Spring Break
Review: Meltin' down the wax in your record crate
'DJ Hero' spins, mixes and fades past its high price point
John Bailey
Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: Focus
When the gaming world heard about "Guitar Hero," many were skeptical. It's not a real guitar. It's a short-lived niche peripheral. It costs too much money. It makes you look like a tool. Then it was great.
When the gaming world heard about "Rock Band," many were skeptical. You need four new peripherals to play. It's got an impossible price point. Nobody has three friends to play with. Then it was great, greater, greatest.
And now, "DJ Hero" is here, and all the earlier critiques still apply. The game needs to run the same gauntlet of cynicism - perhaps doubly so, because my living room is running out of room for fresh pieces of plastic. So is it great? Yes. Is it $120 great? Well, you tell me.
Unlike most rhythm games, "DJ Hero" only features a three-note wide highway. The button-tapping gameplay is familiar; the scratching (and yes, at higher levels, you need to actually perform directionally specific scratches), the fading, the sample-playing and the effects dial are all new.
"DJ Hero" has one huge thing going for it - it's fresh. I've had trouble getting excited about a rhythm game for a while. My folks, you know, we had a good thing going in "Rock Band," but we've been wanting to go solo. We've exhausted the potential of our all-Beatles, all the time cover tour. I've logged my fair share of hours into "Beatmania," and yes, I was one of those kids who hung around the arcade playing "Dance Dance Revolution" in giant pants. None of these games - especially not "Beatmania," which bears as much relationship to this game as "Tetris" does to "SimCity" - give you the same experience.
I've heard complaints that the learning curve of "DJ Hero" is steep; this is true, but the best sledding hills are also steep. Even after Grandmaster Flash makes fun of you for half an hour in the tutorial, you'll find that "DJ Hero" throws an unprecedented amount of visual cues at you. With five difficulty levels, though, the game doesn't require mastery of those cues right off the bat; better yet, "Easy" isn't a dry, infantile exercise in boredom. You still get to spin the turntable and make little "wikka wikka" noises. And, helpfully, failing doesn't exist. You can get one star, and that can hurt you inside, but the game won't care.
When the gaming world heard about "Rock Band," many were skeptical. You need four new peripherals to play. It's got an impossible price point. Nobody has three friends to play with. Then it was great, greater, greatest.
And now, "DJ Hero" is here, and all the earlier critiques still apply. The game needs to run the same gauntlet of cynicism - perhaps doubly so, because my living room is running out of room for fresh pieces of plastic. So is it great? Yes. Is it $120 great? Well, you tell me.
Unlike most rhythm games, "DJ Hero" only features a three-note wide highway. The button-tapping gameplay is familiar; the scratching (and yes, at higher levels, you need to actually perform directionally specific scratches), the fading, the sample-playing and the effects dial are all new.
"DJ Hero" has one huge thing going for it - it's fresh. I've had trouble getting excited about a rhythm game for a while. My folks, you know, we had a good thing going in "Rock Band," but we've been wanting to go solo. We've exhausted the potential of our all-Beatles, all the time cover tour. I've logged my fair share of hours into "Beatmania," and yes, I was one of those kids who hung around the arcade playing "Dance Dance Revolution" in giant pants. None of these games - especially not "Beatmania," which bears as much relationship to this game as "Tetris" does to "SimCity" - give you the same experience.
I've heard complaints that the learning curve of "DJ Hero" is steep; this is true, but the best sledding hills are also steep. Even after Grandmaster Flash makes fun of you for half an hour in the tutorial, you'll find that "DJ Hero" throws an unprecedented amount of visual cues at you. With five difficulty levels, though, the game doesn't require mastery of those cues right off the bat; better yet, "Easy" isn't a dry, infantile exercise in boredom. You still get to spin the turntable and make little "wikka wikka" noises. And, helpfully, failing doesn't exist. You can get one star, and that can hurt you inside, but the game won't care.
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