DJ Hero

If you think your Guitar Hero skills will carry over and make you a killer turntablist in DJ Hero… don’t. Our hands-on time with the groundbreaking steel-wheel simulator proved that it’s definitely got its own groove — drenched in ecstasy, no less. The only thing that will help you going into it is the ability to count to four.

At first glance, you might think it’s easy. “Just three buttons? My pinky finger will die of boredom!” But no. Place your index, middle, and ring fingers on the green, red, and blue buttons, respectively (and that’s whether you’re a righty or a lefty: the cleverly named DJ Hero Turntable Controller can be assembled for either preference). The platter spins freely — there’s no limit to the revolution of the turntable. Your other hand hovers over three crucial controls: a crossfader, an effects knob, and a big glowing button. The fader blends the audio of two tracks; all the way to the left plays only the green track, full right plays just the blue. Some mixes will require you to aggressively slam back and forth to isolate parts of each song on the fly. In the not-quite-final hardware we tried, the midpoint detent didn’t catch very well — it was hard to know when you were exactly in the middle. Doug Grutzmacher, the game’s associate producer, says the center point will have more “click” in the production unit.

So what about that middle track, the one controlled by the red button? That’s for samples — extra beats added to the mix, or on some tracks, shoutouts like Flavor Flav yelling “Yeaaah, boyeeee!” You can switch those vocal samples in the middle of a song; they come in banks of five, and you can choose between them with the knob. In our inexperience, we found it tricky to do that, but it’s a skill worth mastering unless you want Flav screamin’ in your ear for every song. (Hint: You don’t.)

The effects knob also performs a frequency sweep on certain song segments. When a small orange archway appears over a track, that’s your cue to twiddle the knob and give the sound a space-age effect of swooshes and bass boosts. Think of it as the equivalent of the GH whammy bar. The final button triggers Euphoria, which is DJ Hero’s version of Star Power — extra glows, extra beats, extra points. Naturally, you’ll need to build that up by accurately performing the glowing sections of the songs.

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