Most people might know me as a professional poker player, but I’m also an avid gamer. For the last few years, I’ve spent most of my time away from the poker tables, rocking-out on a fake plastic guitar to rhythm games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band and their various incarnations. My hobby is actually more of an obsession, and I’ve been known to play for several hours on end, sometimes to the point where my fingers are aching in pain.
I’ve loved classic Rock and Metal for a long time, but my musical tastes are quite varied, and I fell in love with House music and early Hip-Hop as a teenager. I’ve always felt like I had the ear and dexterity for it DJ, but aside from a little messing around on friends’ decks here and there, I never gave it much of a shot.
Though House and Rap music once shared a common club audience, it was sad to see how musical genres had become segregated and mutually exclusive from each other. It was great to see these and other genres finally merging once again with the invention of the Mash-Up. I was fortunate to have known DJ AM for the last decade of his short and dramatic life, and it was through his music that I first got to experience a whole new world, one which brought all of my different “friends” into the same party.
Of course, I was beyond ecstatic when I first heard rumors of DJ Hero. In late September, Activision flew me out to San Francisco to preview the game at an exclusive press event. I had already gotten to play the demo a few times, but I was super excited to get to try the full game and setlist of songs first-hand. Below is a breakdown of the game and my first impressions.
Hardware:
At first glance, the turntable peripheral could easily be mistaken for the real thing. If it weren’t for the lack of an arm and needle, and the presence of the three colored buttons on the platter, it looks like a cute little turntable made to play 45’s. I was impressed with how well-made and how “unplastic” it felt compared to the guitars and drums produced before it.
The turntable peripheral consists of two parts: The deck- which consists of the rotating platter with three buttons on it (green, red and blue). And the mixer- which houses the crossfader, effects knob, Euphoria button and Xbox controls (or PS3 controls I suppose, though I’ve only seen the Xbox 360 versions).
A lot of thought clearly went into the design of the turntable. The two parts of the unit are detatchable, and the deck can be plugged into the mixer from either side, making it playable by both right and left-handed players. The top of the rotating platter is black with grooves in it to resemble an actual record, and it spins very smooth and silently. The side of the platter has the raised graduated silver dots which resemble those on an SL-1200. On the mixer unit, the crossfader is pretty much what you would expect, though perhaps slightly looser than the real thing, with a subtle but noticable ‘click’ in the center position. The effects knob has a good tension to it and it turns well. The Euphoria button is a pretty standard button which glows red when available for activation.
The Renegade edition also features gold-toned finishes, and a matching hard carrying case– which also has detachable legs to convert it into a turntable stand. It also comes with an exclusive 2-CD pack of unreleased tracks by Jay-Z & Eminem in a collector’s case.
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