Activision has never been an innovator, especially in the music/rhythm genre. It managed to buy its way in by purchasing Red Octane and acquiring the rights to Guitar Hero franchise. The original developer of Guitar Hero, Harmonix, went on and created Rock Band; which Activision cloned with the Guitar Hero World Tour. So the real question is: HOW SUCCESSFUL COULD DJ HERO BE?

Its controller features a free-spinning turntable with three Guitar Hero color styled buttons on one side, a crossfader and a KNOB (an incremental decoder). Surprisingly the controller exhibits a real life and tactile feel which is priced at USD120. The quality of the turntable controller is without question; it could literally take a couple of beatings and still work just fine.

DJ Hero takes a parallel turn to the Guitar Hero's "minute to learn, lifetime to master" experience. By using the 3 buttons, the turntable and crossfader you can beat your way through a mix, but there is more to the mechanisms for the more adventurous - such as rewind, filters, Freestyle sections and Euphoria, similar to Guitar Hero's STAR POWER. DJ Hero can be intense sometimes even on a Medium difficulty. But once you've started to wrap your head around, it's all good now.

There are more than 102 songs for DJ Hero plus 93 original mixes that were created from those songs. It is a good mix of artists, from Queen to Justice, Noisia, Foo Fighters, and even Eminem. The mixes are top notch, which is no surprise, since they were created by none other than Grandmaster Flash and DJ Shadow, giving proof of what talented remixers, DJs and mashup artists can use with existing tracks.

Despite the turntable controller paradigm, DJ Hero has less in common with real life DJing like Guitar Hero is to real life guitar. Players don't have to worry about BEATMATCHING (getting multiple tracks to play at the same tempo and in sync with each other) which distances DJ Hero from real life DJing.

Once you've tried out the Guitar Hero franchise, then you need to have DJ Hero as part of your party game lineup. Activision has really blown music / rhythm genre with DJ Hero.

Looking forward to have a new game this Holidays? Better check DJ Hero Games where we will teach you how to play it.