We're sure there were some mixed feelings when the Guitar Hero franchise announced its latest spawn. On the one hand, yippee another Guitar Hero game! And on the other hand, it's Aerosmith... perhaps a big plus for some, but obviously not for those who aren't keen on the American rockers.

We're pretty ambivalent when it comes to the band. We don't mind some songs and are not so mad about others, so we weren't exactly thrilled at the prospect of an entire game built around them. It seemed like a definite risk. However, when we actually got hold of our review copy, we were pleasantly surprised by the track list, for several reasons.

The first being that the game doesn't just feature Aerosmith's music. In the career mode you pick a character (from the usual GH suspects, so that was Johnny Napalm for us) and for the first two songs of each set you're the support band. This means you get to play all sorts of classics that have inspired Mr Tyler and company, such as Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes, She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult, Complete Control of The Clash fame and Always on the Run by Lenny Kravitz.

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Add in songs by the likes of the Stone Temple Pilots, The Kinks and Run DMC (naturally) and you have an interesting mix. The other factor that surprised us was that the Aerosmith songs (many of which we hadn't heard before) are actually pretty good too. As we said before we're not huge fans by any means, yet we enjoyed more than half of them. Some big name songs seem to be missing (Dude Looks Like a Lady and Crazy spring to mind), but overall the set-list is much more hit than miss, and the note charts are well implemented too, flowing nicely with the music.

When you're on stage as Aerosmith, the quality of the motion capture and animation is quite impressive, and certainly a step up from the standard GH3 visuals. Steven Tyler leaps around with a microphone stand fluttering with his trademark ribbons and guitarist Joe Perry wields some of his famous axes. The increasingly large venues you play are also faithfully rendered, so the Super Bowl half-time show does feel like a mammoth rock event.

One thing that quickly becomes clear is that the developer has heeded criticism of GH3's difficulty levels. Medium skill seems a touch more forgiving, and hard difficulty is definitely somewhat easier. We worked our way through the career mode fairly swiftly as a result, particularly as it only consists of 31 tracks (plus just the one guitar battle this time round, and this is purely optional so it can be skipped if you detest them).

Still, when you do complete the game on hard level there's always expert level, which is more of a challenge for veteran players. And there are ten other Aerosmith and Joe Perry songs that can be purchased with your hard earned cash in the vault (although we weren't so keen on these tracks). The vault also has a few new outfits and guitars sprinkled around, although it's disappointing that there weren't more extras thrown in here.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith surprised us with the quality of its set-list, and fans who were put off by the difficulty of Guitar Hero 3's complex note charts will be pleased to see it eases back on the throttle. The career mode is on the short side, and we felt some more extras could have been jammed in, but this is still a commendable addition to the GH franchise. Particularly if you're an Aerosmith fan.