DJ Hero Review Game Review
SoHood.com Reviewed by: Mario Diaz
Format: Xbox 360
Game Rating: 4.5/5.0
Thinking out side the box, as far as music games go, Activison has jumped into the DJ’s world of music where many genres of music are mixed together. You’re equipped with a unique peripheral that emulates a real DJ’s equipment, with a scratch pad and mixer. Luckily, for lefties the DJ controller is adjustable for right-handed people or left-handed.
On the scratch pad where a real record would be playing, are three colored buttons located on a turntable that fit perfectly to your fingers. The scratch pad has grooves and lines just like a real vinyl, giving it a more authentic feel. The whole DJ peripheral is a cool rendition of a real Turntable; it’s small, compact and lightweight with smooth buttons, yet it feels very durable.
One thing that is flawed with the scratch pad, is the lack of resistance, while having the buttons press down making a scratch like motion that feels awkward at first, as it just glides with no resistance. It really takes some time to get use to the controls.
On the other side of the DJ controller is the mixer, fader, pitch modulator, and Euphoria activator. The fader has three options in that is needed in gameplay, as you can position the lever at its set position at centered, all the way left, and all the way right. Sometimes the fader won’t register, cause there’s a small switch that one can fell when you move it to posit directs, but for some reason when playing on a higher difficulty and all of the movements going on it may be have to be moved harder or slower.
The pitch dial is more of tuning the pitch to add your favor to a track, but it’s more of custom thing, no penalties, as there isn’t a right or wrong way of doing. You’ll notice that opportunity when an orange indicator will appear over a track lane, and you have the option of tuning the pitch to modify the sound.
The Euphoria activator is simply a soft large round button above the fader that lights up red when you’ve earned the ability to use it during a song, It’s DJ Hero’s version of Star Power, as the outline of the land glows blue and the vocal or track is amplified.
The single player career starts up with a tutorial that teaches you the basics of scratching, cross fading, Euphoria, Rewind and changing the pitch. The Rewind feature is one that is assessable once you’ve played great enough on a song, once you do to activate its as simple as spinning the turntable backwards, like you’ve seen DJ do in videos, allowing you to rerun a short section of the song. It’s not a recurring thing, as it really is fun spinning the turntable, and being able to replay as section of a song, but it’s way to limited and you don’t experience enough times to enjoy it.
The presentation, taken as a whole, is excellent. Playable characters are adequately rendered, and come with a multitude of different looks And it is all blended together by the unique soundtrack, which combines many different genres, artists, and eras together to make many interesting track to play to.
Though, I must warn you that some of these mixes may not be for everyone, plus the fact that many of the songs are repeated but with different mixes, some of the songs won’t seem enjoyable if you pop it in your IPod, but they fit the game perfectly and present a very entertaining experience when combined with the actual gameplay.
About the Game:
Published by: Activision
Developed by: FreeStyleGames
Genre: Music
Release Date: US: October 27, 2009
MSRP: $119.99
