Maybe it's just the music snob/college-trained musician in me, but I've never been able to get behind the Guitar Hero/Rock Band series of enormously popular video games. The idea of simulating hair metal shredding and classic rock riffing on plastic buttons just doesn't get me going. And its not like I'm not into gaming either. I'll be one of the millions of almost 30-something grown-ass men snatching up Madden 2010, and subsequently, playing a whole season in two days after it drops in less than a month.
All music snobberation aside, I think I'm gonna have to cop Activision's highly anticipated DJ Hero when it's released this fall. The 1's and 2's simulating cousin of Guitar Hero will feature a turntable controller whose game integration encourages learning DJ techniques. Of course scratching, blending, sampling, and cross-fading on a hard plastic controller, versus rocking a set on a pair of 1200s is a whole different ballgame from a feel standpoint. But these techniques are equally related to the abstract idea of time as they are to the physical medium that they're executed on. If Activision's controllers are intuitively crafted, a good DJ Hero player whose never touched real decks would be encouraged to try their hand at the real thing. I'll have to get my hands on DJ Hero to be sure though.
Other features to get geeked for are: 100 individual songs, highlighted in over 80 new genre-blending mixes and the ability to man the decks as the likeness of turntable legends DJ Jazzy Jeff, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Shadow, DJ Z-Trip, and DJ AM.
Read more about DJ Hero at djhero.com.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment