After spending the last few weeks indulging in the delights of Rock Band, and knowing what’s to come from both Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Revolution, it felt a bit strange to play the axe-only Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Losing the drums and the vocals feels like a backwards step now, almost like walking out onto a stage completely naked. Which we could confidently do, actually, if were to play most of the songs on this game’s track listing.

After all, Activision hasn’t picked Aerosmith for its first band-specific Guitar Hero by accident. The ageing rockers have been going for 38 years now and are far and away the biggest selling American rock band around. Their huge catalogue of songs must surely make for one of the best rhythm-action games ever.

And in many ways it does. As any Aerosmith fan will tell you, the band’s output during the mid to late Seventies was its finest from a guitarist’s perspective and you’ll find loads of that era’s hits hogging the total of 31 songs. The result is a game that’s chock full of twiddly riffs, endless hammer-ons and finger-dancing solos. Exactly what a good Guitar Hero title needs. These songs make up the bulk of the game, thankfully, but it’s the other half of the set list that disappoints. Aerosmith’s other golden period was the band’s spectacular comeback of the late Eighties and early Nineties, yet only a couple of songs from this era have made their way onto the disc. Instead, we’re left with a handful of relatively new, relatively poor songs, and some classic tunes from ‘support acts’ like Joan Jett and The Cult. These are all fairly good songs but we can’t help but think that their space would have been better used for more Aerosmith tunes. After all, at the same price as a regular game this is realistically a fans-only release.

Which leads us nicely to the extras, talking head interviews with the band, loads of in-game references to album artwork, unlockable characters and bonus songs from The Joe Perry Project all make this a great package for Aeroholics. For everyone else the actual songs are good enough that they may just turn you into a fan by the game’s conclusion. If not, at least you can sell the disc on... unlike DLC.