DJ Hero

DJ Hero is the latest game to sport the “Hero” branding made popular by Activision’s Guitar Hero. The game is also the latest attempt to innovate and keep the rhythm game genre moving forward. DJ Hero introduces a new turntable style controller to allow you to feel like a DJ while you mix through quite a few play lists of tracks specially created for the game.

The track listing for the game is really what will make or break this game for you. Although the title is DJ Hero, that could mean a lot of things to a lot of different games. If you’re huge into electronica, you may be expecting to play a ton of Tiesto, Okenfold, or Van Dyke tracks, or it could just be remixes of popular dance and hip hop tracks. DJ Hero doesn’t attempt to cater to electornica fans (probably knowing it will alienate 90% of the audience that would buy the game). It goes down the dance/hip hop route, but takes an interesting approach to the tracks. The game features over 90 tracks, all of which are unique mash-ups. A mash-up is simply taking 2 songs and remixing them together so that they sound like a single track. Some songs are used a couple times in different mash-ups, but for the most part the full track list if varied with a ton of good stuff.
The mash-up approach is great for a single reason: It just works well with the controller.

The DJ Hero turntable controller is a huge departure with the instruments of previous games. The basic principles are the same (hit the green button when the green note comes up), but overall there’s a lot of features that add complexity to the gameplay. The turntable itself has 3 buttons on it which co-respond to a track on the screen.

In Guitar Hero style the game screen shows 3 tracks (green, red and blue) in which notes and other commands stream down towards you. The left track and right track indicate the two songs being mashed up, and the center track indicates some helper audio that can be used to enhance the final mix. The commands given show you what to do in order to play the track as intended.

The first type of command is the tap. Notes will come down the tracks on screen and you’ll have to hit to correct button to co-respond with that note. The next command is the scratch which indicates that you’ll have to hold down that note key, and rotate the turn table back and fourth for the set amount of time. In the harder difficulties, specialized scratches are added. You can’t scratch blindly like crazy; you need to scratch in the exact way that the instructions tell you.

The other side of the turntable controller features several buttons and knobs, including the cross fader. The cross fader is a bar that usually stays in the center, but you must flip left or right depending on which track the game tells you to fade to. A quick spike is when you have to quickly switch to one track and back, but that’s only on the harder difficulties.

Above the cross fader is a selector knob which you can use to alter the sound of certain highlighted sections of the song. It’s not mandatory, and it’s a lot like the whammy bar in the Guitar Hero games. You can also use it to select to a different voice sample for your middle track.

Finally there’s the euphoria button next to the knob. It’s basically star power from the other games. Activating it give you double points for a set amount of time, and it’s only active when you’ve stored up enough power to use it.

Another trick you can get from playing really well is a rewind. This allows you to spin the turn table 360 degrees backwards to turn back the song a couple seconds and replay it with a higher multiplier. Doing well, you can earn quite a few rewinds in a single song.

The controller also features a full set of buttons for navigating menus throughout the game, though this game can not be played with a regular controller.

The basic set up for the game is to move through the play lists performing different gigs. You can unlock quite a few at a time so you’re not stuck to just one gig you have to play. You earn stars for every song (up to 5), and since the sets are an average of 4 songs each you’ll gather quite a few from each set. The stars unlock a TON of stuff, including new set lists, characters, outfits, venues, etc.

Presentation overall is pretty good, though you won’t be concentrating on it much, the scenes are nice and do capture a good club feel. The characters themselves are really lame, as is the opening cutscene but that doesn’t affect gameplay.

The game features 5 difficulty modes to help beginners get into it, but the way they are set up, is really counter-productive to learning the game. Instead of just slowly introducing new mechanics and increasing the number of notes for each difficulty, the game just excludes different features for each difficulty level. The beginner mode only has taps and simple scratches, but it doesn’t care if you hit the right colored button or not. The medium mode doesn’t have cross spikes, or complex scratches. This is bad game design because by the time you’re ready for the higher difficulty levels, you have no idea how to use those features, and you’re probably worse off with the lazy skills you’ve already developed.

For gameplay itself, button tapping works fine. Scratching will take some getting used to. Your hold on the button is usually not enough to scratch for a long period of time so you might have to resort to holding the side of the table with your thumb to help out. Also the rightmost button can be awkward to hold down and scratch for long periods of time.

The cross fader is a huge pain because it’s very loose. When you have to fade from track to track, it’s no problem, but to get it back into the middle is a huge pain. Until you get good at judging how far to push it you’ll overshoot that middle rest nearly every time.

The controller itself is pretty responsive. Even in those situations the faders position doesn’t have to be exact, and you have a good period of time to press down the button (or lift it) for a scratch.

While I don’t find it as fun or as easy to play as Guitar Hero, I did find myself getting into it. It’s a worthy addition to the rhythm genre, and can be a load of fun if you get into the music. There are quite a few unlockables, and a lot of play lists as well as several multiplayer modes, including one that lets a second player use a guitar. So there’s quite a bit to check out. I do find the asking price of $120 to be a bit steep, and the “renegade edition” at $200 is just ridiculous, but that’s up to you.

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