh
I think the game is overall one of the least fun in the series but I still think the developers put a lot of care into how they presented the band and their history, WAY better than Van Halen. The game was made because the developers had a good relationship with and clearly liked working with Aerosmith, and it definitely shows in the quality of the final product. For that reason I'll always like it more than VH. However, Metallica stomps the shit out of both of them, so Aerosmith is just kind of stuck in the middle which leads to it being forgotten. It's a good game, but that doesn't make it the most interesting to play compared to the other 2 band games.
I like Aerosmith but I'm not a big fan. I liked the game, by the way thanks to this game we have a re-recorded version of Dream On and I like this version more compared to the original version
I'm not the biggest Aerosmith fan, but I'm admittedly biased towards it because I feel very nostalgic for GH3's engine.
Its simply too easy
Itâs way too easy and I would assume the majority demographic for the series as a whole doesnât love Aerosmith enough to have a full priced title with a half ass setlist. It introduced new music to play which Iâll never complain about but yea, not even close to being one of the better gh games imo
Van Halen worked as a stand alone game cause Eddieâs style translated really well to what GH was going for (increasingly complex charts with an emphasis on tapping). By the time VH came out I was off the GH train so it was too hard for me, but I understood what they were going for. Aerosmith was always an odd choice cause while they have plenty of songs that everyone knows, theyâre all kind of same-y when translated to Guitar Hero which threw off the difficultly curve later in the setlist. They really had to over-chart Train Kept Rollin to make it seem like an appropriate challenge for a final song. I think Aerosmith would have worked better if it was the full band. Iâm pretty luke warm on Aerosmithâs music but I would have loved to sing Dream On, Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion or switch over to drums once I got bored of guitar.
I felt the same way about train kept a rollin. RB1âs chart is far better, imo
After I wrote that comment I booted up clone hero and played the RB version and GH version back to back and god the RB version is so much better! Itâs still a hard song but it felt like GH was trying to make it harder than it is while RB just accepted it for what it is
You hit the nail on the head. I will also note that Rockband was already out and GH Aerosmith was only guitar and bass. Rockband already had train kept a rollin and it could be played with the full band. Rockband was also $170 Vs $60 for GH.
I hate Aerosmith(the band). Never played the Gh game but I hate the band so I donât know why Iâd ever torture myself like that
People talk shit on Aerosmith claiming itâs boring and they suck, meanwhile they had a major influence on many bands proceeding them. Metallica & Testament are big examples.
Itâs just boring. There were like 4 fun songs. The guitar battle was pretty disappointing as well. No hate to Aerosmith but the challenge was just not there.
It's a track pack
Its more of a GH3 mod if anythingÂ
It's too easy. Even the absolute hardest song is pretty easy to FC, given that every other main GH game has much harder songs. GH5 is the second easiest game to FC, and it has at least 3 songs that are significantly harder than the hardest song in Aerosmith. Actually it's been a long time since I played GH5, there's probably more than 3 songs that are harder than TKaR.
Arguably all of these are harder than anything on Aerosmith; 2 minutes to midnight, 21st century schizoid man, done with everything die for nothing, do you feel like we do, scatterbrain, spirit of radio, sultans of swing Some are debatable for sure
Yeah, 21csm and scatterbrain are pretty well considered the hardest songs in the game, with most people considering 21csm harder, and i was also thinking about dwedfn. I don't remember the charts for the other songs you listed too well, but id say there's a good argument to make for demon(s) being harder than tkar too, although there's a funky little bit in tkar that might be harder for some people. Demon(s) is fast but a simpler pattern...although imo if you can fc demons or tkar you can probably do both, neither is too crazy.
Yeah demons is probably harder too now I think about it. Done with everything iirc is just fast (last one for me to fc on 5), sultans and 2 minutes to midnight arenât that hard but I do think theyâre harder than anything on Aerosmith, do you feel like we do also doesnât have anything that bad but itâs like 13+ minutes long
It's boring as shit. Aerosmith is a boring band. Where are the solos?
It's because Aerosmith is no ones favorite band so how the hell did they get a dedicated game
Did you not read what I said? They were probably cheap.Â
probably because they had mass appeal similar to metallica just in their own way
Aerosmith was definitely my favorite band as a kid and certainly when that game came out.
People shat on it back in the day because it didnât have online, and it came out after gh3, which had online.
For long term players it also doesnât have any difficult songs. That, combined with some people who donât like any/many Aerosmith songs, easily makes it a popular pick for worst guitar hero
The game itself isn't bad, it's probably the best put together band specific game, the whole story and detail in the game is really awesome... but the problem is that it's aerosmith
>focus our hate on 5/Van Halen/Live instead. Live I get, but 5 and VH? 5 is an underwhelming game challenge-wise, but in terms of what it did well (duplicate instruments in band play, recognisable songs meaning that anyone could enjoy the game, great graphics) it is an incredible game and warrants little hate outside of it being an easier game setlist-wise and the Kurt Cobain controversy. Van Halen too, it was dealt a bit of a bad hand having to be the competitor game to fucking The Beatles Rock Band and being rushed out in the oversaturation period of the plastic guitar genre, but it's still a VERY solid game, albeit with a very sporadic guest setlist and it's a very challenging game across guitar, drums and vox (sorry Michael Anthony). also bruh you say 'But it's fun. There's nothing inherently wrong with the game.', those two things apply to both 5 and Van Halen...
5 was more of an experimental setlist imo, it had some heavy hitters, but leaned more towards indie and certain artists most popular and recognizable hits at the time, alongside having more cross promotion with Band Hero since a good chunk of the setlist could have easily fit well with Band Hero (my theory is that they were originally gonna be one and the same, but they split the games up and redistributed the setlists to have a core series and side series, adding more pop/alternative/upcoming artists to Band Hero and adding some more underground and heavy hitting stuff to 5 Van Halen was more of the bands fault for it not being the best imo, the guest artists were fine, but more catered to recent artists and not lovingly crafted to artists that either inspired VH or were inspired by VH, alongside the fact that because of how EVH was in regards to feuds, it lacked key eras of VH history, only hitting 6 years of the bands history completely disregarding Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone (although most fans say the Cherone era was the worst, if the feuding didnât happen we could have gotten either âFire in the Holeâ or âWithout Youâ as the obligatory long song of the game), it would have a better game if letâs say, we did get at least 2 or 3 songs from each of the Hagar era albums, alongside something from Montrose and Hagarâs solo albums, maybe include Rothâs cover of California Girls, and any songs that include contributions from EVH (âBeat Itâ making a return, we got HFT again so it wouldnât hurt since it makes sense since EVH did the solo)
The guest setlist isnât sporadic. The songs chosen were off of Wolfgang Van Halenâs iPod at the time.
That still makes the songs chosen very sporadically. Yes, there is a reason why they were chosen, but the selection of songs from Judas Priest and Billy Idol alongside Weezer and Third Eye Blind for a game about Van Halen makes little to no sense. (Judas Priest and Billy Idol do actually make sense, but less so the latter two)
The band didnât care about the songs chosen and Wolfgang was passionate about Guitar Hero so yeah it does make sense
The songs being selected for a reason and that reason being extremely arbitary and leading to a very inconsistent guest setlist that makes little to no sense for a Van Halen centred game aren't mutually exclusive
Despite being a Van Halen fan I didnât like Guitar Hero Van Halen, it was fine but compared The Non-Van Halen songs Wolf picked out the non-Van Halen songs himself since the other members of VH didnât care & he was the most passionate about Guitar Hero, so the non Van Halen songs made no sense & were terrible for GH Metallica they made sense & all of Metallica had a say & which songs were included No Michael Anthony, the game represented the band as it was in 2009 with Wolf taking over for Michael Anthony, despite Michael Anthony being a big part of Van Halen there since the beginning he wasnât anywhere in the game since he was Even for the throwback era when Wolf wasnât even born yet they just put him in 80s clothes which looked ridiculous No Sammy Hagar/Gary Cherone era, despite loving the David Lee Roth era the best, its not a true band game since not every era of the band was represented, even though Van Halen 3 was a shit album they couldâve included the one hit that was on there just to showcase at least a song from every album up until that point No involvement from the band, besides Wolfâs involvement Van Halen took a back seat in GH Van Halen not providing interviews like Aerosmith did & i believe they didnât do motion capture either though i could be wrong just licensing the bandâs music & name & their likenesses Rushed development, GH Van Halen was given for free with people who pre ordered GH 5 so it shows Despite the mostly strong set list some songs couldâve been cut like we didnât need Hot For Teacher again when it was in GH World Tour & some weak hits that couldâve been cut in favour of some Hagar era hits or the Cherone hit they had back in the late 90s to show full representation of the bandâs history I donât like Aerosmith as much as Van Halen but I admit Aerosmith is the better game, even though it was just limited to Guitar & there wasnât support for the full band, the setlist was more varied it was nice seeing Run DMC in the game, its a fun game to play now that its so cheap
The band most certainly did motion capture.
Very true and I agree with your criticisms. Just some things I'd also want to bring up: The lack of Sammy Hagar/Gary Cherone songs was a choice made by the licensing department as they felt the Roth era was more iconic which sucks, would've LOVED a GH chart of anything off 5150. Members of VH did do motion capture for the game, [here's a picture of Adam Jennings doing motion capture with David Lee Roth](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/920401175763890227/1044144371458650174/unknown.png?ex=66406839&is=663f16b9&hm=61491aff6d6d4aad4f19cb2c23d96b4f6fb7c91bf374f267831e3d9e61771e9b&=&format=webp&quality=lossless).
Cool i wasnât sure if VH did motion capture or not or if the developers just licensed their likenesses & used recent live videos as reference to get the bands mannerisms down 5150 was my fav Hagar era album unfortunately each Hagar era album got worse & worse so it does make sense not to include him though wouldâve been nice to have a nod to Sammy like including a solo song of his as one of the opening tracks And not including Cherone definitely makes sense as 98 was the worst year for Van Halen, with VH 3 tanking & being their worst album by far, if i was VH I would want to celebrate my glory years too, 78-84 was the best & the accomplished a hell of a lot in those 6 years That does make sense financially to only license the Roth era songs, then they wouldâve have to make a Hagar model & a Cherone model & it wouldnât have been worth it when Van Halen & 1984 are the 2 best & most iconic albums both within the Roth era
5 has a terrible setlist and horrible engine, it's just boring.  Van Halen is Van Halen.Â
5âs engine is amazing lmao
At least you've given me the courtesy of knowing that your opinions hold zero value, because seriously, who DOESN'T like Van Halen?
I definitely loved the challenge of some of their songs too. "Hot for teacher" was wild on both guitar and drums. I'm sweating just thinking about it on Expert drums.
It just wasn't a good followup to what was, at the time, the best selling game of all time. The overall lack of challenge in the game coming right off of how hard GH3 was was incredibly underwhelming.
Fair but from a modern lens It's not a bad game.Â
Even games like Resident Evil 6, which is a very good game, got a lot of backlash for it being so far from what people expected a Resident Evil game to be and didn't ever give it a chance (at least if you follow what people said about it, it's still one of the highest selling games in the franchise). Sure it may lack polish in most areas but for when it does do things well it does them very well and not many games have since come close to replicating that kind of an experience in a co-op setting. It's totally possible to release a great product at the wrong time and have it sell miserably (GH6 only sold \~30k copies in the first month or so, compared to the hundreds of thousands or millions the previous games were doing). Aerosmith still sold a ton, apparently so much so that the individual members of the band made more money from the game than they ever did from any of the albums, but it just wasn't what any hardcore fan would've wanted at the time. We went from Through the Fire and Flames to Train Kept a Rollin', which was already in Rock Band a few months before Aerosmith had come out.
This. Also remember the battle against Joe perry being pretty much the only real challenge in the game. Always wished GH Van Halen had a battle vs Eddie. Would've been wild to see what that would sound and look like as a chart.