Interesting idea, but doesn't cut it.
Some people might remember a time only half a decade ago when music/rhythm games were considered niche. It wasn’t until the release of Guitar Hero in late 2005 when the world would suddenly fall head-over-heels in love with this genre. Since then we’ve seen an explosion of rock-inspired music/rhythm games riding the wave of Guitar Hero’s success. Activision’s “Hero” franchise alone has bestowed us a staggering sixteen titles in its extremely short history. Their latest entry into the world of music heroism, DJ Hero, attempts to give fans of hip-hop and dance a peripheral-based music/rhythm game to call their own.
As you’d expect, the music of DJ Hero is all about remixes and mashups. To accommodate this type of music, included in this package when you buy the game is a wireless plastic turntable to add to your ever growing pile of fake musical instruments. The turntable deck is made in two parts, one half on your left hand with a cross-fader, effects dial and a fat button for activating euphoria (the DJ Hero version of Star Power). The other half of the deck under your right hand is where the turntable part is, complete with three coloured buttons. The turntable is loose and fully rotatable, and this is key to the gameplay as I’ll explain shortly. The two halves of the deck are removable and can be swapped around if you’re left-handed. It’s also lighter than it looks, but doesn’t feel especially flimsy either, so it can be sat on your lap if you lack a flat surface to place it on while playing.
Undoubtedly the most important aspect of any music/rhythm game, the soundtrack in DJ Hero is good and varied, but will almost certainly only appeal to people who already enjoy listening to remixes and mashups. DJ Hero boasts 93 original mixes to play through, featuring artists such as Eminem, Jay-Z, Daft Punk, Beastie Boys, Gorillaz, 50 Cent and Eric Pryndz to name but a few. However be wary that although the game contains 93 original mixes, quite a large percentage of these mixes use the same songs but chopped and changed with different songs to make up the other half of the track. For example, you’re going to hear Gorillaz “Feel Good, Inc.” used at least four times through the course of the game. Every mix features pretty liberal use of scratching and cross-fading, giving you plenty to occupy yourself with while playing any of the sets.
The developers at FreeStyleGames were clearly presented with a real quandary when trying to figure out how to make DJ Hero work. What they’ve come up with is interesting, if nothing else. During songs, you’re presented with a relatively familiar vertically scrolling highway with three coloured paths. The green path of the left, and subsequently the green button on the turntable controller, represents one half of the music track, while the blue path on the right represents the other half. The red path in the middle represents audio samples that are dropped in at different points through the songs. As you you play through a song, different icons will come at you telling you when to “scratch” the turntable back-and-forth while holding the appropriate colour button. Sometimes you will only be required to press the colour button once to perform a quick scratch or drop in an audio sample. At various points it will also tell you to use the cross-fader to drop the audio on one of the tracks, or to bring it back in. Finally, you can spin the turntable deck a full 360 degrees to perform a rewind and jump back 5 seconds in the song. This is essentially everything you will be asked to do through the course of a set in DJ Hero. But try as they might have to make this idea work, it just doesn’t seem to work on the same level as Guitar Hero which grew pretty much off the idea of air-guitaring. Having plastic instruments that serve as a middle ground between an invisible instrument and the real thing feels natural, and it works because of this. The inherent problem with DJ Hero is that the turntable controller just feels silly and unnatural. A real turntable isn’t a musical instrument in the traditional sense to begin with, and so when you’re playing a fake turntable it never really feels like you’re involved in the songs you’re playing.
The gameplay modes available to you in DJ Hero are very reminiscent of the very first Guitar Hero game. That is to say, there isn’t much. There’s no story mode for you to play through where you go from DJ Zero to DJ Hero. The game opens up with a tutorial (a very good tutorial at that), and then throws you immediately into the main game where you play through the game’s 93 mixes and mashups. You can choose to play songs you’ve unlocked by playing a pre-made setlist, or by creating a custom setlist and handpicking which songs you want to play. New songs are unlocked by earning stars (which you get based on your performance in songs, up to 5 stars), along with new venues, equipment, characters and outfits. If you have two turntable controllers or an Xbox Live connection, you can play co-operatively or competitively against other DJ Heroes. Those of you who have a Guitar Hero controller can also play a limited selection of songs that have guitar parts in them, and this works exactly how it works in Guitar Hero. This feature seems very much like it was thrown in at the last minute, and anyone who fancies themselves with a plastic guitar is going to find these parts will pose absolutely no challenge at all.
Although DJ Hero is not even close to being what Guitar Hero is to the music/rhythm genre, it’s by no means a terrible game. There is definitely room in the market for a game that caters to fans of this genre of music. Whether or not there’s an audience big enough for this to really take off is something only time will tell. Even if it flops this year though, it probably wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect at least one more DJ Hero be made given the effort the developer has gone to already, and this is a good thing considering you’ll need to hand over $180 to get your hands on this game and the turntable peripheral. This heavy price of admission makes it very hard to recommend though. If this game does interest you, it’s worth trying to find a retail demo station or a video store that’s renting it so that you can try before buying.
