I’m not entirely sure what to tell you about this game. I still play guitar hero a few hours a week, and still get a kick out of it. My decision to buy this game was based on that alone. That said, this is not guitar hero.
The getting started with DJ Hero was relatively straight forward, the tutorials gave you everything you need to get started. The first challenge is getting used to the layout of the peripheral, specifically the euphoria button, cross-fader and effects dial. Being able to switch between each of these elements of the controller with confidence without looking at the controller is the only way to be successful. The next challenge is getting used to finding the center on the cross-fader, it’s grooved so you know when you’ve hit it, but I still found it difficult to not overshoot when trying to reset to the center, particularly during hectic parts. I did find it to be fairly hard on the wrists after spending any extended amount of time on it, I’m sure one would get used to it over time though.
I really struggle to relate to the how the buttons effect the music (especially while you’re learning how to play, on lower difficulty levels), I understand that the green button represents table 1, and the blue button represents table 2, and red is for the samples, however, when you are pressing the buttons during the song, I don’t understand what action a DJ would be doing to create those effects. This knowledge gap is really taking me out of the experience. For example, when playing drums on guitar hero, I know the red button is the snare, and the orange is a cymbal, and to me, knowing that makes the whole experience make more sense. The more sense it makes, the intuitive the actions become, and ultimately more fun. Like in guitar hero, increasing the difficulty teaches some of that in a way.
Just a few notes on the difficulty, I didn’t wait too long on bumping it to expert, at least so I can play the earlier tracks as they were intended (I believe all the hero titles should be played on expert, they’re simply put more fun that way). I started on medium, all of the different aspects fades, samples, effects and scratches appear to be enabled at this level, however all of the “scratch sequences” are freestyle, meaning it doesn’t matter how you spin the platter as long as you do. This made it pretty easy to unlock everything however it wasn’t really challenging, until you get into the tough cross-fading sections in the last tier of tracks. Hard introduces some directional scratching, meaning how you move the platter matters, but it’s so insignificant a change the way its used on hard difficulty, my suggestion is to skip it, the difficulty of the songs is enough to ease you into expert. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very challenging on Expert, a lot of the songs a really really difficult, but since the designers decided that they didn’t want players to experience failures, crank up the difficulty, and take your 1 star on the hard ones, and practice up to improve it.
Another key difference between DJ Hero, and other Hero games is that all the mixes were created for the game. What that means is even though you know the songs, you don’t really ~know~ going in what its supposed to sound like, at times it obvious how the songs will be mixed, but more often than not you’re probably going to need to listen to the song a few times just to learn it, before expecting to score well.
The ‘no fail’ methodology puzzles me a bit, I mean it makes sense as a mode when you’re playing with 3 other people in the room who don’t know how to play or are not really paying attention, but putting this in as the career mode sort of takes some of the sense of accomplishment from getting past a part of a song that you struggled with cleanly. I’ve gotten 5 stars on songs in where there were extended sections where I felt I really shouldn’t have been able to continue. It really seem like the whole game is based around beating your high score, you know… just like asteroids, and pacman. I feel like there should be something more.
Some of the music choices were strange, I definitely could have done without any inclusion of Third Eye Blind… “who?” you say… exactly, and even if you do know this band, and even like this band, it wasn’t intended to be used in this way, and though the mix works, it seems like they’re just trying to get a cash grab from some market by creating some diversity in the songs. Problem is, I’d much rather play songs I don’t like that make sense to the game, than play songs that I do like that don’t, easy enough to simply not play them though, there is lots of other mixes to play.
In the end I don’t think this title was for me. My recommendation for those who are looking for another music game to scratch their itch (no pun intended) like me, I don’t think this game is going to be for you, if however you’re into the music and the scene than you’ll have a good time with this. That is to say, it’s a pretty good game as far as the game goes, and I don’t regret giving it a play through, but I don’t think this will be replacing my guitar hero addiction any time soon.
