DJ Hero 2 First Look Preview

There’s a man on stage. He’s dancing about, nodding his head and twiddling the knobs on the turntable in front on him. His face is obscured by a large cardboard globe with a face painted on it and two smaller discs protruding from the sides – creating a crude effigy of a rodent. If you’re a complete stranger to the world of electronic music, you might think that he was the host of some cut-rate kids’ TV show – or perhaps the lead actor in an amateur dramatics production of An American Tail. But it’s not: it’s someone gleefully pretending to be Deadmau5 – Toronto’s pre-eminent purveyor of stomping electro-house. And the man behind the mask is a very happy Jamie Jackson, Creative director at FreeStyle games.

It’s understandable why Jackson is in such a good mood. The first DJ Hero gathered plenty of positive woofs and meows from the critical press, and despite the fact that the game didn’t really sell that well, Activision has granted FreeStyle a second crack of the whip. On initial appearance DJ Hero 2 seems to be less of a revolution and more of a solid refinement of its predecessor’s ideas, but then that was probably to be expected. The rhythm-based gameplay remains unchanged, with players mashing buttons, flicking their cross-fader and jerking their turntables in response to the demands of an on-screen beat track. It still looks slick, and more importantly it still sounds fantastic. The key thing is that the new elements seem to be patching up the notable holes from last time around, particularly in the realm of competitive multiplayer.

First up, there’s now microphone support with full detection of range and pitch, allowing players to sing or spit rhymes over the top of your fevered scratching; if your mum happens to be an aspiring gangster rapper, you can now tempt her to stay indoors and away from those drug-laden street corners. Alternatively, if you’ve ever fancied remixing your Grandad’s Lady Gaga impersonation, that too will be an option. Activision and Freestyle are clearly aiming for the party crowd this time around, and to emphasise the point there’ll be a new bundle offering a copy of the game, a mic and two decks. And no, there’s no option for one player to use both turntables at once – y’know, like a proper DJ. According to Jackson, the development team have a working prototype of a two-deck system, but it’s harder than trying to read The Iliad in the original Ancient Greek. While bungee-jumping. Blindfold.

For the time being, it looks as if two-deck mixing is off the DJ Hero menu. What we get instead are some nice new options for head-to-head play. Accumulator is a bit like a turntable-based variant of The Weakest Link: two players work their way through a mix, filling up a progress bar in the centre of the screen by “banking” streaks of 50 beats or more; if you hold out for a longer streak you’ll fill up the bar quicker, but obviously this also increases the odds that you’ll cock up, forcing you to start from scratch. It’s a simple setup, but one that seems like a natural fit for the game’s focus on dexterity and timing, with friendly competition adding a further level of pressure to the already considerable challenge.

Accumulator mode looks fairly nasty in its own right, but if you’re the kind of gamer who really likes a good scrap, you’ll probably get most of your kicks via the new DJ Battles system. Here the game adopts a call and response-style approach, utilising specially-crafted mixes that echo the nightmarish demands of the hardcore tracks in Hero 1. One player works their way through a brief, 20 second section of mixing, then they have a break while the other player follows suit with an identical interlude; this alternating process then repeats itself over the course of the whole mix with the best performer nabbing the win. That all sounds very sedate, but in practice it looks like a towering contest of skill and ego, as each DJ attempts to outshine their rival. It’s a bit like the famous banjo scene in Deliverance, only without the inbred mutant kid. And unlike Deliverance, it’s unlikely that your activities will eventually result in non-consensual sodomy. Well, it might do… but if it does then you’re probably taking the competition a bit too seriously.

For the single-player side of things, there’ll be something called Empire Mode – a career campaign that sees you building up a global nightclub network, one sweatbox at a time. We’ve yet to see how this will work, but within the core gameplay the main change-up is a new focus on freestyle play. Essentially what this boils down to are “open” sections of a given mix, represented by fat bubbly bits on the scrolling track; there are still guidelines for the position of your cross-fader, but these are merely optional suggestions that should sound good if you follow them. You’re free to go back and forth as you like, making a blend as beautiful or as outright hideous as your heart desires. During these moments you’ll most likely be hammering seven bells out of the sample button, at which point you’ll notice that this year’s noises are taken from the actual songs you’re playing. It’s a welcome touch, but for purists and cheese fans there’ll also be an option to use the original canned noises. Yeeeeeaaah, boyeeee!

DJ Hero 2 will carry 70 mixes, mashed together from the works of 85 different artists. Freestyle has already revealed the presence of Dr. Dre, The Chemical Brothers, Kanye West, Metallica, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, while Activision’s recent showcase event revealed the inclusion of MSTRKRFT, David Guetta, Pitbull, The Pussycat Dolls and Deadmau5. Last year’s soundtrack had some excellent cuts on it, so with any luck the new tunes will be just as good. We’ll be covering further details on the sequel as they come to light, but in the meantime Activision has released a demo track – Lady Gaga’s Just Dance vs Deadmau5’s Ghosts n Stuff – for owners of the original game. It’ll only be available till June 14, so move quickly if you fancy a gander.

DJ Hero 2 will be released later in the year for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.