DJ Hero puts you in the power of this fake turntable and makes you feel like the hottest DJ in town.
DJ Hero offers a wide arrangement of mixes. Some songs that you thing would sound awful together turn out to be one of the catchiest mixes around. Basically, the soundtrack works. You're not constricted to just hip-hop or techno, but instead are offered many genres to eh... "scratch." The ability to rock out with the guitar while you DJ is a nice touch, so maybe there's still a little bit of rock power in the game, huh?
The game has kind of a steep learning curve. It's not as simple as press color+strum. I think an explanation may be needed for you to understand. You have your platter buttons. Those are simple. Just press them on time and you're good. Next you have notes that you scratch. Basically sustained notes. When these guys come on screen, you press the correct color and proceed... to scratch. Next is the crossfader and crossfader spikes. Align the crossfader to whatever position it is on the screen (left, middle, right). Crossfader spikes are as simple as quickly moving the crossfader back and fourth. See? This thing isn't so easy. Next is the effects dial. Whenever you see the umm... lines bolded, move your effects dial to change the noise up and earn some points (it's KIND of like a whammy bar). When you play well enough, you earn rewinds. If you spin your disk backwards you can rewind a few seconds and replay the section with double the multiplier. You also have euphoria (think star power). There's another useless button that lets you throw in random sound clips.
I had no previous knowledge of Dj-ing at all, so this was all a little complex to me. However, once you get the hang of it, the game is oh so rewarding... and equally chaotic. First things first, you can't fail, but the embarrassment of a low star rating is almost as bad, especially since you need at least 3 stars on most songs to rack up some achievements. The game's difficulty is well balanced. Easy is easy and Expert is... crazy. I still can't play expert honestly, but I hope to step it up to expert soon. If I could do it on Guitar Hero, I can master this faux-instrument too.
The graphics are as good as music games get. Lots of vibrant colors. You feel like you're in the latest and hippest club being totally gangsta (word). Character designs look nice and there's just a lot going on. The characters don't look like robots either, so yay for decent animation.
One of my minor complaints is that DJ Hero is more of a single player experience than other rhythm games. Sure, you can play guitar alongside a couple of tracks and you can play co-op... but this isn't as much of a party game as Rock Band or Guitar Hero is. I don't know how they could make it more of a party game though, which is why I'm calling this a minor complaint, but if you're having a mondo crazy party and you're planning to whip out the music games, Rock Band would probably be your better option.
Minor complaints aside, DJ Hero surprised me. I wasn't expecting this game to be so addicting and fun, and it's unfortunate how low the sales are, because this is a game worth checking out. Instead of buying another GH spin off, why not give this a look instead? It's definitely worth giving a shot.