As a big fan of the dj and electronic music scene I was stoked to get my hands on DJ hero. Out of the box you know you've got something special due to the ruggedness of the controller; it feels strong and well made and if it wasn't for the three buttons on top it might fool you into thinking it was a real direct-drive turntable. It spins freely 360 degrees and is obviously balanced on some impressive bearings. Everything is nicely laid out too. On the top left is a small flap and underneath it are full controller buttons - D pad, X box 360 button with appropriate green leds, and abxy buttons along with a controller sync button. Beneath that is the euphoria button and effects knob. Below that is the fader and on the actual turntable are the three action buttons. You place your right hand on the turntable's buttons and your left controls the slider for fading and effects.

Gameplay it's fairly standard Guitar Hero stuff. You hit the appropriate button as designated by the on-screen icons which fall from the upper part of the screen. The slight bend on the graphics indicating a vinyl record that's playing is a nice touch. If you see a right angle in the lane then you slide the fade in that direction. Sometimes you'll see a zigzag icon and you hold the appropriate button and 'scratch' the record for that duration. It all works beautifully and once you're in a rhythm you really feel like you're commanding the action.

By far though the star of the show are the tunes. Each track is actually a composite of two popular songs which you control with the fader - I wasn't expecting such incredibly intricate and well done remixes of songs you just wouldn't think would work together and they're a joy to listen to. Superb stuff.

There's several modes of play as well as online MP. Turntable vs guitar is also an option adding a new dimension to the game. In all DJ Hero exceeded my expectations and I look forward to many online battles (or indeed a battle with some friends on their guitars).

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DJ Hero, Activision's latest installment in their music genre games, arrives to stores on Oct 27th 2009. When I was offered the opportunity to test and review a demo version of the game prior to release date I accepted immediately; as a fan of Playstation 3 The Beatles: Rock Band - Software Only and Guitar Hero World Tour Band Bundle for PlayStation 3 games, I was very interested in seeing what Activision had done with the DJ Hero game.

Before starting with the details, as other Vine reviewers have pointed out, this review is written from a demo kit, turntable is wired opposite to the wireless retail version so I can't really make a statement about connectivity between the controller and the console. Also the demo included only 3 songs to play with.

Being a music lover, the demo was fun to play, it appropriately combines music from different eras in quite interesting DJ remixes, by doing this, Activision is obviously trying to ensure that whoever plays this game, either and adult or a youngster will enjoy remixing their music. In researching the web for the complete track list I could confirm artists from Weezer, , Rihanna, and No Doubt to David Bowie, Rick James and Queen are included. The selection of the tracks to remix seems wide and interesting. Also, it's been announced that downloadable content for the game will be available from day one after this is released. I played this with a nephew and he absolutely loved it (now he doesn't know if he wants this or Assassin's Creed II for Christmas)

The controls were a little bit tricky at the beginning (and as stated before, I am familiar with the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games) but once you get the hang of it, it is really great to mix the songs in the turntable, you have to pay attention and be quick. While the controller may be different, the logic of the playability is similar to the 'Guitar Hero' games in the sense that you have to hit the buttons accordingly with what you see onscreen. Also important to note, the turntable can be adjusted for left handed players. Assuming the controller I played with is the same as the retail version (but wireless), the turntable is nice looking and of quality. One thing I could not test is that I understand that guitar controllers can also be used to play this game(in something called "DJ vs Guitar" mode), the problem I had is that the two guitars I own are for PS3 so I can't really tell how that would work.

The game looks and plays great and I can't wait to get the retail version, it looks like another promising franchise has arrived!

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The premise of this game is that you're pretending to be a DJ at a club. You've got a single turntable in front of you that comes with the kit (note that it does NOT really play vinyl records) and plugs into your Xbox instead of the usual controller. The game gives you two songs to "mix" together. Usually it's two songs that have little in common like "Heard it Through the Grapevine" that you need to mix with David Bowie's "Let's Dance". For me, even though the song combinations were created by famous DJ musicians (you don't get to pick which songs to mix together), the resulting mix almost never works. In fact, there is little to no room for your own creativity in this game. You can't pick songs to put together and you can't choose how to mix them. Lastly, if you don't know what DJs do (or you don't like DJ-ed music), you'll be pretty lost as to what's going on, making this just a button-pushing twitch game.

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I'm a big fan of the "fake musical instrument" genre of games, but didn't find myself addicted to this.

I found the controls to be a bit challenging to get used to, and annoyingly found myself moving the slider bar too far...ruining any chances I had at earning multipliers. It would have been better if it took more effort to get it moving from one track to the next.

The soundtrack was cool though. I love that Benny Benassi "Satisfaction" song so it was good to see it on a big mainstream game like this one.

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We have the Wii version of Guitar Hero (with the full band's worth of instruments); we got the Xbox version of DJ Hero Demo. The general idea of the controls is very familiar while also being novel. In other words, if you're already used to GH, this is a nice alternative, and my son likes it better than GH. He says it's harder and also that the GH guitar was hard to play sitting down and didn't feel much like an actual guitar and that the turntable seemed more realistic. (However, he has never DJ'd in real life. :-)

One of the things we have loved about GH is as a family game, fielding four or fewer band members depending on how many people are up for playing. The real appeal of GH to me lies in the enormous fun of playing together and the adults playing with the teenagers. I'm guessing that this ends up being more appealing to teens playing with their friends than families playing together. Among the factors here is that the kids are going to be better at picking up the more complicated controls.

We got only three songs with the demo, but I like the music better than GH (we have World Tour, FWIW.) My son says the music is good.

We don't like the slide control, which has three positions -- left, center, and, right -- it's hard to return to center. It might be better as sort of an arrow, with "center" at the top point of the arrow.... or maybe you just get used to it.

I like that is has a "Euphoria Button". I think we could all use that sometimes. :-) Alas, we didn't learn to use it because the tutorial on our disk didn't go that far. But still, it cracks me up!

My son picked the star ratings... he says four stars for fun because we couldn't play the full game, so it's hard to fully access the fun. But five stars overall because it seems like a great game.

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Setting aside the fact that this is a four song demo, and any obvious Guitar Hero comparisons the following can be said of DJ Hero its playability and potential based on the DEMO.

The unit itself is a great looking peripheral with wet glass smoothness to the table and its rotation and an appealing retro look and functionality. The buttons are a little small and close for big hands with a surface that can be hard to lock onto with a fingertip in the heat of play. Working the crossfader can be frustrating as the only click point is the center channel, but after a few days of practice I find it much easier to grasp the crossfading gameplay element which is really the hardest part of the gameplay to master. The hidden control pad has a touchy dpad but is otherwise functional and smoothly implemented. Gamewise the graphics look like Jet Set Radio ran into a truck carrying some rejected anime characters (think SSX phunky). Ignoring the graphics and focusing on the music that the few mashups included hint at the possibility of greatness and annoyingness(VINE VINE VINE), possibly without the replayability of other music games due to lack of true user input.

Nitpicking aside the game feels fun on all skill levels, there is a flow to the music and gameplay on EASY mode that the added crossfading of MED and Hard take away. The guitar turntable co-op is fun for two people but it doesn't exactly feel like anything too groundbreaking, just the new game with someone playing GH next to you. The music is going to sell the set as fans of herky jerky, mashup style genre defying DJ music will feel right at home and want to hear more, in other words I would be more likely to play this game for the music than the overall addictiveness of the gameplay which isn't insignificant. If you came to scratch this game isn't going to disappoint or overwhelm you with joy, but it is that mechanic alone that will probably carry or bury this franchise.

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I never actually DJed before, but I am a bit of a musician and rhythm game fan. I love Rock band, Guitar Hero, DDR, etc. When I got a Demo copy of DJ Hero I was excited to try out a form of musical expression I hadn't experienced before.

First off, the turntable controller is amazing. I played with it for about 20 minutes before even turning on the game. The turntable feels like a real turntable... if you give it a good spin, it will keep going for several minutes. It has a lot of weight to it. Likewise, the fader bar and the effects knob all feel like they are made out of very high quality parts. After getting my hands on the controller I was very excited about the possibilities with the fader slide bar and being able to actually influence the music in the game. Sadly, I was mistaken.

The slider bar, to my disappointment, only has 3 positions (song A, song A+B, and song B). I was hoping the slider was analogue and I could get 'mostly' song A and just a little song B.

Another disappointment is scratching. The turntable feels SO GOOD, but when you scratch the games audio ALWAYS scratches with the same rhythmic, regardless of how fast/slow you are scratching the song yourself.

So, in the end, it is another very pre-programmed rhythm game like guitar hero. Your influence over the music is extremely limited. Now, this might seem hypocritical because I love Guitar Hero, but there is a reason it upsets me in this game. In guitar hero, there is no way for the game to make any sense of notes played that arn't in the song, so I am not upset when I play a wrong note and just hear an error chord. This is not the case in DJ Hero. It would be very easy to allow the user full control over scratch rhythym and fade. The technology and the peripheral are all there. They just chose not to do it.

As a pure rhythm game, it is pretty solid. If you are doing everything right you will feel like you are a DJ. But as soon as you want to be creative, and it just feels like you should be able to, the game puts you back on the rails. This really could have been excellent, but I am a bit dissapointed. For the price I would stick to Rock band or the latest Guitar Heroes. But, again, it is a solid rhythm game. If you love DJ mixes, this has some great tracks.

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I've think this is a really great game, but beware those with terrible coordination or no sense of rhythym. I fall into that category, but I won't rate the game badly because I have no beat. I was only capable of playing it on the easy setting(just one step up from beginner), otherwise I just got hopelessly lost as the beat changes and theres scratching etc involved. I thought I wouldn't be able to figure it out at all, with the little icons and their meaning(scratching, fader, etc), but it has a common sense approach and it's easy to understand. I actually think its easier to play then guitar hero, which I also am very bad at, but enjoy none the less. Having the 3 color buttons vs. the 5 color buttons on the guitar was less to try and conquer.

Besides playing, I also watched some friends, who picked it up easily and love the game. There is a lot of music and some great pairings, things you'd never dream to put together. Really interesting music on here, it doesn't stick to a genre or decade and has a little bit of everything.

The idea of a DJ game I thought was ingenious, and the fact that you can play with the turntable and guitar is a super idea for those crossing over from guitar hero. You can also play with two turntables, but I think that would be for the very serious fans only, since you have to get another turntable.

Great game, I look forward to see what else activision comes up with.

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I was excited to have this game, as it seems to resemble Amplitude (which we love) as much or more than Guitar Hero.

But I lost interest the first day of playing this, when, while playing this on Expert level already, I noticed there does not appear to be any way to lose or fail a level. I sat back without touching the controls at Expert level for several songs and nothing happened. Granted, this was in one-player mode, maybe the two-player competitive modes are more interesting or something.

So with no way to lose, the game becomes merely about getting the maximum number of points you can in a stage. Which to me is fairly boring.

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I didn't pay a lot of attention to Guitar Hero when it came out way back in the day. Then I read that Slash from Guns and Roses considered it more fun than rock and roll (yep, don't have a citation, that's from memory). So I bought it for my (then) 5 year old who spent two weeks on it, conquered it on Expert and spent an afternoon (at 6) explaining why Freebird was the greatest song he ever heard (along with the Pretenders' Tattooed Love Boys...)

I tried it and I got hooked within a few minutes. Guitar Hero was transcendent, and later Rock Star incarnations in drums, mike, etc were just as good. These were fun ways to experience songs that I always loved.

Now, along comes DJ Hero, a version that is all about scratching a (fake) turntable, blending unlikely pairs of songs. Guess what, my (now) 8 year old and I played last night. I never liked DJ scratching or blending or mixing but I have to tell you...just as good, just as addictive. I really had a lot of fun and played the heck out fo the game. The (fake) turntable is actually pretty solid state and the game play is amazing. Even the graphics got better!

For those who are unsure whether a music game is for you, consider this: I also bought Halo ODST a week ago. I'm a big fan of the Halo games (except for Halo Wars) and usually jam on them for months after new ones come out. In this case, I'm hopeful that I'll get to it one day after we get bored with DJ Hero. But not until and probably not anytime soon.

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DJ Hero is, if you'll pardon the pun, the latest spin on the tried and true Guitar Hero franchise. You should already be familiar with such rhythm game concepts, but in case you're not, here's a quick overview:

Colored shapes come traveling down lanes on the screen, like a conveyor belt. When they get to the bottom, you push the corresponding button(s) or perform the action indicated. In the case of DJ Hero, there are 3 tracks to mix and scratch, each represented by one of the colored lanes (green, red, and blue). When the colored circle comes traveling down, it means push the corresponding button on the turntable. When a segment looks like a patch of zipper material, it means to scratch the record while holding down the correspondingly colored button. When you see a big zig-zag on either the left or right track, that means to slide the cross-fader in the direction indicated. Score enough correct consecutive button presses and a meter builds, multiplying your score, just like Guitar Hero. Once it is fully charged, you can push the Euphoria button to unleash a supercharged mode where your score multiplier is doubled and cross-fading is automatic.

Playing DJ sounds like fun, but it's not, due to the frustrating controller. The colored buttons on the turn table are arranged in a row, and the innermost button (blue) is too close to the center point, making the turntable very difficult and uncomfortable to spin. The buttons are slightly concave and textured with small grooves, but they are not deep enough or gripping enough to prevent fingers from slipping. Sweating will make it worse. After several minutes of playing, I found slippage to be a problem.

Equally problematic is the cross-fader. The game requires you to slide the control to the left, center, or right. The slider is not a continuously smooth sliding control and it's unforgiving. It snaps into place in the middle and has to be snapped to register the hit. Due to the snapping, it is very easy to overshoot and miss the middle point, especially when you have to cross-fade multiple times in quick succession at certain points in the game. As a result, I was focusing on how much force to exert so as not to overshoot rather than actually playing the game. When a game forces you out of the experience to concentrate on the controls, it is bad design.

If you are interested in this game, I would definitely recommend playing it for 10-15 minutes at a store before you decide. DJ Hero's website has a location finder.

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This game looked fun, I'd been anticipating it's release, but as other reviewers have said - It's hard to learn. I've played it a bunch now and it's just not for me. It's hard to manage the controls when you're used to a standard controller-style game. Great selection of music, but I seriously can't stand to play it anymore. The product itself is well-produced, you may love it if you like Guitar Hero and the like, it's just not my style.

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I was skeptical and then hopeful about this game. Skeptical because I didn't think they would pull off something decent, but then when I saw the playlist I was brought back. My assumption was that this would be 100% hip hop, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the like of Eric Prydz and Daft Punk on the list, while I don't dislike hip hop I am much more of a house person and I figured house would be forgotten in this game, it's not

However as usual with so many games it is the game play itself that lets this game down. My path to this game is thus:

Tried guitar hero -> didn't like it (just wanted music not some stupid story)

Tried rock band -> loved it, especially drums

So I am coming from a rock band background. I also am a music nut, am familiar with and use DJ software like Ableton and Traktor frequently. What I loved about Rockband was the connection between you, the controller, the game and the music. When you make an action on the controller you see it both on the notes, the actions of the avatars and you hear it. This is the first mistake of DJ Hero, you don't feel like you are actually the musician. On Rockband you do.

#1 Little connection between what you do hear and see. The Avatar does not follow what you are doing at all (minor) but it's there in Rockband. Sometimes the taps appear to have no effect on the music, perhaps the effects are two subtle to notice, but when you manipulate the controller you should get something noticeable for it, it seems many actions are just there to make things more difficult at higher levels (eg, cross fade and tap simultaneously, what action is that on a real system?)

#2 The game is confused as to what it is trying to produce, it combines vinyl based mixing, digital vinyl based mixing (like Serato, Traktor etc) and fully digital mixing (eg Ableton) into a single composition. Some of the transitions and effects you hear are simply not possible with vinyl. You have Armanda Van Burren CDJ style beat repeats and key points on one track and seconds later you have scratches. This is simply not possible without having 4 hands. They should have made it more of a scratch game, not throw in confusing digital effects. On the higher difficulties you get more of a feel for what's happening eg. a tap could be a beat repeat, a cue point, a track fader an effect etc.. one tap can be one of about 12 different real life actions.

#3 There is no room for free style at all. All you get is a cheesy autofilter on the one encoder and the ability to hit a "Custom" sample every now and again. Am I missing something? They didn't appear to build free style scratching into the game at all? Why they heck not, how cool would it be to be able to sratch without having to buy 2 $500 turn tables. Come on, huge gap in the game play! There also needs to be more effects than just auto filter, the samples get old really fast, why can't there be more effects? Like echo, gater, flanger etc.. there are more effects on the guitar on rock band!

#4 Minor but the saving time is slow I think

#5 The controller. The buttons to select which deck you are going to scratch are on the platter, I don't get that at all, at least give some kind of real feeling. I know this is a game, but it would be nice to actually put your hand on the vinyl rather than on a button, seems like it would have been better to but the buttons somewhere else on the controller, or maybe have an option with two turn tables so you don't have to select at all. Also as everyone else has said, the cross fader is a nightmare, I have never seen a cross fader with a notch in the middle, no dj has to get the cross fader directly in the middle of the encoder to make a mix, this should have been an analogue control like the platter, as long as it is within say 15% of center it should be ok, you constantly overshoot on quick cross fader runs.

Over all the mixes are great to listen to, but there are too many obstacles in the way of making this feel like you are manipulating the music rather than manipulating a game controller. To me that is the most important part of a music game, the game needs to get you to a point where you suspend your disbelief and actually believe you are really playing the guitar, drums, decks, whatever...

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This game looked great and I picked it up shortly after it came out when i first saw something different in the music genre coming out i was psyched seeings me and my husbands son love playing the rockband games and I got it and played it for a day or two got into it than got bored with it shortly after cain who is 11 has played it maybe 3 times and I have had the thing for how many months save your money and stick with the rockband/guitar hero games they hold your attention way longer than this ever will!

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DJ Hero is the latest in Activision's rhythm game offerings. What started out with players strumming on guitars morphed into singers singing, drummers drumming, and now this. But unfortunately, what should have been a revitalization of the genre and a new entry in the party game hall of fame falls short in several ways.

THE GAME

Building off of the Guitar Hero model, you play along with a club mash-up track, trying to keep up with the on-screen instructions as they roll past. The group with whom I played were equal part intrigued and intimidated by the turntable controller - everyone wanted to try, but quickly got frustrated at how unnatural it felt. Face it - most of us have had momentary fits of air guitaring or drumming, but not so many have had that for DJing.

Players combine crossfading tracks, dropping sound effects, and scratching to play the songs. Most players were mainly interested in the scratching, but it was disappointing for two reasons: first, it's difficult because of the controller's size/design (more on that later), and second, it's also very basic at the same time. The scratch motion is just back and forth with no regard for speed, distance, or anything else that makes each scratch unique. Ultimately, it's no more interesting than hitting a button on-time and it didn't take long for players to realize it. I found crossfading to be the most rewarding and interesting part of the gameplay, but most others found it to be too difficult.

Another issue is the mixes themselves. Each one is a mash-up of two tracks and you're supposed to creatively reassemble together. Interesting yes, but that means that the target tracks are necessarily unfamiliar to everybody. Think about it this way - when you play Guitar Hero, what's more fun? Playing some song you've never heard before, or a longtime favorite? Exactly. At one point someone commented that you can barely even tell if you're doing well or not because your ears don't know what the end result is supposed to sound like.

If the unfamiliarity of the source material was a given, then why not allow more freedom for the player? Unlike Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, where players are given opportunities to solo freestyle for stretches, there are no such creative opportunities here. Why not let players decide how to mash these tracks together or even post their own track combinations, similar to how players can upload their own musical compositions via Guitar Hero 5? This is a big miss that ultimately dooms the game to being more of a chore than party.

There is multiplayer built in via DJ + Guitar mode, where one person works the turntable while another plays the familiar guitar hero role. This seemed like a last-minute add-on, and possibly even a concession that there will probably be more people who want to play the familiar and fun guitar instead of the turntable at your party.

THE CONTROLLER

The DJ Hero controller uses one free-spinning turntable and a crossfade bar along with a few extra buttons for Euphoria (like Star Power in GH games) and sound effect/sample drops. The turntable itself is small, closer to a 7" single than a full-size record. This unfortunately makes it difficult to scratch, especially when using the right-hand source - that button is so close the spindle that it's difficult to move the turntable back and forth from that position. A larger turntable would have solved this issue.

Also, I don't see why the turntable is free-spinning to begin with. Since there are no speed-based elements programmed into the game (i.e. it reads a slow scratching motion identically to a fast one), there's no reason for that range of movement. It would actually have been easier to control if it sprung back to a center position like the strum bar on a Guitar Hero controller does. More than a few times, our test group lost the buttons when they spun away after a scratch.

Finally, unlike Guitar Hero, there is no option to flip the controls and/or the screen for left-handers. Even some of the right-handers who tried it found that the controller was too cramped with one hand on the crossfader and the other on the left side of the turntable where it forces you to play. It would have been nice for all to have an option that flips the on-screen track lines so that you could control the turntable on the right side.

The controller is average quality, the turntable being the highlight. I'll be interested to see how well the crossfade bar holds up during rigorous play - it felt a little flimsy right out of the box.

CONCLUSION

I'm not sure who this game will appeal to. On the one hand, players will no DJing experience will likely find the game and controller too frustrating to bother with, while those who've used the real thing will find the dissimilarities with the turntable controller a turn-off. Plus based on the opinions of several players, the game itself lacks the immediate "I can't wait to play that again" fun factor that the Guitar Hero series has. Much like how the Guitar Hero series has evolved, maybe the next release of DJ Hero will fix the problems by upgrading the controller and allowing players more creativity in the way that they play with it. Until then, just pass this one up.

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