usic video games are not about playing music.

And, sincere as Activision’s celebrity shills might sound, music video games are not really about whetting anyone’s appetite for the real deal.

The irony of making this assertion today is that DJ Hero comes as close as any music game has come to acting as a primer for how the real thing works… and this mere weeks after The Beatles Rock Band‘s excellent teaching tool for singing vocal harmonies broke new ground. So, maybe the rhythm game genre isn’t played out, in its death throes, and desperately recycling its best material… it may actually be evolving and improving on a continual basis.

My immediate thought with DJ Hero is: think of the theme parties that will be had… think of the sideways New York Mets hats and the four-knuckle rings that say “RUN”… and hopefully you saved your Bulls Starter jacket from grade 8… and hopefully you aren’t expecting these gatherings to be the venerable who’s who of cute hipster girls that Guitar Hero parties were. Because those are like…. so three years ago? Note the scorn dripping from the question mark.

But who cares? Because DJ Hero is a lot of fun. It does just about everything right.

And it can also teach you cool stuff about the world. Case and point: I didn’t really understand that the real foundation of DJing is preparedness and deep knowledge of your vinyl, and that performance-wise, good command of the crossfader (the control slider on a DJ’s mixer that determines which turntable plays through the speakers) is the base of excellence—not scratching. Albiet in a small way, DJ Hero has deepened my understanding of the DJ experience (granted that understanding was kind of shallow) and how awesome it must feel for the real guys to trigger a sample, scratch a dope rhythm and then slam the crossfader over just in time to catch the chorus.

The mystique of DJing itself works in the game’s favor; everyone knows how a guitar works and what it does (and knows a guitarist who hates Guitar Hero who gets in arguments with another guitarist who loves Guitar Hero) but few will ever actually get the opportunity to play with decks and a mixer. And despite the fact there are cartoonish pictures of them spray-painted on every available brick wall in your city, you find that actual DJs are relatively rare, and some of them are weird elitist recluses. I know a lot of musicians, and have crossed paths with many others, particularly when I was living in a dorm… yet in all this time I’ve only met one guy who had turntables in his room.

But I still maintain that “inspiring people to try the real thing” is not really what DJ Hero and other music games have going for them. Hell, they’re not even about giving us a taste of the real thing.

And I’m totally tired of trying to convince cynics that Guitar Hero isn’t actually a cheap substitute for playing a real instrument. Those people often make a couple of valid points but most of their cookie-cutter complaints (one part music snobbery, one part cranky old man mentality and two parts pure misinformation) can easily be addressed and dismissed:

‘Hero’ games have never let you play the music, but they provide a framework in which for you to physically interact with the music. By attempting to perfectly mimic simplified but cleverly representative sequences of “notes” that correspond with pre-recorded riffing and shredding, you become connected, and in a way, part of the music. And there’s nothing cheap about that. Do you deride people for their lack of—whatever—when they clap their hands in time with the music at a concert? Is establishing a rhythmic mechanical bond with the music not perfectly instinctual?

In DJ Hero, instead of chords and riffs it’s scribbles, rewinds and crossfader stabs, but it still serves to create that powerful physical connection to the sounds being played, and it feels nice.

The world’s love for Karaoke, Guitar Hero and their bastard spawn, Rock Band demonstrate that being a part of a music performance with some training wheels has pretty universal appeal. Not because it’s easy, or because it’s ‘user-friendly’ and not because it panders down to the laziness of  ‘today’s youth’ in their fax machine, hula hoop and instant potatoes world. Just because it feels good.

DJ Hero’s material allows it to tap into another base pleasure too… for whatever reason, listening to remixes and mashups of popular songs makes people happy. And turntable art itself is impressive.

As a video game, DJ Hero has a learning curve—even if you’re a good gamer it’s pretty tough. It’s tame on any setting below Hard, but you won’t feel like you’re really going through the DJ motions until you crank the difficulty up that high.

But given that there’s no failing out of songs, you’ll probably jump to Hard or Expert on your first day and just fumble around until you figure it out and start getting good scores.

But careful there, music nerds… what’s fun for you won’t necessarily be fun for your dumber, less musical friends who aren’t great at video games. This isn’t really a party game, it’s still probably best enjoyed by small groups of enthusiasts.

And yes, the harder songs on Expert are a bit ridiculous, and the showing-off aspect is present in DJ Hero, that gaming staple we like to call the Joy of Pointless and Difficult Achievement. It appeals to the part of men which thinks it’s awesome when some dude makes Youtube videos of himself playing the banjo with his toes. Or which makes you spend 11 hours on one bronze trophy or 5 gamerscore points, or spend all summer looking for flat rocks to throw at the water because you know have 6 skips in you. You either understand this sort of dedication or you don’t.

Should you buy DJ Hero? If you hate hip-hop and remixes and scratching, then obviously no. But for what it’s worth, I like rock better than hip-hop and I still like the game. I actually love it. My hunch is that anyone who likes the music but doesn’t like the game, is stuck in some weird stance they’ve taken against music games, for being too… whatever. But they clearly “just don’t get it.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: DJ Hero is a music video game developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision as a rhythm game similar to Guitar Hero. It was released on October 27, 2009 in North America and on October 29, 2009 in Europe. The game is based on turntablism and features more than 80 remixes of two different songs from a selection of over 100 different songs across numerous genres. To score points, the player must press buttons to activate accented beats, adjust their crossfade between the two songs, and “scratch” the turntable on the game’s custom controller in time to marks that scroll on the screen to score points and perform well for the virtual crowd. The game features both a single player Career mode and cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes. The game also features a mode for selected songs for a DJ player to play alongside another player using a Guitar Hero guitar controller.

Many DJ and mix artists have contributed to the game both in the game’s development, the creation of mixes, and in lending their images for playable avatars in the game; these including DJ Shadow, Z-Trip, DJ AM, Cut Chemist, J.Period, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and Daft Punk.