DJ Hero

DJ Hero ^{(Xbox 360)}

Genre: Music Publisher: Activision Developer: FreeStyleGames Players: 1-2

By Keith B (9th Nov 2009)

Playing with the new controller is certainly good for kicks, but the overall lack of depth means it never really hits the peaks of the guitar-based games.

If you had told me 10 years ago that people in the millions would spend their time clutching miniature guitars and playing along to all kinds of music - from Slayer to Willie Nelson - then I would have laughed right in your face and called you an idiot. I would also have been very wrong, because as anyone who has played a game in the last few years will know, this music imitation genre has become big business culminating in a full on, four piece band setup rocking away in your living room.

Electronic music is the latest genre to get the gimmicky controller treatment, and despite serious concerns over both the styling and the price (which puts it in at around half the expense of the entire band kit of World Tour), things started well. As a genuine casual gaming measuring stick, it had my missus hooked and the last thing she played in any way was LittleBigPlanet.

The premise is simple – play your way through a whole array of music, mixed by some of the most respected names in the business. Earn stars for performances and unlock new venues, tracks and equipment while mastering the increasingly difficult and complex tracks. Get online for some head to head action or plug in a guitar controller for some cross-genre multiplay.

The action is handled through the turntable, a limited but functional piece of kit. There’s a rotatable portion for pushing buttons and scratching, a cross fade for blending the two streams of music, a small knob for changing the tone of one or both channels, and a star power button. Notes come down a slightly curved highway, to be pressed when they cross the hot zone, similar to Guitar Hero, and when a certain extended icon arrives then the track must be scratched by, well, scratching the damn thing. It’s all pretty straightforward. Move from Easy to Medium and the cross fader comes into play, meaning bringing tracks in and out of the main stream. Up to hard and the scratching becomes directional, making it a little tougher, and small elements like spikes are introduced where the cross fade must be flicked and returned to its place in the centre in the blink of an eye.

For ease of use, it gets five stars. As I said, my missus was a dab hand at it in 15 minutes, and when I took it to a friend’s place for a party even the respectably drunk were able to have some fun. That instant gratification and ability for the game to make the player feel like they’re doing something inherently cool is what the real appeal is. And for a few days at least, it’s remarkably addictive.

There are some big issues with it though, once the novelty has worn off. Perhaps the biggest issue, critically, is the music. It may feature some big names – Grandmaster Flash, DJ Shadow, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Scratch Perverts – and boasting over 90 original mixes means that there is technically a hell of a lot of content. The problem exists because having all this content is meaningless if gamers don’t feel like they’re recreating music.

Guitar Hero has succeeded because it made people feel like they are creating music, and moving the action across the buttons followed some semblance of the progression of the track. Expanding beyond the guitar and both the drum and microphone enhanced the feeling of music creation.

DJ Hero does nothing of the sort. Considering you’re not actually creating any music, but responding to the artistic prompting of another, a massive part of the experience becomes lost. Because you’re solely following the prompting of the screen it is little more than an exercise in Simon Says. The same accusation used to be levelled at the earlier guitar games, but that argument has been diluted somewhat by the addition of the rhythm and vocal components. There is no defence for DJ Hero, it’s simply a follow-the-prompts game.

Problems with the music aren’t confined to the fact you’re a third party either. I realise that the next argument could be debated intensely and comes from a personal standpoint, but for more times than not, you’ll be playing along to a song that contains one good tune and one bad one. True, there are tracks that come alive when the two audio streams are mixed, but the opposite is also true. Did we really need to have MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This mashed with Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby?

Playing to the Jackson 5 is cool; playing the same song multiple times, mixed with often-questionable partnered tracks, is not so much.

While the scratching elements, cross fade and button mashing all works well, other features are poorly implemented. Being able to drop in samples and sound effects should be a defining feature, a time for the game to rebel against that structured feeling, but it falls horribly flat. Belting the red button in selected areas is supposed to offer the chance for some customisation, but because most of the samples – which can be selected before each set – sound so poor it’s almost impossible to make them sound anything other than rubbish. True, they can make onlookers crack a smile but not because they’re smart, but so out of place.

Rack up enough of a multiplier by hitting masses of notes one after the other and you can earn a Rewind, allowing you to spin the controller backwards, thus moving to a point earlier in the track and allowing you to score points for the same section again. The idea is sound, but again, the implementation fails. More often than not the point the game places you at will be right in the middle of a scratching section, or in between some hectic cross fade action. It's random and therefore has as much potential to harm your play as it has to help you boost your score.

Most of these issues will only come from playing lots of the tracks, and as such, it will take some time for these issues to come to the fore. Longevity, though, is paramount in titles like this, and ultimately the formula loses its appeal quickly. There is wonderful groundwork here, a lot of things are handled well and it will appeal to all ages, but until players can pick the songs they want to mix then it really is nothing more than a glorified prompt-reaction exercise. Should the personalisation be upped – and that’s not going to be an easy thing to do – then the potential for this is pretty high. A good start, but we hope there are better things to come.

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