Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Mike Escobar

The first thing people tell you when you mention music videogames is that the genre is “saturated” and “so last year”.  Well Activision and developer Freestyle Games are betting that all those people are wrong, and they’re placing their faith in a little game called DJ Hero.  DJ Hero takes a different “spin” on music games (oh c’mon, you just KNEW that joke was coming) by introducing the gaming universe to the world of DJs and club music.

Taking a chance on a completely different style of music - as well as another new peripheral - is certainly a gutsy move, especially in a day and age where developers are taking fewer risks and going the “safe” sequel route.  To help offset this risk Activision spared no expense when it came to this title.  From the solid controller to the plethora of celebrity DJs and wide assortment of licensed music, DJ Hero comes off as a highly polished effort.

It’s no shock that DJ Hero uses the same graphics engine as Guitar Hero 5, but what is a nice surprise is how well DJ Hero uses it.  DJ Hero goes to great lengths to try and re-create the mood and experience of seeing a DJ in an elaborate club.  The settings for the different venues vary from the banal (a small club named the Krunk House) all the way to Times Square.  The light shows match up beautifully with each song, and the editing between the DJ’s performance and shots of the crowd dancing and partying are perfect.  This is about as close to a live DJ’s show as you can get without buying your own glow sticks.

The list of celebrity DJs that are involved with this game is nothing short of amazing – DJ AM, Daft Punk, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Shadow, and Grandmaster Flash to name just a few.  Add in the participation of stars like Jay-Z, Eminem, and Rihanna and this is one seriously star-studded cast.  It’s just too bad that the DJs themselves are rendered so poorly.  While the Guitar Hero 5 engine was able to render icons like Kurt Cobain and Johnny Cash recognizably, the stars in DJ Hero come off as very generic.  Several people I know had to be told “yes, that’s supposed to be DJ AM on stage right now” and they still didn’t believe me until I pulled up the set list.  While not a huge issue, this is one case where a little extra time spent on the DJs would have gone a long way.

The music is where this title really hits its stride though.  With over 100 different songs mashed up to create more than 80 different mixes, there is something for every fan of club music in here.  With the exception of the guitar mixes, nearly every track in this game is absolutely fantastic.  Part of the attraction to playing through the different songs is curiosity.  At several different points in the game I would see an upcoming set list and wonder “how the hell are they going to combine these two songs”.  For example, seeing that the developers combined Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” with Gorillaz’ “Feel Good, Inc.”.  If nothing else, you feel like you have to check it out just to see if it would sound good or not.  Almost without exception, all the mixes work and work well, even when they pull from such disparate sources as Motorhead, Blondie, and Third Eye Blind.

While a very creative idea, the guitar mixes are the only real weak point in this game.  Following up the assumption that most music gamers already have a plastic guitar or three lying around the house, Freestyle games implemented ten guitar mixes into DJ Hero.  This allows a second person to play a guitar accompaniment to the DJ’s mix.  Unfortunately, the majority of the guitar/DJ mixes are a mess and just don’t sound right.  There are a few gems in the guitar set list, but most of them should be avoided for the far superior standard turntable songs.

During gameplay you also have the option of using the microphone, but in a very limited fashion.  The microphone can either be used by the person manning the turntable or another person altogether.  The drawback to this is that there is no effect on gameplay when you use the mic.  If you think of yourself as a talented freestyle rapper you can hone your skills while scratching away on the turntable, but most of us will be limited to doing their best Flava Flav imitations and mumbling "Yeaaaah boyyyyyy!!!" over the music every once in a while.  There’s great potential here, but we’ll have to see if the developer’s take this a bit further and integrate it into gameplay better.

Speaking of Flava Flav, one of more enjoyable facets of this game is the addition of samples during the mixes.  At different points in each of the songs you’ll have the option of playing from pre-set sample lists.  These can be anything from horns, buzzes, and other sound effects to vocal samples.  Freestyle Games, in their infinite wisdom, included not one but TWO sets of Flava Flav samples.  It never fails to elicit a chuckle or two when you hear Flava shouting “Get it on!” and “Hit me!” mid-song.

The first thing you notice about DJ Hero is the unique controller that comes with it.  Whether you purchased the Renegade special edition or just got the regular copy of the game, you’ll have a brand new plastic instrument to add to your inventory.  The good news is that Activision managed to do everything right with this controller.  It is a straightforward, flexible, quality piece of hardware that you won’t have to worry about breaking in three months (I’m looking at you, stock bass pedal!). 

Consisting of a three-button turntable on one side and a crossfader, Euphoria button, and special effects knob on the other side, this accessory is the very epitome of simplicity.  The crossfader is a simple slider that has a left position, center position, and right position and is used to switch between tracks in the song.  The Euphoria button is DJ Hero’s version of Star Power; once you have hit sufficient notes correctly, Euphoria is available and you can activate it to double your bonus multiplier for a short period of time.  The special effects knob is made available whenever one of your music tracks has an orange circle around it, allowing you to adjust the tone and the depth of the track.

You also have an available covered compartment that contains your PS button, start, select, and D-pad, making it a breeze to navigate around the game menus and then hide it away during gameplay.  The turntable controller’s flexibility comes from being able to easily reverse it to either left-handed or right-handed use.  Simply flip the control over and there’s a unlock switch.  Unlock the two halves of the controller, rotate the crossfader control 180 degrees, and plug it back into the other side.  It’s simple and easy enough that you can do it mid-party, with virtually no delay to the playtime.

The one bug I ran into with the controls for this game was rather strange.  From time to time, for no apparent reason, the control scheme would change from a right-handed setup to a left-handed setup.  This wouldn’t be obvious until you started your set list and noticed that the note highway was curving to the right instead of the left.  This was fixed easily enough by pausing the game and changing it back in the options menu, but it happened several times during my playthrough.  After making sure that it wasn’t a low battery issue I decided it must be a game bug that will hopefully be patched in the near future.

What’s most amazing though is how incredibly addictive the gameplay is.  I’ve been absolutely hooked on the music game genre since Guitar Hero 2 came out, spending so much time and money that I began to question my sanity.  I own an Ion drum kit, every Guitar Hero title that’s come out, both Rock Bands, and countless hours of downloaded songs.  So it was with a slightly jaded attitude that I first approached DJ hero.

Imagine my surprise when I fired up the tutorial and started playing through a mix of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” and Daft Punk’s “Da Funk”.  Through six basic tutorials and six advanced tutorials I played sections of the same song over and over, learning the ins and outs of playing this game.  While that particular mix did get a little old by the eighth or ninth tutorial, it was still a lot of fun to play.

The tutorials are broken out in a very logical manner, with each new aspect of gameplay introduced in a fashion that makes complete sense.  You first learn how to tap, using the by now familiar “note highway”.  Whenever you see a circle come down the highway, you just tap the corresponding green, red, or blue button on the turntable.  Learning to scratch next, you see blocks of arrows travel towards you, letting you know that you have to hold down the right colored button and move the turntable back and forth.  This definitely takes some getting used to, but it’s not nearly as bad as you might imagine.

The next step on your path to DJ mastery is learning about directional scratches.  Instead of a block on the note highway, you will now have a block with arrows either pointing towards you or away from you.  To successfully navigate these notes, you’ll not only need to hold down the correct button and rotate the turntable, you’ll also need to scratch in the direction indicated.  This is another skill that appears to be difficult but you get used to very quickly.

Learning about the crossfader and Euphoria button are the next couple of tutorials and were easy enough to conquer.  The crossfader is a slider that has three positions – left, right, and center.  Each song starts off with the crossfader in the center position, but the individual note highways can shift either right or left depending on the song.  Moving the crossfader in the direction indicated changes the focus of the songs playing to that track.  It may sound confusing, but is one of those easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master sort of thing.  Euphoria is DJ Hero’s version of Star Power; get enough correct notes in a row and the Euphoria button will start blinking.  Press the button and you’ll be awarded a double multiplier to your score for a short while.

The last trick to learn in this game is Rewind.  Keep on getting the notes, crossfades, and scratches correct and you’ll eventually have Rewind available.  Spinning the turntable clockwise 360 (or 720) degrees while Rewind is available and you actually rewind the song a bit.  This lets you hold higher multipliers for longer (as long as you keep getting the notes right) and can go a long ways towards pushing your score through the roof.

Now that the preliminaries were over, it was time to start showing DJ Hero who the boss is.  Like nearly every other entry the “Hero” series, the formula remains the same.  You start off with the easier mixes, or as DJ Hero calls them, the “low intensity” tracks.  After every song you play you are awarded from one to five stars, depending on your performance.  As you acquire more stars you begin to unlock new venues, new DJs, and new accessories.  The accessories range from the outfits your DJ can wear, their headphones, even the decks they spin on!  DJ Hero does an excellent job of pacing these rewards well as you play.  You won’t receive a pile of upgrades early in the game and then never see any changes until the very end.  The pacing is even and goes a long way towards keeping interest high as you play.

The usual Guitar Hero formula has the idea that you can perform so badly on a song that you fail and get booed off the stage.  This is not the case in DJ Hero – no matter what difficulty level you play at, you can never fail a song and have it end prematurely.  While I disagreed with this approach initially, as I played more I realized that this fit a lot better into the overall feel of the game.  Many of the mixes will have a lot of subtle differences in their sounds at the higher difficulty levels.  Using the traditional Guitar Hero formula, you’d never get to hear these mixes in all their glory unless you managed to become a turntable expert, which is really quite difficult.  Instead, if you miss a scratch or a crossfade, that track will go silent temporarily before coming back online.  This gives you an audible cue that you missed a note, but doesn’t punish you the way that most other music games do.

Another brilliant idea is the way that the difficulty levels are implemented.  There are five levels of complexity in DJ Hero, ranging from Beginner all the way up to Expert.  At each level, a new type of gameplay is added into the mix.  Starting with Beginner, you are only required to hit a button, ANY button, at each of the taps in the song.  This is great for younger players and anyone new to the music genre and widens the appeal of this game greatly.  Moving up to Easy will require you to hit the right color button in time with the song, as well as some scratching.  Medium adds in the crossfader and Hard requires directional scratching and much tighter timing.  At Expert you face the ultimate challenge and are confronted with all of these things, all in differing combinations.  Directional scratches that crossfade back and forth, and even multiple scratch tracks add to the insanity.  Believe me when I say that it will take some time before you truly feel comfortable tackling songs on Expert.

Through all the progress on the single player experience you’re constantly faced with new challenges, new venues, and new set lists.  The set lists comprise of anywhere from three to eight songs, and quite often have a theme.  In some cases the sets will be all DJ AM mixes, while others will focus on the guitar/turntable tracks.  This helps keep the game fresh and interesting at all times. 

As it should be, the real focus is the music, and it’s fantastic.  Boasting that all the tracks are custom mixes made especially for DJ Hero, you’ll hear plenty of familiar songs paired with some unusual choices.  I love Motorhead, but who would have thought to pair them with Noisia and feature the resulting love child in a DJ game?  Brilliant!

As with all music games, the amount of replay value is a reflection of how good the gameplay is as well as how well the developers support the game with new downloadable content.  The good news is that playing DJ Hero is absolute blast – expect to be fighting over the turntable controllers quite a bit with your friends.  Even better, the multiplayer options, while limited, are every bit as fun.  Supporting two turntable controllers, you have the option of co-op playing any of the tracks.  If you really want to show of your skills, you can play head-to-head and decide once and for all who the best DJ around is.  Toss in the option of using a microphone or guitar, and you’ve got several excellent multiplayer options.  As long as they improve the quality and number of guitar mixes that is.

This brings up the other half of the replay puzzle – the downloadable content (DLC).  While there have been plenty of rumors about the amount of DLC that will be available, the most that’s been heard at this point is that there will be “a large amount of DLC at release” and that it will be from “some very big stars”.  Much has been made of the involvement of Jay-Z and Eminem in the new tracks that will be available after launch, but there have been no announcements on what tracks they will have available, the number of tracks, or even the cost per track.  With no information about DLC to base a review on, we’ll just have to let DJ Hero stand on it’s own with the tracks included with the game.

It’s totally understandable to be hesitant about DJ Hero.  On the heels of so many “Hero” music games that have been released this year, there are bound to be doubters about yet another one with a whole new controller.  Having said that, the addictive gameplay and wide variety of creative music manages to take players into a whole new world.  Throw in the vast array of celebrity appearances and never-before-heard mixes, and you have an experience that is unlike anything out there today.  As long as Activision supports this title with solid downloadable content (which they have a great track record of doing), DJ Hero is a game that you’ll keep coming back to.

Gaming Trend Score

90

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 85
6. OVERALL:90