Post by funkdiggity on Nov 10, 2009 4:26:39 GMT -5
I was originally going to pass on this game and go with Scratch (the other DJ game). My reasons for doing so were basically "this is a ___ Hero game, it can't be good." But then Scratch got held up in lawsuit limbo, and I read somewhere that DJ Shadow was providing original content for DJ Hero, and that was that. I was sold. I'm pretty happy I went with this one.
Overall I feel like this game is flawed, but still mostly outstanding. There's lots of stuff about DJ Hero that will scare away casual players, and maybe even hardcore music gamers, but very few of those things are outright negatives. In fact many of those things are what make the game so rewarding to play.
Gameplay is almost absurdly complicated. Much like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are nothing at all like playing actual instruments, DJ Hero is nothing like DJing. But the motions you go through are close enough to the real thing to make the game enjoyable. Players are asked to coordinate three lanes of music, various beat taps, scratching, and crossfading. It sounds simple enough, but in practice its alot of work. Even more so when you figure in the fact that the game has three different types of overdrive: the standard overdrive typical of music games, an effects knob you sometimes have the option of using for extra points, and rewind, where you spin the platter backwards, rewinding the song and allowing you to play a section over for extra points (rewind is AWESOME). The crossfader is what raises the game up from simple button mashing and up to something that really takes some technique to play. Quick lane switches, even quicker cross fade spikes, jumping from lane to lane mid scratch, or while simultaneously switching which lane you're scratching on, or switching lanes, switching scratch tracks, and tapping beats all at once: this is where the game really shines, and where you'll be having lots of "holy shit, did I really just play that?!?!" moments.
The difficulty is pretty high on DJ Hero. It may just be because I'm new to the controller and the game play, but a couple of these tracks feel like they should rank among the hardest things I've ever played in a music game, period. As I said above, the game expects you to do a lot at once. This gets even more difficult on expert, where you're basically doing 1:1 scratching. In other words, you're doing the same motions the DJ is doing, and you're doing them in time with him. So while in hard you'll have a generic scratch pattern like this: <><><><><><>, in expert it turns into something like this: < < < ><><>>>><<<><>< > >. Learning to make sense out of all that, move your arm in sync with it, keep an eye on what the rest of the chart wants you to do, and doing it at the speed that the screen moves on expert is quite a challenge. This is partly made up for by the fact that its impossible to fail out of a song on DJ Hero (a great idea, you can play through a crazy hard song without jumping down to a difficulty level you're bored with, but you're denied bragging rights for beating that song since anyone can check the leaderboards and see your pathetic score), but it doesn't change the fact that the charts themselves are pretty tough going.
The turntable controller itself is a pretty impressive little machine. It looks great. Its quite solid. Its big, so you get a real sensation of actually working a turntable while playing it. And the platter works great. But it isn't perfect. The buttons are a bit clunky, but by the time you're playing on expert it won't be that big of a deal. The cross fader is the real issue here. While its certainly fast enough to handle the insanity the game throws at you on harder songs, its not terribly precise. Recognizing by touch where the fader is at can be very difficult. Again, by the time you're on expert you'll develop a pretty good sense of where its at, but the fader could still have been designed a little better.
Depending on your taste for this kind of music, the soundtrack is pretty top notch. There's lots of big name artists, and lots of big songs. Many of these songs/artists are new to music game altogether. This is a mash up simulator though, so the songs may not be presented in the most recognizable manner. This is all original music. Developers and actual djs actually created all these mixes strictly for the game. The mixes are mostly done by developers at Freestyle Games. Like most music game setlists they're mostly pretty good, with a few that are amazing, a few that are bad, and a few that are of the "For god's sake, what were they thinking when they mixed THIS?" variety. The mixes provided by actual DJ's are simply epic however. DJ Shadow, Z Trip, and Daft Punk probably turn in the best mixes here, but they all range from great to awesome.
The game itself looks great. The onscreen DJs look a little too cartoony for my tastes, and the video game versions of real life DJs look a little too real to be interacting with cartoons (except for DJ Shadow who's some kind of kungfu wizard in this game, and Daft Punk, who show up in their robot suits), but otherwise its a gorgeous game. The venues are impressive. The crowd actually dances, there's dancing girls on raised platforms, there's glow sticks, lots of touches like that make the crowd more than just a bunch of faceless silhouettes waving their hands around. Definitely a step up from Rock Band, I have to say. The same goes for lighting effects and camera angles. I love Rock Band, but I think DJ Hero has it beat in graphics. It just looks and moves a lot better.
There are some flaws. There's a half assed option for playing guitar that's just a mess. The mixes with guitar parts feel a bit tacked on, and since the graphics for the guitar charts are just a direct cart from the Guitar Hero engine, putting them alongside the new shiny DJ Hero graphics really just emphasizes how ugly and outdated GH's highways and notes look. The biggest problem with the guitar mixes though is they can only be played alongside other mixes that have guitars. So there's about 20 songs that are completely cut off from the rest of the set list. A very dumb move on the developers part.
The other big flaw here is that, for a game that plays party music and nothing but, its probably the least party friendly music game ever made. Multiplayer only goes up to two players (as opposed to RB and GH's four player model). The controller isn't that intuitive either. It takes some work to pick this thing up and play it at all competently. Whipping this game out during your party will bring things to a pretty abrupt halt.
There's a few other minor flaws, the same ones I always have with Hero games: clunky menu system, lack of character creation, but they aren't game breaking mistakes. The lackluster multiplayer function and the guitar mixes are potentially game breaking, but I think they can be fixed pretty easily in DJ Hero sequels, if they're ever made.
So is it worth getting? If you're a fan of the music, and you're not put off by the steep learning curve, then yes. Absolutely. In fact I'd probably go so far as to say I like this more than Rock Band. Yes, really. I love Rock Band for the constant stream of new music, the awesome people I get to play with, and what's probably the funnest multiplayer component I've ever gotten to play. But the game itself, the nuts and bolts of game play and graphics have gotten pretty stale to me. This is a fresh take on music gaming with a fresh peripheral, and with music that hasn't been seen much in rock centered games. That's enough to make me more excited about a game than I have been since I first sat down behind a plastic drum kit on the original Rock Band.
Overall I feel like this game is flawed, but still mostly outstanding. There's lots of stuff about DJ Hero that will scare away casual players, and maybe even hardcore music gamers, but very few of those things are outright negatives. In fact many of those things are what make the game so rewarding to play.
Gameplay is almost absurdly complicated. Much like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are nothing at all like playing actual instruments, DJ Hero is nothing like DJing. But the motions you go through are close enough to the real thing to make the game enjoyable. Players are asked to coordinate three lanes of music, various beat taps, scratching, and crossfading. It sounds simple enough, but in practice its alot of work. Even more so when you figure in the fact that the game has three different types of overdrive: the standard overdrive typical of music games, an effects knob you sometimes have the option of using for extra points, and rewind, where you spin the platter backwards, rewinding the song and allowing you to play a section over for extra points (rewind is AWESOME). The crossfader is what raises the game up from simple button mashing and up to something that really takes some technique to play. Quick lane switches, even quicker cross fade spikes, jumping from lane to lane mid scratch, or while simultaneously switching which lane you're scratching on, or switching lanes, switching scratch tracks, and tapping beats all at once: this is where the game really shines, and where you'll be having lots of "holy shit, did I really just play that?!?!" moments.
The difficulty is pretty high on DJ Hero. It may just be because I'm new to the controller and the game play, but a couple of these tracks feel like they should rank among the hardest things I've ever played in a music game, period. As I said above, the game expects you to do a lot at once. This gets even more difficult on expert, where you're basically doing 1:1 scratching. In other words, you're doing the same motions the DJ is doing, and you're doing them in time with him. So while in hard you'll have a generic scratch pattern like this: <><><><><><>, in expert it turns into something like this: < < < ><><>>>><<<><>< > >. Learning to make sense out of all that, move your arm in sync with it, keep an eye on what the rest of the chart wants you to do, and doing it at the speed that the screen moves on expert is quite a challenge. This is partly made up for by the fact that its impossible to fail out of a song on DJ Hero (a great idea, you can play through a crazy hard song without jumping down to a difficulty level you're bored with, but you're denied bragging rights for beating that song since anyone can check the leaderboards and see your pathetic score), but it doesn't change the fact that the charts themselves are pretty tough going.
The turntable controller itself is a pretty impressive little machine. It looks great. Its quite solid. Its big, so you get a real sensation of actually working a turntable while playing it. And the platter works great. But it isn't perfect. The buttons are a bit clunky, but by the time you're playing on expert it won't be that big of a deal. The cross fader is the real issue here. While its certainly fast enough to handle the insanity the game throws at you on harder songs, its not terribly precise. Recognizing by touch where the fader is at can be very difficult. Again, by the time you're on expert you'll develop a pretty good sense of where its at, but the fader could still have been designed a little better.
Depending on your taste for this kind of music, the soundtrack is pretty top notch. There's lots of big name artists, and lots of big songs. Many of these songs/artists are new to music game altogether. This is a mash up simulator though, so the songs may not be presented in the most recognizable manner. This is all original music. Developers and actual djs actually created all these mixes strictly for the game. The mixes are mostly done by developers at Freestyle Games. Like most music game setlists they're mostly pretty good, with a few that are amazing, a few that are bad, and a few that are of the "For god's sake, what were they thinking when they mixed THIS?" variety. The mixes provided by actual DJ's are simply epic however. DJ Shadow, Z Trip, and Daft Punk probably turn in the best mixes here, but they all range from great to awesome.
The game itself looks great. The onscreen DJs look a little too cartoony for my tastes, and the video game versions of real life DJs look a little too real to be interacting with cartoons (except for DJ Shadow who's some kind of kungfu wizard in this game, and Daft Punk, who show up in their robot suits), but otherwise its a gorgeous game. The venues are impressive. The crowd actually dances, there's dancing girls on raised platforms, there's glow sticks, lots of touches like that make the crowd more than just a bunch of faceless silhouettes waving their hands around. Definitely a step up from Rock Band, I have to say. The same goes for lighting effects and camera angles. I love Rock Band, but I think DJ Hero has it beat in graphics. It just looks and moves a lot better.
There are some flaws. There's a half assed option for playing guitar that's just a mess. The mixes with guitar parts feel a bit tacked on, and since the graphics for the guitar charts are just a direct cart from the Guitar Hero engine, putting them alongside the new shiny DJ Hero graphics really just emphasizes how ugly and outdated GH's highways and notes look. The biggest problem with the guitar mixes though is they can only be played alongside other mixes that have guitars. So there's about 20 songs that are completely cut off from the rest of the set list. A very dumb move on the developers part.
The other big flaw here is that, for a game that plays party music and nothing but, its probably the least party friendly music game ever made. Multiplayer only goes up to two players (as opposed to RB and GH's four player model). The controller isn't that intuitive either. It takes some work to pick this thing up and play it at all competently. Whipping this game out during your party will bring things to a pretty abrupt halt.
There's a few other minor flaws, the same ones I always have with Hero games: clunky menu system, lack of character creation, but they aren't game breaking mistakes. The lackluster multiplayer function and the guitar mixes are potentially game breaking, but I think they can be fixed pretty easily in DJ Hero sequels, if they're ever made.
So is it worth getting? If you're a fan of the music, and you're not put off by the steep learning curve, then yes. Absolutely. In fact I'd probably go so far as to say I like this more than Rock Band. Yes, really. I love Rock Band for the constant stream of new music, the awesome people I get to play with, and what's probably the funnest multiplayer component I've ever gotten to play. But the game itself, the nuts and bolts of game play and graphics have gotten pretty stale to me. This is a fresh take on music gaming with a fresh peripheral, and with music that hasn't been seen much in rock centered games. That's enough to make me more excited about a game than I have been since I first sat down behind a plastic drum kit on the original Rock Band.