DJ Hero *Preview*

DJ Hero - Saving the world 2 mixed beats at a time.

The villain has stolen your princess and she’s locked in the castle! It’s up to you and your trusty record scratching box thing, to perform a grueling series of events involving the mastery of timing, pressing, scratching, sliding, holding, and bobbing your head along to the beat. You finally have made it to the end of your journey! Only to have some little guy tell you that you wasted all your time. But then, it’s all about the journey, isn’t it?

No, that storyline has nothing at all to do with DJ Hero’s storyline. You can pretend if you want though, since DJ Hero doesn’t actually have a storyline as far as I could tell. Maybe it did, I only spent one hour with the thing, and it was a demo copy so I only had access to a single 3 set of songs. Supposedly that’s how it works, just like DDR used to do it.

Again, I only spent about 1 hour with this game, so if you think this review just doesn’t cover all there is to the game, there’s the reason. That said, I feel that 1 hour is all the time needed for a game like this. There is no growth in this game. There is no character development or plot line, there’s no unlocking of cool new abilities to blast your foes with. All of the growth will come from the player themselves as they gain skill at using the turntable. It’s essentially Guitar Hero with a turn table instead of a guitar. Well, instead of 5 buttons you get 3 buttons, a slider, and a little disc to turn. That slider is actually the most difficult part.

Like other games of its ilk, DJ Hero is no pushover once you get to the harder difficulty levels. You will feel like you are actually accomplishing something that takes skill, and so even if you’re not actually learning anything worthwhile, the game still works. The whole experience was rather empty, but if you like this kind of music and you don’t mind the $90 price tag, and you like the Guitar Hero style of game, then there is zero reason not to buy this.

Oh right, add to that list: if you don’t mind playing by yourself. DJ Hero is a single player game through and through. Supposedly a friend can come over with their own $90 turn table and plug it in and you guys can compare your scores in person rather than online, but… that’s about it. Whenever something like this comes up with a game all I can think of is Four Swords Zelda for the GameCube. You’ll be happy its single player though once you realize just how silly you look getting all into scratching on the little plastic record.

The mixed beats are of high quality, most of them made specifically for this game by real DJ’s. It is a little disappointing that the maximum number of mixed beats is only ever two songs. They could have really spiced things up and made some real 20 minute sets with over 10 different tracks at once, but for some reason they felt to take that out and leave you with bite sized chunks of minimalist mixing. The game pauses between each mixed song in a set, tallying your score up for you, letting you know how you did, before starting the next song. If you feel like a DJ when you play this game, then you might want to find out what DJ’s actually do.

The lack of creativity from the player is also apparent. Now maybe I missed something about having a free style icon letting you know when you can scratch to your heart’s content, but even if that is in the game it doesn’t make up for zero player mixing. All of the songs are premixed, it’s actually hard to play them in the game until you’ve played it a few times and know how different parts are going to sound because the beat will randomly change and you’ll be stuck wondering why you just missed a series of notes. Since you can’t actually hear the beat anymore once you miss the first note, and the beat changes as you hit that first note, you can’t use the audio to help you DJ. You end up being forced to spend way too much of your attention on watching the timing of the track on the screen, and not enough on enjoying the music you’re playing. In other words, the game can feel more like work than play, which honestly is a non issue in Guitar Hero, unless maybe you’re playing the drums. But even then, at least the beat is constant; you got that working for you. DJ Hero says no.

If you do get this game, the first thing you need to do is set up a comfortable place to play it. Then you need to set up a massive sound system, subwoofer if you can, and blast the neighborhood. It really is important to play comfortably and at the right height, because otherwise you’ll end up getting blisters on your scratching hand. Actually, you should go out and invest in a special DJ Glove. Then you can DJ Hero whenever you feel like it no matter where you are.

Final hits? Solid beat game. New style of music and a new way to play it. Niche marketing to the near extreme. If you liked playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band when you were by yourself, but like this kind of music more than rock and roll, you’ll like this game.