Review: DJ Hero

When I first heard about DJ Hero earlier this year, the first thing I thought was "wow, they're really trying to milk the Guitar Hero franchise." Then as I started to see screen shots and videos of game play, I got a little more interested but still not enough to make me want to go out and buy the game when it was released. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when my brother asked me if I heard any good things about DJ Hero. I told him no and that no one I knew had it. About two days later, my parents and I were in Best Buy buying my birthday gift (a new video camera, yes!) and I started to hear some good music pumping nearby. I followed the sound and there it was, DJ Hero, all set up with surround sound and a big HDTV. I figured I would give it a try to see how it is, and it was soooooo good! I immediately texted my brother telling him it was awesome and told him to get it right away. That weekend, he did.

So this week, I went and slept over his house on night and of course we spent the whole night playing the game. At first, I was horrible. Usually I tend to be really good at most games the first time I play them because I am just nice like that but this game was really hard. Guitar hero requires one hand to move about the fret buttons and the other hand to strum, pretty simple. DJ Hero requires one hand to not only press the buttons but also "scratch" when told to do so. Also, similar to "star power" in Guitar Hero, there are points in the game where instead of getting star power, your turntable becomes "rewind ready" and in order to use that, you actually have to spin the turntable backwards and the last 10 seconds or so of the song is rewound and played again. Now, that's just one hand. The other hand is used to control the crossfader in order to switch between the 2 songs playing or to play them at the same time when told to do so. There is also a nob that adds effects to your music such as sound bites, horns, and a warping-type thing that distorts the song. The last thing done with this hand is pressing the euphoria button. Euphoria is another bonus you get just like rewind, but this is actually just like star power. When you have euphoria, the button glows red and when you press it, point value is doubled for a short amount of time. After hours of play on medium difficulty, I got really good.

The song choices seem to be endless, but I know it isn't unfortunately. We had already unlocked a good chunk of the set lists which contained between 2 and 5 songs each and when I went to count how many more we had to unlock, there were at least 15 more. Eventually we had to go to sleep, but the next day was Thanksgiving at Grandma's house so of course we brought it with us and unlocked a few more. Sure, we felt kind of anti-social, but whatever, the game was that fun. Bottom line is that this game is like one of the best games I've ever played and it is super addicting. Here is a video of one of my favorite songs in the game, just so you can see how it works:



Oh and one more part I forgot to mention. Since the game is technically a part of the Guitar Hero franchise, some of the set lists have the option of letting you or a second player play the guitar controller in addition to the turntable. Obviously you can only do one at a time, but if there are two of you, then there shouldn't be a problem. That would look like so: