In a lot of ways DJ Hero is better and worse than I thought. On the one hand the turntable peripheral is solidly made and will be able to withstand prolonged scratching and mixing but on the other hand the songs range from quite annoying to fully funkdafied.  Too much filler and not enough killer?  Just not enough Daft Punk if you ask me...man I love those guys.  Instead of another Guitar Hero: Whatever, make DJ Hero: Daft Punk.

I’m going to act like you’ve seen a music videogame working before and not go into how it all works too much as it’s fairly basic. You have a turntable (that can spin as much as you want) that has three coloured buttons on it. You have a mixed that is hooked up to the turntable and you use that to mix from one track to the other track. The buttons are pressed in time with the notes coming down a song highway on the screen and you scratch and mix when it tells you too. DJ Hero’s version of star power is called Euphoria and once you have unlocked enough special notes, you’ll be able to unleash Euphoria on the crowds by pressing the glowing button on your mixer. It really is as simple as that.

Unlike Guitar Hero and Rock Band, you kinda feel like you are playing in a band even if you are just following the notes on your screen, but with DJ Hero you really don’t feel like you’re DJ’ing at all. Now this isn’t a bad thing because as a music game that uses the ‘follow the leader’ mechanic it is actually very entertaining it just doesn’t suddenly make you feel like you’re the big cheese up in the club yo.  

DJ Hero does look nice though.  There is plenty of footage of the nightclub getting down complete with gyrating hips and pulsating neon.  The only downside to all this is that the footage doesn’t correspond to what you are playing, it is simply little more than stock computer graphics that play out never changing unless you pick someone different to step behind the decks.  When you stuff up on screen there is nothing to reflect that in the background graphics, not that you’re likely to notice when you’re trying to concentrate on all the notes flying down the screen at once.   

What is missing from this game...DJ Lance Rock...straight thuggin'

A big complaint I had with the game was the difficulty levels.  There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground between easy and medium.  Easy is slow and doesn’t require the use of the cross fader, Medium is faster and requires the use of the cross fader but there is no option to have it on a slower speed with the cross fader activated for those that are first starting.  On medium you can get a little overwhelmed until you get better at it but my friends who played it as I watched found Easy too boring and Medium too hard and quickly lost interest.  I played every song on Medium difficulty and had a ball but because it really is the ultimate game of ‘rub your belly while you tap your head’ you really have to get used to the co-ordination and ability to use the controller if you’re going to get anywhere.  It is fun but it just takes a little bit of a steep learning curve to get to the level where you start actually having fun.  You can also hook up and play with a friend using the guitar instrument but that’s never as much fun as actually playing the rock game that it was intended for, still it’s nice to see that it has been included.  

Overall DJ Hero is bringing something to the music genre that we haven’t seen since the old days of Beatmania and even then it’s very different to what we were expecting.  There are definitely some great times to be had with it but I didn’t find it as enjoyable or as accessible as a rock game using instruments.   Those that don’t like rock and prefer techno, house and hip hop are probably better off getting DJ Hero but for others I would suggest a try before you buy.  Some of the mixes stink in my opinion, just because you can mix MC Hammer with Vanilla Ice doesn’t mean that you should, while Gwen Stefani (who I usually can’t stand) works wonderfully well with Rick James.  More Daft Punk less 50 cent.  

DJ Hero is a great music game but it is also a polarizing one.  How much fun you have with this one will largely depend on how much you like this style of music and how co-ordinated you’re capable of being.  Not bad at all.