360 Review: DJ Hero
DJ Hero is the latest Activision addition to the Hero line of musical based games, and the first to highlight the rap/hip-hop/dj club scene. So throw on your favorite hoodie and sag your pants down around your ass. It’s time to get the virtual party jumping.
The peripheral itself (shown on the right) is a fairly solid yet simple plastic turntable with green, red, and blue finger placement points on a record that sits to the right and a three position mixer switch on the left. It’s not the greatest piece of crafted videogame hardware I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly not the worst either. A little more resistance on the back and forth movement of the plastic record would have felt more comfortable, but that’s just my opinion as someone who has never touched a real turntable. I also felt that it didn’t make much sense to have a record capable of spinning a full 360 with tiny markers for your fingers that only appear in small section. One errant spin and you’ve now effectively lost your ability to interact with the game and hit the next note in time. In the end, it does the job it needs to do so you can’t fault it too much.
There aren’t a great deal of buttons to mash in the game, but that certainly doesn’t mean that becoming the next great DJ Hero will be an easy task. Five difficulty levels (Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert) paired with the built in gradual ramping of difficulty between song groupings should be more than enough to keep veterans on their toes and newcomers improving as they go. If super green DJ hopefuls find they need a little more help adjusting, they can watch a very well made in-game tutorial for a few pointers.
The graphics are colorful, stylized, and in line with what we’ve come to expect from the Hero franchise. And considering you spend most of your time staring down colored markers as they fly across the screen, there’s really no sense in dwelling on the graphical prowess of the game outside of saying that it doesn’t detract from the end goal of delivering a videogame replicated DJ experience.
In terms of the gameplay, each track mixes two songs that you’ll need to scratch and fade into euphoria-inducing head-bobbing beats, and the act of blending the two requires a slick combination of timed color coordinated scratches on the right with side-to-side movement of the nob on the left. Do it properly an the crowd is yours to command, though for the first time in a Hero franchise, a “No Fail” feature means royally messing up won’t get you booed off the stage. No fail or not, sloppy play kills the crowd vibe, leaving you feeling like Kanye West on stage during a Taylor Swift acceptance speech.
DJ Hero features a robust roster of real life DJs like Grandmaster Flash, Jazzy Jeff, and Daft Punk to name a few. Each of which is available to play along side you in the games collaboration mode. And if collaboration is your thing, the title also has a few songs that let Guitar Hero fans get in on the action as well. In addition to jamming out with the turntable and guitar, you can also lend your own lyrical talent with a microphone. The game doesn’t have any means for you to see how well you’re doing vocally but if your friends ask you to shut up, you may want to keep your day job.
The music in DJ Hero is by far one of the most attractive and compelling aspects of the game. So much so that I’d have no problem throwing down a few bucks to own the soundtrack itself. Jazzy Jeff lends mixing talent on a track that pits “Bittersweet Symphony” against “Rock the Bells” and “Hollaback Girl” goes head to head with “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” courtesy of the late DJ AM. In total the game has 93 tracks (not counting the DLC sure to follow), and like the Hero titles before it, they are broken up into tiers that you unlock as you progress — meaning you can’t just power it up and pick any song you want. With the exception of a few less-than-stellar mixes, I really can’t stress enough how awesome the tracks are in this game. The individual DJs and team FreeStyleGames really delivered the musical goods.
In closing, Activision’s DJ Hero is a fun time for anyone that enjoys killer tracks and wants to feel the rush of being a DJ without having to sort through all the groupie phone numbers at the end of the night. It does have a slight disadvantage in terms of mainstream popularity when compared to something like Guitar Hero but that’s more of a cultural thing than a gaming flaw. More tracks that allow for other instruments and vocal scoring would have been nice, but hey that might hamper the sales of a future “DJ Band Hero” and we sure as heck wouldn’t want to do that. If you’re tired of the band scene, and on the market for an edgy musical title that attempts to break the mold, DJ Hero is your man.
