DJ Hero (Wii)

It’s pretty safe to say that most people are getting a little burnt out on ’Hero’ games, and with a ton of releases in the Guitar Hero franchise this year you can’t blame the average gamer. So when DJ Hero was announced it was ’oh boy, here we go again’, but wait, it’s not that bad. DJ Hero is a little bit of freshness in the ’Hero’ stable and like it’s Guitar and Band brethren can be played not only by the more casual gamers but also the hardcore crowd. Ravers on ecstasy might have some troubles though.

As you probably know by now DJ Hero ships with a turntable accessory; yep, another piece of plastic to add to collection. Built again by Red Octane, the turntable is well built and like the Guitars needs a Wii Remote to power the controller. The Wii Remote is plugged in under a cover on the side of the turntable, but you won’t need to press any of the buttons on the Wii Remote as the turntable has everything you need on it. There is even an analogue stick for navigating the Wii Menu to get into the game.

The tutorial is the best place to start with DJ Hero—and well, you have to do it—as it’ll run you through the simple moves and how to play the game and show the advanced stuff if you wish, which you will want to do. Playing DJ Hero is pretty easy, well very easy if you play on Beginner and Easy—you’ll want to push it to at least medium for any sort of a challenge. Beginner just has you tapping the buttons on the turntable, easy mixes it up a little more, but medium is where the fun starts.

he game takes a leaf out of the Guitar Hero book with a ’track’ of notes coming down the screen and you’ll have to hit them when they get to the bottom. But where DJ Hero differs is that there is crossfading, rewinding, and scratching all mixed in. While some notes you still just have to hit, others will require you to hold the button down and scratch up and down. The other big part of the game is the crossfader. The slider part on the left of the wheel which allows you to switch between just playing one track or the other or when in the middle plays both parts of the mix; you’ll need to switch this left and right at certain times and lots of the time that needs to be quickly. Other advanced techniques, like rewinding and rotating the turntable 360 degrees, happen less frequently. There are a couple of ways to make the mixes “your own.” While when you play the game you can’t change how the song really sounds, you can add a couple of samples when the clear note tracks appear. It doesn’t really serve any purpose unless you like saying “yeaaaah boyeeeeee” over and over.

DJ Hero is played in sets, with a different number of mixes (songs) per set. The bulk of the game is a the career mode; there is no quick play like in Guitar Hero but you can create a list of mixes to play through once you’ve unlocked the set list in the main mode.

It won’t take you long to unlock everything either as the game doesn’t let you fail at all and doesn’t care what level you get the stars on. So you could play the entire game on beginner and unlock everything really easily. This problem also passes onto the games leader boards which you can’t sort by difficulty, so even though you’ll rip it up great on expert someone on beginner will have pipped your score with a minimum of sweat.

The fact that you can’t fail will annoy some people and please others. While it lets everyone have a go and allows you to get back on track, it does mean that there is no real punishment for messing up a song. Also like Guitar Hero there is a star power mode, called Ecstasy Euphoria, which ramps up your multiplier but mostly makes it so you don’t have to use the crossfader. Ah, the cross fader, probably the weakest part of the DJ kit. While when you start it’s pretty easy to slide and hold in the middle, even after the few days I’ve had the unit it’s now wearing a little and really hard to get to stick in the middle. This causes you while you’re DJ’ing it up to often make it fly right over to the other side, losing your multiplayer.

So the other very important part of the game is the soundtrack. If you’re gonna sit there and play it for a couple of hours you want something that’s decent. Thankfully the game isn’t full of doof doof I can’t hear you, oh I feel funny someone spiked my drink club rave music [b]but features a mix of songs from 2Pac, Queen, Beastie Boys, Grandmaster Flash, 50 Cent, Rihanna, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Billy Squier, David Bowie, Cypress Hill, Gorillaz, The Jackson 5 and Gwen Stafani. That’s just a handful of them and as you can see, there is a wide variety of genres and music types are in DJ Hero. Activision should (and probably already have it shipping) a soundtrack from the game – some of the mixes are top quality.

DJ Hero’s graphics and interface, while similiar to Guitar Hero’s ingame the menus are completely different. The game on the Wii looks about the same as the Guitar Hero’s on the Wii but do their job well. The play area in game is easy see to what is going on and is nice and clean.

The games multiplayer is both offline and online; the offline component means you will need another turnable. Disappointingly, you both play exactly the same song and parts of the song. While in Guitar Hero you can choose the Guitar or Bass parts you both play the same notes so there is no ’duelling’ so to speak. You will of course need two turntables as well. Along with the normal multiplayer, there is Guitar co-op where one person is on the turntable and another plays with a Guitar, although this is only on a limited amount of tracks in the game.

Online multiplayer is pretty much the same we hear, but we can’t tell you as every time we logged on to play no one was playing. We even let the game open for two hours and no one joined. Similarity the music store wasn’t online at the time of review.

Graphics 8.0

Interface is slick and easy to understand. Menu presentation is a little awkward with many settings hidden away within submenus.

Gameplay 8.0

Turntable is solidly build and game mechanics bring a breath of fresh air to the Hero franchise. Crossfading is a little dodgy but mainly due to the controller rather then an issue with the game itself.

Sound 9.5

Great and varied soundtrack with music from many different artists and genres. Something for everyone.

Tilt 7.0

Plenty to to singleplayer and online, multiplayer is a little naff and wont be the party game Guitar Hero or Rock Band is but still enjoyable. Turntable is solidly built but game is a little expensive for what it is. Requires its own Wii Remote for power.

Value 8.0

Had a lot of fun with this one when I didnt expect to. The whole package is a joy to play. But please let us skip tutorials, if we need help we will come back to them.