Reviews
The Japanese should be lauded for their cleverness. From miniaturising consumer electronics to bringing us cheap and reliable motor vehicles. On the other hand they are also responsible for inventing karaoke. It’s big business in Asia. It’s engrained in their culture and a staple pastime for the young and old and karaoke bars are a thoroughly respectable, almost regular, venue to conduct business deals while you’re in Shanghai or Tokyo. Over here in the West though, karaoke bars have traditionally been the hangouts for the hard of hearing and the morally inept. It seems a lot of men don’t mind being subjected to some drunken lass belt out “Dancing Queen” fifteen times in the one evening just to score an easy lay. For many years, I was of the opinion that singing is not something you should do if you can’t. Period. Primarily for the sake of those around you within earshot. In the past decade though with “Idol” and all those other reality TV shows, it seems that everyone should at least try to sing and thus we have embraced a karaoke evolution. It’s okay to suck because it’s fun. And let’s look at the facts, new karaoke bars are opening up all over town and Singstar (*cough* on Playstation) has sold over 13 million copies in the PAL region alone. It’s no wonder Microsoft want a piece of the lucrative pie.
Lips is the first stand-alone karaoke game on the Xbox 360 if you discount the mic offerings from GHWT and Rock Band. The first thing you notice is that it comes packaged with two wireless microphones which is a great feature unmatched by anything else at the moment. They are sturdily constructed and have a nice weight to them with flashing lights that indicate status and beat with the music. An in-built motion sensor in each mic also means that joining games is a simple shake away and adds an entire new element to your singing performance with motion-based gestures. Pairing them up to the console is a simple process but you will still need to have your controller connected to browse the menus and make song selections. The game disc comes with 40 songs covering a range of artists from Rihanna to Nirvana. The song list is a pretty decent selection of stuff from the past four decades and you have the option to download more from the online music store for 160 MS points each. At the moment however, the choice is limited to only a handful songs although Microsoft are promising to add more to their library. All songs are the original artists and most include the original music video as well. You also have the ability to add your own DRM-free songs from your music player or iPod. You won’t get lyrics however and there is no real scoring system so it’s basically a “freestyle” mode if you wish to sing along to your own songs. Note however that not all music players are compatible. My iPhone couldn’t establish a connection but my first generation iPod Nano worked fine and had my entire 4GB library up in around a minute. It’s a nice feature but the problem is that you can’t transfer them onto your console hard drive so you have to connect your music player every time you play. You do have the option to submit your song to Microsoft to petition for your favourite tunes to be added to the downloadable song list though.
The core gameplay itself is based on singing along to the lyrics on screen (overlaid on the music video) with pitch markers of where you should be hitting your notes. Get it right enough of the time will build your Star Stream meter where you will activate an on-screen pose indicator. Copy that pose with your mic and you will kick off the Star Stream mode where you accumulate more points and mutipliers for higher scores. Shaking your mic can also act as percussion instruments to add to the Star Stream meter. This motion based element adds a great new gameplay mechanic which rewards stellar performances as well as hitting the rights notes. Other rewards include Medals for achieving good rhythm, technique and consistent pitch in your singing. At the end of each song, you are given an overall rating which for some strange reason is based on the scale of astronomical bodies ranging from a measly Comet all the way to the Big Bang. There is no real punitive aspect to the gameplay though as you could sing terribly and still make it to the end of the song, albeit with a lower score and therefore advancing rank a little slower. Therefore as a single player game there isn’t much of challenge and no real incentive to play well. Played with another though either in VS mode or other games modes such as Vocal Fighters is great fun and competition soon heats up. Or team up in Co-op mode and as a party game it would be right up there with something like Rock Band and possibly with an even broader appeal as you all you need is to know how to belt out a tune, or something vaguely resembling one.
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