DJ Hero 2 Review

DJ Hero 2 Review

All around improvements make DJ Hero 2 an even stronger contender in the rhythm game genre.

My experience with last year’s DJ Hero was, overall, a good one. After having played too many Guitar Hero iterations, DJ Hero was a welcome change. However, the game failed to click with a large audience (mainly because of its high price tag), so I was left to wonder if it would ever receive a proper follow-up. Luckily, Activations saw promise in the franchise and went forward with DJ Hero 2. While it does little to change up the first game’s basic formula, it’s the minor tweaks that make it a definite improvement over the original.

While you still have very little creative control over the music, DJ Hero 2 places a larger emphasis on freestyle elements. During certain sections of each mix, the game allows you to do what you want with the crossfader and isolate or change up the sound as you see fit. Freestyle scratching is fairly self-explanatory: when the icon appears, you can scratch in different directions or speeds and you’ll hear those effects in-game. And freestyle sampling essentially replaces the sound effects you could insert with the Red Platter Button in the original DJ Hero; now samples are a part of the mix and it’s up to you to use them to match the beat.

DJ Hero 2 ReviewA less welcome addition to DJ Hero 2 is the vocal track. While it adds the ability for a second (or third) person to join in, it often hampers the experience more than it helps. Since you’re playing a remix of two songs it’s fairly rare that you’ll know both well enough to sing, especially when parts are either missing or changed around completely. And with two songs mashed up, the erratic tempo makes it even harder for someone who wants to jump in for some quick fun to play along. While the idea sounds interesting, I wish the game allowed vocals to just drop in or drop out at any time.

In the game’s career mode, Empire, you travel around the world performing at different venues and building up your brand. Altogether there are seven locations, and aside from the first and last venues, each new club starts off with a different Megamix, scratched and mixed by some of today’s most popular DJs, like David Guetta, Tiësto, and Deadmau5. It isn’t terribly original (nor as important as the music itself), but overall, Empire feels like a much more refined, streamlined, and approachable experience than the first DJ Hero’s Career mode.

The original game was a largely single-player experience. You had the option to play certain songs with a friend using a guitar controller, or to play against a friend if you had two turntables (they weren’t sold separately until months after release, however), but these options were either incredibly lackluster or just overly expensive. Luckily, the DJ Hero 2 party bundle (available for the same price as the original — $149) comes with two turntables and a microphone, making DJ Hero 2 a much more realistic (and affordable) party game option.

Another big problem this sequel fixes from the original is that most of the game’s 83 mixes are unlocked for Quickplay right from the start. Many of the mixes in DJ Hero 2 tend to follow a formula of “Song 1″ followed by far too little of “Song 2,” though. The first game struck a better balance by changing back and forth between both songs more frequently in mixes.

The genres represented in mixes were also more varied in the original — almost every song in DJ Hero 2 is a rap or dance track. That’s understandable since your character is the DJ at a club, but what I enjoyed about the first game was how it mixed together frequently disparate tracks. With that said, I still built a decent setlist comprised of some of my favorite mixes: Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown” vs. “The Day Never Comes” by Metallica, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” vs. “Ghosts N Stuff” by Deadmau5, and “Love Lockdown” vs. “Bad Girls” by Donna Summer.

With the exception of the new vocal track, the improvements in DJ Hero 2 should encourage fans of the first game to give this sequel a chance; the changes might be small, but they add to the overall experience. Catchy mixes, impressive visuals, and a much improved career mode make DJ Hero 2 worth checking out. And for those who’ve never tried the series, the fact that the game now comes bundled with two turntables and a microphone for only $149 gives you a perfect excuse to try your hand at turntablism.