Spin that shit!
I had always wondered how hard it was to DJ. Well this week I found out when I played DJ Hero. DJ Hero is the latest crazy plastic-peripheral based game that Activision has pumped out, but who knows? By the time I have written this review, Triangle Hero or Clarinet Hero could be hitting store shelves near you.
Just watching a video of this game in motion looks very daunting. It seems a bit of a challenge to spot everything happening when you aren’t even playing the game, so when I finally got the game I’d been waiting for, I did have my doubts.
The game starts by forcing you to play a long series of tutorials explained by no other than Grandmaster Flash. Don’t let this put you off though, because without it you’d probably be completely lost. I’m not one for long tutorials but this is a must. The game eases you in with some simple songs that seem quite impossible when you start, but it all starts becoming easier. It all depends on which difficulty you try. Beginner is a difficulty which frankly just didn’t need to be in the game. You can literally do what you want. As long as you press any button (yes, ANY button on the controller) on the beat line, you are fine. Each difficulty gives a new part of the song to be looking out for. Medium is when the fader kicks in and Hard is when it goes faster and gets a few single direction scratches in. In any difficulty up to Hard, you can scratch the turntable at any speed, but when you hit Expert, you need to be perfectly scratching in the right direction and speed.
DJ Hero follows the “Hero” formula of progression. As you play new sets, you’ll gain stars based on the performance you’ve given and unlock new songs, entire sets, decks, costumes and venues. The main change in the actual core game play of this in comparison to Guitar Hero games is that you can’t fail a song. I find this to be a very clever and important feature. It helps you get to grips with all these new crazy mechanics of the game without worrying if the virtual crowd is enjoying the show.
The tracklist is pretty solid with 102 songs mashed up, making a total of 93 tracks to play. As expected some of them have been put together to work with the 3 or 4 guitars you have lying around your house. This is the sensible thing to do I suppose, they may as well get people’s old peripherals to use but it just feels like they have thrown it in as a last minute afterthought. All these songs seem like the sort you’d find on YouTube where people have just put two completely different sounding songs together to create a racket. What makes it worse is that even if you’re playing single player, the songs with guitar included in them take up half of the screen as if you were playing with a friend, with no option to turn it off.
The controller feels like a well made piece of kit. It’s sturdy and even has a cool “Euphoria” (Star Power) button that lights up red when Euphoria is gained! It also has the clever functionality of being able to put the turntable on either side of the mixer.
DJ Hero is a fantastic game that feels very rewarding. When you see all these different icons coming at you at quite a fast speed and you hit them all to make an awesome sounding mix, it feels great. If you want to play this game at its best, Expert is what you’ll need to be doing. It takes a while to get there but when you do, it feels like you’re a real DJ, and that’s just what these games are about. It has a few flaws such as selecting songs is kind of a pain in the ass which could have been streamlined a lot. You have to press triangle to enter the set list, square on all the ones you don’t want, then triangle again to come back out, then X to get to the DJ character setup. Why not just press one button on the song you want!? These few minor setbacks do not stop this game from being a great one though. When you feel like a real DJ playing awesome songs, none of that matters. This is a truly stunning looking game with lots of flashing lights, neon buttons, strobe lights and effects which are like a visualisor for the songs being played. I really enjoyed playing it for hours on end, and I can see myself playing it for a lot more time too.
