The Controller
The controller features a free-spinning turntable with three Guitar Hero-style colored buttons on one side, a crossfader and a "knob" (or incremental encoder). What was a real surprise to me was that these controls exhibit a better tactile feel than most "real" digital DJ controllers several times the price of the game (US$120). There's a decent amount of mass to the turntable, and it doesn't feel cheap at all - like recent Guitar Hero controllers, it feels like it could cop a beating and still work fine.
The Game
DJ Hero parallels Guitar Hero in that it's a "minute to learn, lifetime to master" experience. Just using the three buttons, crossfader and turntable will get you through a mix, but there's plenty more game mechanics there for the adventurous - rewinds, freestyle sections, filters and "Euphoria", the analog to "Star Power" from Guitar Hero. It can get pretty intense at times, even on Medium difficulty - but once you've wrapped your head around it all, it's a blast.
It all works beautifully, apart from the freestyle sections, which allow you to trigger samples at will. Good in theory, but I'm yet to find one of the samples that fits well in any of the freestyle sections in any of the mixes. The upshot is that you're free to leave these sections alone without penalty. I just wish this lackluster mechanic had been replaced with one where your scratching actually affects the sample, rather than just mimicking someone else's scratching.
The Music
There's 102 songs in the DJ Hero, and 93 original mixes created from those songs. It's an eclectic mix of artists, including everything from Queen to Foo Fighters to Justice to Noisia to Eminem, but having said that, if you're particularly averse to hip hop, you might want to give DJ Hero a miss - there's plenty of it.
The mixes, created by artists including Grandmaster Flash and DJ Shadow, are top notch - and are a real testament to what talented DJs, remixers and mashup artists can create using existing pieces of music.
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