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I honestly never expected to be so addicted to DJ Hero. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t played music games before. I’ve played a lot of them. A whole whole lot of them. Still, there is something about DJ Hero that really tapped into something I hadn’t really experienced, and I really, really enjoyed it. So much so that I’ve gotten the vast majority of the achievements, even the ones that required me to compete online. It’s just a really fun little game.

I blame a lot of this on the controller. Say what you will about the cost, and it is probably overcosted, but that controller really makes the game into something special. It feels REALLY good scratching on the controller, and having the physical little dial and crossfader turn potentially boring mechanics into really compelling ones. It takes a lot of work to master these sorts of things, and build up muscle memory on how much to move that slider and where exactly that knob is, but man, for me anyway, it was totally worth it. It feels like you are doing something completely and utterly different from playing guitar in Rock Band or playing a normal music game with your controller, and the game benefits greatly from it.

The music in the game itself is a whole bunch of Mashups, which are both good and bad. On one hand this, once again, makes the game feel extremely different: you haven’t played a game with such songs in it before. On the other hand, this gave them excuse to re-use songs in Mashups over and over again. Sure, every mix is a bit different, but it’s still much less fun playing 4 songs where the base is the same song time and time again.
Still, some of the mixes are really nice and catchy. There are some pretty awful ones, but it’s amazing seeing songs like Hollaback Girl turned into songs I can’t stop listening to. Of course, one of the main reasons I wanted the game was the vast support that Daft Punk threw behind the game, adding a whole bunch of music and mixes. These are by far the best, both their normal mixes, as well as some “Megamixes” where they just remix all their own songs together. And, of course, once I unlocked playable Daft Punk, I never used anyone else. Because Daft Punk fucking rules.

But yeah, I really loved DJ Hero. The main problem with it is that I have pretty well pulled every bit of entertainment out of it that one can. Unlike Rock Band, which works decently as a single-player game, but really comes together, and becomes something you constantly come back to, because you can bring friends into it over and over again, DJ Hero is a purely single player experience. Adding another Turntable wouldn’t really make things any more fun. The game is just complex enough that people can’t just pick it up and fiddle with it like they can a guitar or drum controller. There’s no community element to it. It’s just a game. A fun game, but a game, not a party game. Which is a shame.
That’s why I liked it so much, though. It was tailored for the exact situation I was in: sitting down, by myself, and just enjoying some music and some music gaming. It was a damn enjoyable experience. I hope they manage to fix all the rough edges and bring me a sequel. I’ll probably dust off the turntable and give that a solid playthrough as well, if they do.