DJ Hero 2

My local HMV is affectionately known as the Plastic Graveyard at the moment thanks to its full-to-bursting window display of heavily discounted, unsold, mostly Activision-published peripherals. There are ad-hoc sculptures made out of Band Hero boxes and Beatles: Rock Band guitar packs next to disarrayed stacks of justifiably neglected Tony Hawk: Ride skateboards, presumably mirroring the precarious piles of dust-gathering, obsolete guitars and drumkits in the corners of living rooms and lofts across the country.

If you wanted to pick up DJ Hero for less than half the original £90 asking price, now would be a good time. It's well worth it for the original game alone, but even if you already own it, once DJ Hero 2 comes along you may find yourself itching for an extra set of decks. Multiplayer was under-developed in the first game, limited to surprisingly tedious note-for-note face-offs, but here it's very much a headline billing.

The main event is definitely DJ Battle, a two-player mode where you trade hooks with your opponent, sometimes playing phrases alternately in a call-and-response pattern and sometimes playing slightly different versions of the track at the same time. Whoever wins a phrase gets a point, and whoever gets the most points wins the face-off and the approval of the virtual dance floor, as we discovered when we sat down to play it ahead of gamescom.

There are a few rules for successful multiplayer in rhythm-action games. Rule One: you need dedicated multiplayer modes that make your players interact with each other, not just play the same song side by side. DJ Battle amply takes care of that. All the tracks are purpose-remixed by Freestyle Games so that there's just the right amount of give and take between opposing DJs. It feels exciting and deceptively creative - the illusion of control over the music is as strong as it was in the first DJ Hero, and it's still a refreshing change from the familiar songs and chord patterns of band-based rhythm-action games.

The brilliant track selection contributes to that, obviously. Rather than Guitar Hero and Rock Band's huge long lists of Tracks You Vaguely Recognise, DJ Hero is full of ear-catching original mixes that put a brilliant new spin on music you know well. Nelly thrown together with Warren G and Nate Dogg's Regulate turns up an amusingly laid-back version of Hot In Herre, Lady Gaga's Just Dance is given some bite by Deadmau5, and there's an excellent mashup of the Chemical Brothers' Galvanize and Leave Home (which, actually, would work perfectly well as one song title). Sadly, Rihanna's Rude Boy and Iyaz's Replay don't sound any less offensive to my ears when smooshed together.

Rule Two of Rhythm-Action Multiplayer: it has to be fun across all difficulties, otherwise players at either end of the Expert/Easy scale have nobody to play with and have to sit facing the wall in the corner of the room while everybody else has fun. DJ Battle's construction caters well for this. Each player gets their time in the limelight with a song's key hooks. Because you're trading phrases, you can play on Medium against an Expert player and still win even though they've quadrupled your score; picking higher difficulty levels basically acts as a self-handicap by giving you much trickier scratching patterns to negotiate.

(Rule Three, by the way, is that wacky power-ups are cautiously welcomed, so long as they don't remove any trace element of skill from the game. It's a tricky balance. Wacky power-ups featured neither in DJ Battle nor in the more conventional Star Battle head-to-head mode, but there's no guaranteeing that some won't crop up in as-yet unannounced multiplayer attractions.)

The musical interplay, both in the mixes and between you and your opponent in DJ Battle, really is invigorating. The DJ Hero decks' Euphoria button, effects dial and sample buttons make you feel like you have far more control over the music than you actually do. It's all an illusion, as there's still no actual creation involved in the game, but there are a lot more opportunities for freestyling than there were.

As well as the red freestyle effects button from the first game (also known as the YEEEEEAAHH BOIIIII button), DJ Hero 2 incorporates freestyle scratching and crossfading. A glowing outline shows when you can just hold the green button down and scratch away, letting the game turn your movements into cool noises, and when you can flick the crossfader back and forth.

Sadly, all I managed to do was make the mix sound terrible. It turns out I'm better at following button prompts and flashing lights. It's all part of Freestyle Games' response to feedback from fans desperate to mix their own music with the DJ Hero decks, which remains a sad impossibility thanks to the almighty tangle of licensing restrictions tying up the game's music.

A couple of superficial improvements also make themselves known, most notably the menus. There's none of the rave-inspired graffiti gaudiness of the original; they're clean-cut and easier to understand and navigate, set against a stylish but slightly boring white backdrop that may or may not be a placeholder. At least you no longer have to spin the deck around and around for about 10 seconds through 30 different setlists to reach Quickplay. There are many new playable famous DJs, too, including the unmistakeable Deadmau5 (with a selection of different head masks, hopefully), David Guetta and DJ Qbert.

Freestyle Games' passion doesn't appear to have diminished over the past year. DJ Hero 2 showcases the same fastidious attention to detail as before when it comes to the look and the music, with even more creative mixes comprised of tracks by over a hundred artists. Nobody could possibly complain about such a fully-featured sequel. But in order to enjoy the most significant improvements you'll need two sets of decks - which, even when they're on display for £40 in the Plastic Graveyard, is still quite a big ask.