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Written by: Ian Markowitz
We were all in High School when RedOctane and Harmonix released Guitar Hero, which quickly took off, became a cult hit, and spawned several knock-offs. In fact, Guitar Hero virtually began the music videogame genre which formed the basis for Rock Band and, more recently, DJ Hero.
With the purchase of the game, you are provided with a turntable controller as well as the game for your console of choice: either Playstation 2 or 3, Xbox 360, or Wii.
The game allows you to mashup a variety of songs from artists such as Third Eye Blind, the Jackson 5, Daft Punk, and others. By mixing the songs correctly, you gain points.
This is similar to the way points are gained throughout the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. However, instead of the star power that players of Guitar Hero are familiar with, DJ Hero introduces “Euphoria” under the same concept.
The DJ Hero controller is comprised of a turntable with three buttons which allows you to select which track is being played, a cross fade slider for muting a particular track, and the euphoria button for activating the euphoria score multiplier. By following the commands on the screen, similar to Guitar Hero, you scratch, cross fade, and add effects to the mashup as you play.
DJ Hero allows you to customize your character by picking your own turntables and DJ (yes, Daft Punk is one of the unlockable characters), as well as other characteristics of your character to make the DJ truly your own.
Additionally, DJ Hero features ten songs in which you can add your Guitar Hero controller and have the guitarist play one track and the turntable mix the mashup. This is a fun feature, it’s just a shame that Activision didn’t include this functionality on other tracks.
The most important part of the game is the top-shelf music off of which the game is based. One of the best mashups in the game is a mashup of “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind mashed up with “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5. Even though this doesn’t seem like an ideal combination, it is (look it up on Youtube if you want to hear it).
DJ Hero is a fairly decent game in concept, allowing you to mashup popular songs into pretty good sounding mixes.
Unfortunately, after playing for only a few hours, the game play becomes quite redundant and provides little incentive in terms of completing the game beyond interest in unlocking a few select setlists by major DJs like DJ AM or Daft Punk. Unlocking those setlists requires a significant time investment as they are among the last you can unlock in the game.
While DJ Hero would be a lot of fun to play at a party with everyone gathering around a TV playing differing mixes, the game is not very thrilling to watch and is only marginally more enjoyable to play.
Disappointingly, DJ Hero offers little in terms of group gameplay and is best suited for individual play. While the game does allow two turntables to be connected at the same time, finding a second turntable outside of the bundle is difficult.
Additionally, with the bundle retailing for $99.99, finding a standalone turntable wouldn’t come cheap, either.
Rating: 3/5 Falcons
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