DJ Hero Co-Op Review

In a fall drenched with music games like The Beatles Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, and others - one game has managed to stand out by attempting something different.  DJ Hero has broken away from the rock and guitar genre, instead focusing on the mixing of different songs and beats to create unique music.  The DJ's instruments are the turntable, his headphones, and a microphone; and while yours may be plastic it's nice to be able to shape the music on the screen.

As a veteran of music games you may come into DJ Hero thinking you can skip the tutorial, but that isn't advised.  While the game shares its roots with other games in the genre, gameplay wise there's a lot of new things to learn.  You'll still be tapping buttons as notes come down three tracks on the screen, but added to the mix are scratches, fades, freestyles and more.

Scratch patterns may be freestyle or specific, asking the DJ to either scratch up or down by spinning the turntable back and forth.  Crossfades follow the outside tracks either left or right mixing in the appropriate song either less or more.  The slider has a little dead zone in the center that clicks to let you know you've gotten back to balanced, but it's very tempting to just slam the slider back and forth missing the tracks.  Freestyle samples, which can be loaded before a song, allow DJs to drop in custom sounds and voices into a song. 

There's a few ways to add bonus points to your score, either by hitting Euphoria notes in succession to build up a meter, or by building up note streaks and earning rewinds.  Euphoria acts like Star Power in other music games, and can be activated by pressing a button that lights up the turn table to double your multiplier.  A rewind is activated by spinning the turntable backwards, and it does exactly what it sounds like - rewinds the song.  You'll get a short double multiplier in doing so.  The trick here is to rewind when there's a lot of notes to play for maximum points.  I found the rewinds, while fun to do, ruined the pace of some of the songs.

While there really isn't a career mode in DJ Hero, there is an order to the games progression as you play through different sets of songs.  Each song is worth up to five stars, and stars are used to unlock DJs, accessories for your DJ, and venues to party it up in.  With almost 100 songs at your disposal, that's a lot of stars to earn and a lot of unlockables to get.

100 songs sounds like a lot, and it is, but it's also a bit of a misconception.  The game is filled with 100 mixes of songs, but the same song is uses multiple times.  Thankfully the real life DJs that created the mixes have done a great job of making each mix feel unique, and rarely will it FEEL like you are playing the same song.  With the likes of Daft Punk, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Grand Master Flash and others, there's a ton of talent behind these songs and mixes.

The music is where the game shines.  There's something for everyone, and as a child of the 90's I found a lot of the music really tailored to my tastes.  Songs like Insane in the Brain by Cyprus Hill, U Can't Touch This by MC Hammer, The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony and many more all brought a smile to my face.  I mean, the game mixed Ice Ice Baby and U Can't Touch This - that was a junior highschool playground battle!  But even above these songs there's some interesting mixes with songs of the 70s, 80s and more.  Something like Jackson 5 - "I Want You Back" vs. Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed Life" is an interesting mix; and it also is one of the songs that provides the game's only co-op mode.

Co-Op in DJ Hero is available on 10 songs that have two parts - DJ and Guitar.  The DJ part plays exactly like the single player game with the exception of being able to rewind the song.  The guitar part plays exactly like Guitar Hero, though your score and star power doesn't contribute to the first player.  In fact, the co-op in general seemed a bit odd because the guitar, other than sounding really cool, had little effect on the progression of the game.  They didn't help or hurt the progress.  

With only 10 songs available in this mode, co-op is only a small diversion.  While you can play every song with two turntables, the tracks aren't written for co-op, and it's basically a competitive mode.  

We powered through the co-op songs, which you can choose right from the beginning, in about 30 minutes. Hopefully we'll see some co-op DLC in the future beefing up the cooperative offerings.  Maybe even some co-op DJ songs themselves, after all, Daft Punk is a two man group.

DJ Hero won't be for everyone, but as someone who's grown a bit tired of music games, DJ Hero managed to hold my interest and keep me coming back.  Despite the lack of some significant social offerings, there's a ton of content that's still perfect for parties letting people try their hand at spinning the records.  You can even plug in a microphone and actually MC if you want, or just let the tracks play in party mode.   Aspiring DJs will enjoy the game and earn a new appreciation for the craft, one that I was surprised was so involved.  At $120 it's a tough investment for the casual gamer, but considering Activision's support for the other music titles, you'll get your money's worth eventually.  Lets just hope the DJ game genre doesn't get over saturated too.