Learn To Fly
Having said all of that, what are the downsides? It almost seems distasteful to rip on the game after the effort it puts into its presentation and musical catalogue. By nature, this is a single-player-focused experience, clashing against the heavy multiplayer emphasis in all recent rhythm games. The progression is basic and addictive: stars earned from performances unlock new songs, venues, set-lists, and characters. It’s basic Guitar Hero 1, 101. In a couple of unusual choices for the genre, however, FreeStyleGames has forgone any kind of fail-state when playing, and made difficulty selection irrelevant to your campaign progression. No more stars are earned by beating a song on Expert than on Easy and, in fact, beating a song is no problem since your performance doesn’t end if you suck. The song continues to the end. Your reward for doing a good job is up to five stars on any difficulty, a high score, and a sense of satisfaction.
This twist does invite the player to be daring: rather than be terrified that Expert won’t even allow one to get some practice of the song, you can try it out as best you can and see what the full song pattern involves. The decision to let all five stars be earned on Easy also means anyone – and I mean anyone – can unlock all content in the game. For the purposes of accessibility, that might be a wise decision, but experienced rhythm game aficionados may feel that the game is talking down to them – even though Expert mode in almost any song is nothing to sneeze at.
Focusing high level play on pure personal rewards and score attack might have worked out better if the online leaderboards in DJ Hero had been presented better; but as with far too many modern games, the leaderboards are hidden away in the options screen and are awkward to page through. Had they been front and centre, displayed after every song finished with your ever-progressing rank (one hopes!) shown in the middle, it might’ve distracted from the fact that the single player campaign is essentially a cakewalk if you chose to make it so.
Learn To Live So Free
Multiplayer in the game is limited to twin-DJ duels over Xbox Live or locally and a smattering of songs which allow a guitar controller to be used for the guitar track. The former feature is basic, and DJ duels simply can’t be as epic as the four man band action of other games, and the latter would have mattered more if more than a mere handful of songs supported the feature.
One other feature that has become critical to the music game is missing: a real music store. Activision’s games have lagged behind in this area, with the Rock Band series setting the standard for downloadable content. While some song packs are being offered for DJ Hero, it’s doubtful it will receive the perpetual stream of fresh content that makes Rock Band the standard in this area. On the other hand, almost as though anticipating this, FreeStyleGames made sure to include the largest default set-list of any music game out there, so this is balanced out to a degree.
What this all comes down to is that DJ Hero is, in a quickly reddening sea of guitar rock games, a small green island (that’s full of turntables). Sheer genre fatigue may cause some people to turn away purely because of the “-Hero” in the name, and the price tag attached to the elaborate turntable. If you love music, however, you might want to think hard about this, as the content that counts the most – the tunes – is absolutely unrivalled, and the playing experience is unique.