DJ Hero Review

You'll find this box inside the other box with the expensive peripheral

As with all ‘innovative’ games, the shadow of its evolutionary past and the pressure of its own groundbreaking present is sometimes just enough to stunt its future. When considering DJ Hero as a ‘logical’ leap from Guitar Hero, the game suffers from this trip up. But seeing DJ Hero as a niche market game and isolating it from the hype of the ‘next big thing’ in plastic instruments gives it a chance to … well, not exactly shine, but perhaps glow a little in the dark, dark room of single player obsession games.

A simple way to describe the game would be to say that it’s a music/rhythm game for people who like Hip Hop and be done with it. You get a lap-sized plastic turntable, 23 set lists/concerts of mashup tracks and lots of famous and credible DJs featuring in the credits and character sets.  You could add that it features funky mixes of both old and new tracks like ‘Heard It Through The Grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye, ‘The Big Beat’ by Billy Squier and ‘Hollerback Girl’ by Gwen Stefani, and that around 78% of the time those mixes are awesome. You could easily dance to them out at a club somewhere. The controller is a simple design, reflecting in a very basic way what a real turntable and crossfader look like. To cap this off, I’d probably add that if you’re a fan of turntablism, this game will give you a small but tantilising glimpse into how your favourite DJ works their magic.

But what’s being left out is that this is not a party game, even though the music selections would suggest otherwise. It is most definitely a game that you play on your own. Even though there are playlist options, such as with ‘Ace of Spades’, where you can plug in the Guitar Hero guitar and a two player versus mode, these seem like tacked on additions. Almost like the test players were mothers, concerned that perhaps Little Jimmy Gamerson should be playing nicely with others and sharing his toys. Online play is passable, but if with only 120,000 games being sold over all consoles in the US, and far less than that here, you’ll be lucky to find anyone on to play with.

Whereas Guitar Hero was a party game that could draw from a fan base already established in the in-game music, DJ Hero has neither of those things going for it. While there are a surprising plethora of tracks, with Activision licencing over 100 songs to create 94 mixes, it’s not a whole song you’re listening too. With the exception of Daft Punk’s inclusions, it’ll be a beat here, a riff there, a bit of the chorus over the main sample of another song. This can work exceptionally well, such as the highly publicised ‘Hollerback Girl’ mixed in with Rick James’ ‘Give It To Me Baby’; or it can backfire and leave you breaking your wrist while hoping the track will end. A ‘bad’ mix, in my opinion, was ‘Jayou’ by Jurassic 5 and ‘Big Beat’. It was an tepid mix, bringing with it a fairly boring scratch and button-push session.

That happened a fair bit, actually. I mean, gameplay with a rhythm game is always going be noticably repetitive, with the screen constantly displaying what buttons you’re about to think about pushing. Unlike a FPS or even games like Guitar Hero, you don’t get to just move instinctively, you have to pay attention to what your hands are doing.

Using the controller can be difficult if you have never seen what a turntabilist does. Even if you have, the idea of what they do doesn’t translate well. The basic premise of the gameplay includes tapping or cuing up the samples, scratching and crossfading. As with Guitar Hero, you get star power (here called “Euphoria”) along with the ability to rewind the track, where you spin the turntable around completely and are taken back four bars (or more, if you’re on a higher difficulty). This is a very nice score raising trick.

The unavoidable and unskippable tutorial – narrated by Grandmaster Flash – teaches you these skills with copious lashings of encouragement. Having Flash tell me how awesome I was definitely elicited a fangirl squee out of me but I was itching to get in and learn by playing, rather than slowly building my skills. What can I say? I’m impatient. All of this is fairly easy to master and with the help of the beat, you can easily slip into funny little flourishes and tricks as you play. It’s not dorky, the Real DJs ™ do it!

YEEEAAAAAHHHH BOOOOOYYYYEEEEE

As the difficulty level ramps up – and believe you me, it is a steep learning curve – you are introduced to cross fader spikes (a quick flick of the fader left or right) and specific directional scratching. You can’t fail out of a track, but you sure can crash and burn your score easily enough.

There’s also a nice little addition of ‘freestyling’. Basically, before you hit the actual set lists, you can choose a sample group to use in appropriately highlighted moments, for no score value whatsoever. Such samples include Flavva Flav’s iconic ‘YEEEEAAAAAHHHH BOOOOOYYYEEEEEE’ and a very posh, butler-esque man dropping such gems as ‘Oh my goodness’ and ‘Go, Dee Jay’ like he was spitting out cold slugs.

Visuals are quite pretty, thankfully, with Daft Punk being a highlight. It’s your stockstandard crowd scenes, big gig spaces and dancing DJs, with the occassional ‘stage dancer’ scenes thrown in. But if you’ve played Guitar Hero or Rock Band, it’s nothing new. The actual DJs were rendered well, with Z-Trip and the late DJ AM looking very realistic. This was a nice touch, but they obviously spent most of their character building budget on getting the contributors correct, because the ‘other’ DJs were fairly bland and there are no custom character options.

Let me be straight here guys. This is a very fun game, for all the negative angles I’ve thrown out in this review. It’s technical and challenging, with funky music, a substantial hat tip to the turntabilist world and bright shiny colours! Like I said before though, it’s suffering a little from the what it should have been and what it is. I predict, as with Guitar Hero, the second outing will have a lot more to it, and the game will hopefully be able to stand on it’s own merits.

The Verdict:

Pros: The music and the physical challenge of scratching and crossfading on Hard has a bizarre pulling power. You can’t fail out of the songs, but you want to get those scratches right because just maybe you’ll be able to translate this into real life. The buzz of famous DJs was cool, their contributions seemed like they’d actually done the work, not just slapped their names on it. It’s surprisingly fun to play, in that obsessive compulsive way.

Cons: Too much ‘Hollerback Girl’ just makes me go bananas, as does slogging through boring ass mixes. Tacked on 2 player action doesn’t work well, neither does stupid MC option, all of which makes me think there’s going to be a DJ Hero: Linkin Park in the future. The unskippable tutorial was annoying, even with Grandmaster Flash saying you’re his new favourite DJ. And I love that guy. No ability to customise a character – I thought this was standard now?

Overall: Enough to please the closet Turntablist in me, with funky tunes and cool mixes, but not enough to reel in people who are only mildly interested. Buy it if you’re itching for a new achievements game to get your scratching skills up and then splash out on Scratch: The Ultimate DJ in Q1 next year, which is when the real otaku behaviour will come out.  3 out of 5.