DJ Hero Impressions

I finally got my hands on DJ Hero at Best Buy the other day. Of course with the constraints of a demo, I might not have been all that impressed upon, but as far the gameplay goes, I was surprised, to be succinct.

In many more words, I have to say that playing DJ Hero is like relearning everything you've already figured out about music games, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. You have to relearn how to handle rhythms, you have to relearn where you hands go, you have to relearn what you can get away with. God I wish Harmonix were handling this new foray into the music genre (but they're more interested in teaching people how to play real instruments... [is a turntable an instrument?]).

DJ Hero certainly has loads of personality to spare and the visuals certainly do impress (if you even look at them, who looks at what's going on in the background during music games?). The demo let Jenna and I play through three songs, including mash ups of Gorrilaz, Marvin Gaye, and Gwen Stefani. Really, walking into the experience, I thought DJ Hero was going to be really stupid, and so did Jenna too. Still, I wanted to at least try the new rhythm game and get my hands on the turntable, especially after I had heard some good things from Zach.

What finally got Jenna in, I think, was her curiosity and the music. Something about mixing two bad songs together ends up turning them into one passable song. It helps that DJ Hero's mash-ups combine new and old songs. I noticed that a relatively new Black Eye Peas song was mixed with a much older and very recognizable electronic song. I think it turns out a nice balance.

Anyways, my stance currently is that I have quite a bit of plastic crap in our small apartment and a Rock Band set would come back inside before a turntable, but maybe some day I'll pick up DJ Hero.