Scratch It Up
The first thing I noticed about Delicious Vinyl DJ (DVDJ) was its slick presentation. The app loads fast, the menus are well designed, and it only takes about fifteen seconds to go from the Springboard (the interface on the iPhone) to scratching a song. Very acceptable time for playing on the go.
After you tap to start the app, you arrive at the main menu that has all of your options. Most of the screen is dedicated to song selection. To change the song you’re about to play, just swipe to the left or right or tap the arrow icons. When you do, you’ll see the artwork for the song and an audio clip from it will play. Underneath the artwork thumbnail are three options: Play, Buy Song, and Visit Site. If you tap Buy Song, Safari will launch and attempt to connect you to the iTunes store, but I actually got errors as of last night when I tried this. My Safari browser returned “too many redirects” but you can obviously just take the song name and get it via iTunes on your computer. That said, I really don’t see that error as a problem or knock against the app itself. As for the Visit Site button, when you tap that, Safari takes you to the artist page on Delicious Vinyl’s website, deliciousvinyl.com. This is neat if you want to read a brief bio about the artist who created the song, but as the iPhone only runs one app at a time, it will close out the game, too.
In addition to song selection, the main menu also has a star icon in the lower left corner. Tapping this will show your
best score on Easy, Medium, and Hard for the song you currently have selected. Also, in the lower right hand corner, a question mark icon leads to a very concise, but detailed tutorial video that teaches you how to play the game. The video is high quality and runs just a couple of minutes and includes everything you need to know to get scratchin’, including tips and a gameplay demonstration. Nicely done; to this point DVDJ had all of the polish of a professional app.
I’m happy to say that the presentation of DVDJ isn’t the only thing that is impressive. The songs themselves are very good and have a high replay value to them; some more than others of course, but of the seven included songs, I really enjoy five of them. My favorite song right now is “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone-Loc. The full track list for the game at this time is:
Young MC, “Bust A Move”
Tone Loc, “Funky Cold Medina”
Tone Loc, “Wild Thing (Peaches RMX)”
The Pharcyde, “Passin’ Me By”
Masta Ace, “Born To Roll”
Mr. Vegas (feat. Pitbull & Lil’Jon), “Pull Up (Club Mix)”
Masta Ace, “Slaughtahouse (Eminem RMX)”
True, seven songs isn’t much. Each track is roughly three to four minutes in length, with only difficulty settings available to spice things up. Most people will find Easy to be a little too hands off, not requiring a great deal of interaction. Medium is very comfortable, offering a near perfect balance of interaction. The Medium setting is almost too easy though, as I was able to net an 85% or higher score within my first or second try on every song. I spent most of my time playing on Hard, which is a stout challenge. I never scored more than a 75% on any track. On Hard, expect constant interaction, requiring some very nimble fingers and devoted concentration.
So how do you play this game anyway? I only had to watch the short tutorial video once to get the hang of it, and it really couldn’t be much simpler. If you’ve seen or played DJ or Guitar Hero, you know what to expect. Colored icons fall from the top of the screen and as they pass into the bottom of the screen, you have to press a button or otherwise input a command at the instant that the icon passes through. I may have made that sound harder than it is. With DVDJ, players control their turntables with quick, short swipes. The swipes are basic and intuitive — a quarter circle swipe up or down, or quickly up and down in succession. The icons that flow on the left and right side of the screen clearly mark what motion you must match. The center column, which uses green square and circle icons, corresponds to two tap icons in between the two turntables. Comparing the two tables and this center column, I found the center column to be the more trickier one as both circle and square icons are the same color. In the heat of Hard mode, I found matching the turntable motions to be doable, but keeping up with switching between circle and square to be a lot tougher. The only change I would have been interested to see is if the square or circle icons were somehow more vibrantly distinguished.
Two other inputs are present on the screen during play as well. Along the middle left side of the screen is a small icon that represents a fader. If you swipe this icon from bottom to top, you’ll literally destroy all icons on the screen, buying yourself about two seconds of reprieve before the next set comes. You can only use this ability one time per song though, which is certainly fair. It’s a handy mechanic when you’re suddenly overwhelmed with too many icons or when you need a second to adjust the position of your phone.
The other input is the X in the upper right corner of the screen. Tapping this pauses the action and brings up “Restart Song” or “Select New Song” options. However, you cannot resume your scratch session, which I thought was odd. So once you tap X, think of it as “quit” or “exit” and not “pause.”
Other on screen elements keep you informed as to how well you’re doing. Unlike some music rhythm games, mistakes in DVDJ aren’t represented with breaks or miscues in the song — instead, you’ll see red negative numbers appear just above the bottom of the screen. Also, in the upper left, your running score is shown. Points in DVDJ are kept conveniently simple — mistakes are worth -10, while proper motions are worth +100. Doing the right moves consistently without error nets you multipliers to help boost your score.
It’s too bad that you cannot create playlists, a feature that is likely to be added in future revisions. More songs are already on the way, hopefully at very little to no cost. Given that the app itself is only $2.99, it’s hard to see them charging much if anything for additional tracks. As it stands, Delicious Vinyl DJ is an impressive release that I look forward to expanding with new tracks in the near future.