Dj Hero 2 Review
wiki wiki wiki what! Scratch that, hold up, the batteries in my turn table died. That’s right I’m here to review DJ Hero 2. As you may remember just under a year ago Dj Hero was launched and I reviewed it here and I loved it because of the music. Nothing has changed this time around. The music is kick ass and there is already downloadable content on the market place. There is no secret that the DJ Hero franchise is my music genre game choice.
The track list in DJ Hero 2 is awesome and aims to attract and branch out to reach a different type of audience. Sure, Lady Gaga, Pitbull, Rhianna and Janet Jackson are stars but they’re not my thing. The first game featured a ton of Jay Z and Eminem and they don’t have many tracks in this game, however, my favorite tracks so far have been Eminems “Not Afraid” and Lil Wayne feat. Static Major “Lollipop.”
When I first played Guitar Hero 2 it was all about the music and that’s evident here in Dj Hero 2 as there is no world tour and story modes. Empire mode is where you begin DJ’ing house parties and you can make it all the way to an international sensation. The issue with this approach is that I never felt like I was progressing my career at all. Another problem is that all the characters are pre-defined and sometimes you get replaced a real life DJ. I can use my Avatar in the game but why they did not go the extra mile to incorporate that piece of functionality into the single player is beyond me. Along the way you have to battle fictional dj’s as well as David Guetta and Tiesto, but it never felt like it was a real challenge against these real life stars.
Once you’re done unlocking all 83 songs for quick play mode set up some play lists, rack up the high scores, and challenge your friends to beat it. Alsok from the main menu you can enable party mode which will randomly play songs so you can sit back and enjoy the remixes. The only downside to this mode is all the song selection is randomized.
One of the main complaints of the original DJ hero was that as the DJ you had no control of the mash ups. In each mash up there are freestyle sections where you can control the crossfading, scratching and trigger samples as you like. The best implemenation of this is crossfading where you can choose to play either track A or track B or mash up the two tracks how you like it. This is one of the best parts of the game for me, I wish I had more control of the mash ups. trigger samples are hard to keep in tempo with the song and scratching is fun but doesn’t sound as good as the recorded scratches.
DJ Hero allowed players to sync up a microphone and give shouts over the music, this has been taken a step further in DJ Hero 2 and allows players to sing along to the songs. Since the songs are mashed up this can make singing along to your favorite song very impossible since the lyrics to another song could pop up at any moment. I personally would have been happy with this portion of the game not being included.
The two-player battles have also seen a face lift. Now player 1 will perform a section of a song and then player 2 will have to perform the same section of the song and try to out perform the other DJ. A winner will be decided at each checkpoint and when a player reaches a certain number of checkpoints won there is a winner. This mode can be played locally or on Xbox Live/PSN against other players.
Also, from the main menu you can view your Rep, check how you are progressing on your Achievements/Trophies, compare your your scores on the leaderboards and you read the Hero Feed which provides all sorts of statistics from how many mixes you played to how many hours you’ve played.
Overall this DJ Hero 2 is a good improvement over the original game and it’s kept me entertained for hours and hopefully through DLC it will continue to provide many more hours of entertainment.
read moreDj Hero Renegade Edition Review – Xbox 360
Activision has yet again brought us a new “Hero” series game, this time venturing away from the guitar, drums, and microphone to bring us DJ Hero. Yes another metal and plastic instrument for are already overcrowded living rooms. There are two versions of the game the regular edition and the Renegade Edition featuring Jay-Z and Eminem.
There are only 2 differences on the hardware that I’ve found so far one being the knobs on the Renegade edition are metal compared to plastic on the regular edition. Secondly the turntable is black and gold compared to black and silver. My only real complaint regarding the turn table is the cross fading mechanism. It is has 3 positions left, center and right. When sliding from right to center or vice versa there isn’t enough of a click to ensure that it is centered. I’ve often lost note streaks because of it. FreeStyleGames even thought of the lefties, you can detach the mixer and place it on the right.
One of the biggest complaints I have had with games Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the tracks. Being in my twenties the music in those games just didn’t appeal to me because I didn’t know 90 percent of the artists. This is one of the single most important reasons I love DJ Hero the set list is fantastic. You have music from Eminem, Jay-Z, N.E.R.D, 2-Pac And 50 Cent mixed by the likes of DJ AM, DJ Grandmaster Flash and DJ Jazzy Jeff. This game is loaded with star power.
Another Hero game means another controller, so half of it is the record platter that contains 3 buttons green, red and blue. The other half is the mixer that includes the cross fader, effects knob , euphoria button (star power) and system control buttons .As the familiar red and blue and as notes come down on the screen you press the button. Scratches involve holding either the green or blue button while moving the platter back or forth, but on harder difficulty you’ll have to follow onscreen arrows that indicate whether to push it forward or pull it back. When you get into the medium, hard and expert settings you add in the cross fader, which you’ll have to push left and right depending on what notes are being played during the song. Think of it this way, when the cross fader is in the middle position music from record 1 and record 2 are being blared through your speakers. Move it to the left and only record 1 is being played, move it to the right and it’s only record 2.
Beginner and easy mode are just like sound, lame and boring. For me this game started to take off once I switched to medium 5 starred all the songs and found my groove. Hard and expert is a challenge and some of the songs really do kick my ass but I’m ok with that since music in this game is incredible. You can hook up a USB microphone and throw shout out’s to your TV, it’s lame but it could be fun at a party. Next time they tried to integrate a co-op mode by having 10 songs that can also be played using a guitar. The guitar and Turntable mode sounds but I really thought it was tacked on instead of being carefully thought out. One small annoyance I have is that you cannot fail a song regardless of how bad you suck, the music will keep playing. This is great if you wanted to just kick it at a party and listen to some great tunes but it’s hard to focus on where you need to improve your skills.
You can go on line, pick a set list and battle other people, I personally didn’t enjoy this mode at all as I could never seem to win a set list.
I hope Activision takes a cue from the fine folks at Harmonix and releases weekly downloadable mash up tracks for us to play. This is only way to prolong the life of this game.
Dj Hero makes a very good debut onto console platforms but FreeStyleGames needs to make a few improvements to the hardware, co-op and potentially a lower price as some people may find the current price tag a little high. At the end of the day this is one of the best music genre games I’ve played.
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