Unoriginal copy of Guitar Hero does basically nothing for players. The music is HORRIBLE, the controls unwieldy, and quite honestly it is boring to play. Stay away from this waste of money if you can.
Rating: 1 / 5

I was SO excited to be able to review the review sample version of DJ Hero. This version came with a wired controller and three playable mixes (one set), along with the tutorial. I was excited about the musical artists who would appear: Black Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani, Gorrilaz, Benny Benassi and Rick James to name a few. I like this kind of music just as much if not more than I like the rock music that appears in similar music games. The game can even be played along with a Guitar Hero guitar controller, mixing DJing with guitar. I believe that is the only way that two players can jointly play. At any rate, as someone who enjoys electronic music and has been to a few clubs in her day, I thought it would be great fun.

Grandmaster Flash led the tutorial and while he was great, the tutorial was not. It was a little unclear how the skills we were learning related to real DJing. Why is that? Well, I bet most of us know very little about real DJing. I used to actually DJ (college radio and goth clubs) and never touched on any of this stuff besides cross-fading.

Playing the game consists of Taps, Cross-fades, Scratching, and effects. Effects and Scratching are fun. Much like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, the screen indicates what to do when the notes scroll into the hit zone – in this case, it’s not notes but scratches, taps, effects. You use two hands to control the taps on the tracks, the crossfades between them, and blowing off sound effects from your sampler. The game doesn’t really allow you to be creative, which is one of my complaints. A cool feature would have been to allow the player to make his/her own mixes out of the two songs, rather than rigidly requiring you to hit buttons. The most creativity you get is WHICH sound effect to play when the it’s time to mash the sampler button. All the mixes are pre-determined as well – you do not choose which songs to mix together; the makers of DJ Hero have done that for you – for better or for worse.

It isn’t so different from its predecessors, so why does it fail to rock? It really lacks the visceral feeling of picking up a guitar and playing it. Also, I think most of us grew up seeing Rock Gods on MTV. We understand how the guitar is played and we see the Rock God (or Goddess, as the case may be) rocking out on the stage. DJs are unsung heroes, often behind the scenes. We boogie down to what they play – but do we understand how they do it? Real life DJing may actually be easier than trying to keep up with this game. It is certainly challenging, this game, but it is not fun. In fact, it is rather boring. I wanted to quit 1 minute into the first mix, but made it through all three demo mixes in order to do this review. It didn’t get any more fun. And I’m not just saying that because it was hard – once I got the hang of the controls, it was still immensely boring. Although I love electronica, hip hop and techno – I’d rather play a guitar-based game any day.

One problem I had with it was the lack of feeling connected to the music. In Rock Band, Guitar Hero and even Karaoke Revolution, you could listen to the background music and get into the rhythm and know when you’d hit the next key or sing along. In this game, you don’t know what the predetermined mixes will choose to do, how they’ll choose to mess with the songs. So you are at the mercy of your visual senses. I think people enjoyed the other games because they really felt like they were making the music, they felt musically connected.

Rating: 1 / 5

My spouse received the demo version of DJ Hero. Now we are huge fans of music based games – Rock Band, Rez, et al are amazing fun. In those games, you feel the music and what you “play” corresponds to the music. Plus they are great at parties. I was a little hesitant on DJ Hero since I wasn’t entirely sure how it would map and how it would take a game franchise that is best played with friends and pare it down to a solo adventure (though you can join in on guitar for some tracks).

Needless to say, it doesn’t work well. The first issue is the controller; it took me several tries and a few dozen wiggles just to get it to connect and draw power from the USB port. This is not good. The second is the cross fade shifter – it supposedly has three positions but the center one would not lock – thus you’d over shoot the track. Quite frustrating. The rest of the controller felt like it would break within a few months of heavy play. The Rock Band Wired guitar felt more solid.

The next issue is the killer though – its the game play. First the songs and the beats you hit don’t really seem to fit – in other words unlike Guitar Hero and Rock Band, simply listening isn’t going to help you play this game. Well maybe for scratches it might…This is simply not acceptable in a music game. The play really felt like the designer said “ok, here’s the track – now add buttons and such where ever you like. Oh and try to make some tricky moves there too”. And the “Euphoria” button – huh? Seriously go back to star power and make it do something other than pretty sparkles please. The next troubling part was all the dancers shown were female. Now typically this doesn’t fully bother me, but for this game it seemed gratuitous. Way to turn off a large and growing part of the gamer market! However its the former that makes the latter stand out. Great gameplay, and I wouldn’t care if they were showing scenes from some bad porno in the background; however this game plays so poorly that as one prays for the demo to end, she invariable looks at the screen and cringes.

I can’t stress enough how terrible the gameplay is. Aside from not matching the beat and mixes that are so-so, my spouse, a DJ, simply walked away stating the game is as related to DJing as as it is to cooking. Save your money and use it to get tracks for your other favorite music games.

This game could have been cooler. Maybe if they allowed you to mix the songs yourself (I’d buy that in a heartbeat!) or found a way to match the play to the song or at least made the game more fun than a bag full of badgers. I hope this is the last Hero game for a while. The line is getting played out. Though, I will admit, Polka Hero could rock (Hello Pittsburgh Polka!)
Rating: 1 / 5