User Review : SingStar

Grab a drink, then grab a mic, in that order.

I didn’t really know where to start on a review of this ‘game’, so I’ll skip any witty comments or anecdotes and move straight on to a description of what Singstar is all about. The game basically turns your Playstation 3 into a karaoke machine, a pretty good one at that. But if you’re expecting anything more from this then you will surely be disappointed.

For anyone new to Singstar, the experience is relatively easy to grasp. The game comes packaged with two microphones, though at this stage they are the old style Playstation 2 wired mics. And the disk comes with 30 pre-loaded songs, with a variety available for download of the Singstore. You then load up your favourite song, pick up a mic and get singing. In fact, you sing along with the original artists, the music video plays in the background, with the lyrics along the bottom of the screen.

Now you’re not just doing this to satisfy your karaoke fetish (or perhaps you are), there is a scoring system available here. You are judged on your ability to hit the correct tones at the right times. Note you don’t actually have to speak the right lyrics, you could if you so wished just hum and get a great score, although some might consider this cheating. The score goes up as you hit the right notes; there are also special notes, which give you extra points. And the end of the song you get a score, a grade and some rather embarrassing playback options. These include audio playback, and if you have a PS Eye, still pictures and a 30 second video clip of your performance. I have never yet managed to sit through a whole audio playback, though if you are so inclined there are also ways to distort your voice. If you really want to torture yourself (or others), then all these clips and videos can be saved, for viewing later.

The games online element is the feature that sets it apart from the Playstation 2 versions. This comes in two areas. A store where you can purchase additional songs, and a ‘my Singstar’ area, where you are able to post you video, audio performances as well as any photos, for the viewing of the wider Singstar community. The interface is slick, works well and you are also able easily view other users postings. Back to the store, we can describe this as a rather mixed bag. The number of songs available is limited, over 300 were meant to be available at launch, however about 50 were up with it taking about a whole month for some more, rather small updates. It’s starting to take a better shape now with an extra 67 songs coming on the 7th March. Every song is reasonably priced at 99p and they don’t take long to download.

The star of the show, ahem, however is the multi-player, especially during social occasions, which usually involve the consumption of alcohol. Please be aware that Paul_war supports responsible drinking, however it is friends and drink that maximise the fun of this game. This game can be a pre-outing event, or even the main event itself, lasting many happy hours into the morning, until everyone has eventually drifted off.

The audio of this is good, as you may expect and hope that it is. The disk comes with a reasonable selection of songs on it; the menu music varies on what theme you select for the game and are all fit for purpose. The songs themselves also sound very nice and certainly won’t embarrass your speakers.

This game isn’t so strong on its looks, but then again it’s not really meant to be its main feature. The menus are all very sleek and stylish, it’s very easy to navigate around and it looks good while you’re doing it. The main problem comes that, to date, none of the music videos are actually in high-definition. Don’t get me wrong, they still look alright, though; I was hoping to see some of my favourite bands in HD while I was murdering their music.