DJ Hero Review
By Gaetano Prestia
DJ Hero is the latest music venture by Activision, one that tries to introduce gamers to the challenges associated with mixing and scratching two completely different music tracks. Even if you can’t scratch or have no sense of rhythm whatsoever, it really won’t matter, because DJ Hero is all about the music, more so than what it is about the actual skills required to be a DJ.
DJ Hero is a bit like that club you go to, where the DJ plays one brilliant track every 2-3 bad tracks. As inconsistent as the track listing is in DJ Hero, there are some absolutely insane mixes thrown in there, most of which trump and overshadow any of the horrendously bad ones. One minute you’ll be grooving out to "Paper Planes vs. Eric B is President" by M.I.A. and Eric B. & Rakim, before you’re forced to play through any of the gag-worthy Jackson 5 numbers.
The game is broken up into separate sets, with several artists representing each set with roughly three to four songs. You’re unfortunately forced to play through each and every set, which is probably a given for this kind of title, but is a letdown considering how mediocre some of the earlier tracks are. It’s obvious the developer wanted the first hour or so to be as easy as possible so as to ease gamers into the unique gameplay, but the tracks included early on are pretty terrible and do the game no justice whatsoever. While the experience does pick up towards the end, the beginning doesn’t really show off DJ Hero in its best form, distancing itself from the great gameplay and feature trailers we saw shortly before launch.
It may be difficult for you to sit through that first half of DJ Hero, and that ultimately hurts the titles value overall. The way this game has been marketed makes it look like a cool and unique experience with brilliant mixes, but the first impressions hurt it severely. That’s a massive shame, because the second half is substantially better. Take this as a word of advice: push through the dull initial impressions you’ll most likely have and you’ll eventually reach the games better core experience.
With a new music game comes the expected new controller. The DJ Hero turntable has the record platter and three face buttons on one side, with the cross-fader, effects-knob and euphoria button on the other. The controller can be flipped around for left-handed gamers as well.
The game tutorial - led by Grandmaster Flash - introduces you to the controller and all of the different gameplay features on offer. While there are several different difficulties, you can’t fail a song. That can be both a negative and a positive. On one hand it allows you to progress and unlock new sets at a quicker pace. On the other hand, you can find yourself moving through a song that you clearly don’t have the skills yet to complete, yet the game will just keep on, even though you’re failing to hit any of the notes or scratch when you need to. There will be no sound but the song will keep running and you’ll ultimately receive a crappy score if you can’t keep up with the track, but that’s as harsh as the punishment gets. It kind of makes the game overly accessible and might deter both veteran DJ’s looking for a challenging music title, as well as die-hard Guitar Hero gamers who need that incentive to master a track before moving on. The game doesn’t encourage you to do well on a song because you never fail, therefore leading towards completion without having fully experienced the track.
DJ Hero is definitely more enjoyable and rewarding on the higher difficulties. The gameplay becomes a bit more complex, forcing you to use the turntable more effectively and precisely. For example, on the easier settings you can just hit an approaching coloured symbol and scratch when required in any direction. However, on the higher difficulties, they’ll sometimes be arrows that dictate which direction you have to scratch the record platter. The audio stream also moves more often in the more challenging tracks, having you move the cross-fader to the left or right to correspond with the tune’s audio stream and beat.
The gameplay works great for the most part and while it takes a few tracks of getting used to, it’s definitely enjoyable to scratch and cross-fade, especially on the better tracks towards the end of the game. The only misstep would have to be the freestyle aspect, which allows you to change up a sample from a popular hip-hop track and mix it into the track. You don’t get any points for it and most of the time it ends up sounding pretty bad, especially if you’ve got an audio stream that is constantly moving and you haven’t managed to pick the sample best suited to the track. It’s a gimmick if anything and one that probably isn’t needed for future DJ Hero titles.
You can introduce a Guitar Hero controller for multiplayer and play alongside a friend, which is fun, but the combined turntable modes are severally lacking. As opposed to Guitar Hero where each player played to specific parts of a song, each gamer controls an identical part of the mixed track. So you’ll essentially be going at each other to see who messes up first, as opposed to playing out different parts of a song and seeing who can manage the different challenges.
The Final Verdict
DJ Hero is a surprisingly good if inconsistent music game. The controller is great and the gameplay itself is good fun. The first-half of the game is pretty bad, offering some horrendous mixes, while the game does a complete 180 in the second-half with some unreal mixes that you won’t hear anywhere else. Overall, it’s a great first effort, one that can definitely improve, but one that is still worth checking out if you’re a DJ and/or music game fan.