Activision has never been branded as an innovator, especially in the music / rhythm genre. Activision managed to buy their way in by buying Red Octane and acquire the rights to the Guitar Hero franchise. The original developer of Guitar Hero, Harmonix, went further and created Rock Band, as Activision cloned with Guitar Hero World Tour. So the real question is: How successful can DJ Hero be?
The controller has a free-spinning turntable with three Guitar Hero styled color buttons on the one hand, a crossfader and a Knob (an incremental decoder). Surprisingly, the controller shows a real life and tactile sensation which is priced at USD120. The quality of the turntable controller is without doubt; it could literally handle a couple of beatings and still work well.
DJ Hero takes a parallel turn to the Guitar Hero’s “minute to learn, lifetime to master” experience. By using the 3 buttons, the turntable and crossfader you can beat your way through a mix, but there is more to the mechanisms for the more adventurous - such as rewind, filters, Freestyle sections and Euphoria, similar to Guitar Hero’s STAR POWER. DJ Hero can be intense sometimes even on a Medium difficulty. But once you’ve started to wrap your head around, it’s all good now.
There are over 102 songs for DJ Hero with 93 original mixes which were created from those songs. It’s a good mix of artists, from Queen to Justice to Foo Fighters to Noisia and even Eminem. The mixes are top notch, which is no surprise since they were created by none other than Grandmaster Flash and DJ Shadow; giving testament to what talented remixers, DJ’s and mashup artists can create from existing pieces of music.
Despite the turntable controller paradigm, DJ Hero has less in common with real life DJing like Guitar Hero is to real life guitar. Players don’t have to worry about BEATMATCHING (getting multiple tracks to play at the same tempo and in sync with each other) which distances DJ Hero from real life DJing.
When you’ve tried out the Guitar Hero franchise, then you’ve got to have DJ Hero as part of your party game lineup. Activision has really blown the music/rhythm genre with DJ Hero.
Want the newest game this season? Take a peek on DJ Hero Games and with our how to play articlewhere you can master your way up.
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