Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Edition is a game you should buy if you’re a fan of Guitar Hero 3 and you just can’t get enough Aerosmith. How big a group of people that represents is anyone’s guess, but there’s no doubt that Activision and Neversoft have effectively pigeon-holed themselves with this release, in part because in offering both Aerosmith and non-Aerosmith tracks, it tries to be too much to too many people and doesn’t really do enough for either audience.

With just 31 tracks in the main tour campaign (with 10 more that are unlockable), the game is shockingly small for a $60 title. Sure Guitar Hero is a huge franchise, but when you compare the number of tracks in this game to Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band (or the upcoming sequels), that’s as few as half the number of tracks, yet Activision seems bent on charging full price for half a game. Not even the original or its sequel included this few tracks.

Then there’s the problem that a dozen of the songs included in the game aren’t Aerosmith at all, nor are they in any way tied to Aerosmith. It’s not that these tracks, which include “Complete Control,” from The Clash, “Hard to Handle,” from The Black Crowes and Stone Temple Pilots’, “Sex Type Thing,” aren’t great. It’s that they are. But while these are incredibly fun songs to play, they’re also the sorts of songs any fan of the franchise, but not of Aerosmith, would want to see included in a game they’d actually buy, say the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour.

So the question becomes, if you’re going to produce a game that, really, will only sell to Aerosmith die-hards, why wouldn’t you just go the full gonzo and make it nothing but Aerosmith? A dozen good non-Aerosmith tracks are not enticing enough to lure the non-Aerosmith fan to purchase the game and fans of Aerosmith would be just as happy with 31 all Aerosmith tracks as they would be with a dozen songs that are from somebody else.

The way the Tour mode is structured also seems like Neversoft just took the easy way out. Like every edition of the game before it, you’re locked into playing a set of consecutive venues; six in all. In each venue you play a list of five songs, two of the non-Aerosmith variety that constitute the opening act, and three more in which Aerosmith takes to the stage. The Tour itself is meant to mimic Aerosmith’s rise to greatness -which occurs around the third venue (The Orpheium) and everything that came after (their Super Bowl and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame performances). The mode, as it has for three editions of Guitar Hero, gets the job done, but it also feels like a wasted opportunity to really revel in the Aerosmith exclusiveness. If you’re going to depict the band’s rise to stardom, then why not have each venue only include Aerosmith songs of that era, instead of having them all mixed up in some semblance of order of difficulty? Instead of depicting the band in their current rock and roll geezer reality, when playing the Nipmuc High School location, why not show the band as young and vibrant? The game makes a show of wanting us to feel like we’re on this journey as or with the band, but it really doesn’t play with that model nearly as much as it could.