Review by: Brian Rowe

I’ve been friends with DJs, roommates with DJs, and had the privilege of stepping up to the tables on occasion. I’ve learned two things along the way. If a DJ with a vinyl addiction asks for help moving, you’re busy. Second, flipping the crossfader and matching your first beat is an awesome experience. This is probably the part where you expect to hear that DJ Hero is close to the real thing. Not quite, but it will likely inspire a burning desire for your own set of tables.

The controller is the crux of the experience and is a comfortable blend of real gear and embellishments. It can detach and shift into four configurations. Three of your fingers rest on a row of buttons that are more than up to the task of future abuse. Since some kids these days don’t know how to operate a tape-deck, allow me to point out that records don’t normally have buttons stuck in them. Pretend they’re part of a drum machine. From real turntables we get a textured platter (where the record goes), an equalizer streamlined down to a single knob, and a smooth crossfader. Unbeknownst to many, the innocuous crossfader is a powerful weapon in the DJ’s arsenal. It’s also the one part I worry about breaking. Mine already has a little wobble.

At DJ Hero’s most simplistic, the crossfader slips across three streams of music, the three buttons correspond to beats on the streams, and the record spins with everyone’s favorite ‘wicka-wicka’ motion for scratches. You could compare the gameplay to Guitar Hero, if that game also dictated up/down strums, came with a wah-pedal, and tracked your side-to-side motions. The dexterity needed for a perfect mix at DJ Hero’s expert-level makes the plastic six-string look like a PlaySkool toy. Check out a screenshot. The layout looks more like an algorithm for military code than anything capable of creating music.

Activision went all out and hired renowned talents like DJ Shadow, DJ Z-Trip, and Jazzy Jeff. Don’t laugh. If you thought Fresh Prince was the real star of the outfit, you got played kid. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, or missed the terrible pun, some of the soundtrack’s 93 mixes are going to fly right over your head. That’s why we have mash-ups – combinations of songs that normally wouldn’t be caught dead working the same club. Old-schoolers like Cameo, Eric B. & Rakim, and Public Enemy fuse with the likes of M.I.A., Eminem, and Gwen Stefani in border-crossing unions of times and genres.