Just when you thought it was safe to pack your neglected DJ Hero deck up in the box and hurl it in the loft, the sequel’s been officially announced. More of the same, largely. Of course, there are all-new tracks – over 70, in fact - comprised of mashups courtesy of the likes of Dr. Dre, Kanye West, Lady Gaga and the Chemical Brothers.

If only all clubs were like this

But the musical repertoire, we’ve found, is really the least of many DJ Hero players’ concerns, fallen as it has so often into the world of hardcore score-chasing. Those fast-fingered types won’t be disappointed with the sequel, it seems, with new features making a genuine difference to the nuts and bolts gameplay of any given track.

Freestyle scratching and fading are the most glaring new additions to proceedings. With segments cropping up fairly often in each song to allow one or both of these events, the scratching manifests as a section that allows any style or rhythm of scratching you like, but with vaguely delineated markings to help you, if followed loosely, to make something that sounds the part.

Fading works in a similar way, enabling you to fade or crossfade at will at certain points, again racking up extra points, and further muddying the high score-centric concepts of success and failure. At the same time, while the more intense partygoers might be huddled in the corner scratching their night away, there’s a little extra here, in the manner of last year’s playalong guitar tracks (not confirmed for this iteration, but we presume it’s coming), in the form of added vocals.

I love it!

From what we’ve seen, these are added in a refreshingly unobtrusive way, creeping in at points in the song that are non-crucial to the concentration of the DJ, and adding a flavour and mood to the experience rather than, as we’d feared, hacking everybody off as the vocalist bawls over the top of the elegant mixes.

In relation to these new vocal elements, personal sampling is also, apparently, going to be available. Providing your own sound bites seems an amusing concept in itself, but should also raise interest in long play sessions, removing the repetition of constant cries of “Yeah, boyeeeeee” by those too lazy to change the sample loadout.

Finally, multiplayer’s been given a veritable competitive overhaul, now feeling far more like a one-on-one duel between two DJs as they gain the new abilities to steal rewinds from one another as well as one player now being able to freeze the other’s progress in the song during their own rewind, stopping them scoring any more points until the rewind’s over and both are back at the same point in the track.

More news as we grab some definitive hands-on in coming months, but keep hold of those decks for now – it looks like it’s going to be worth it.