Reviewed: November 8, 2008
Reviewed by: Arend Hart
Publisher
Disney Interactive Studios
Developer
Zoe Mode
Released: October 21, 2008
Genre: Music
Players: 1-8
7
7
8
8
7.5
Supported Features:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
When our esteemed editor suggested that I – as a father of three children – would be the best equipped staff member to handle Disney Sing It, a Disney-themed karaoke game, I got a bit giddy. The very though of having a karaoke title filled with classic Disney show tunes and musical numbers left me dreaming of Holiday break, with the family snuggled around a warm fire, passing the microphone around to sing tunes like “Whistle While We Work” or “Bear Necessities”. When the package finally arrived in the mail, my warm family dreams were shattered.
I guess I should have done my homework before agreeing, because as a family of loyal Nickelodeon watchers – we have been completely oblivious to the world of Disney music. I mean, we had witnessed (and laughed at) the frenzied Hannah Montana moms begging for $1000 seats for their daughters, and had heard of the dreamy Jonas Brothers – but who knew that Disney took this whole music thing so seriously?
Then I remembered that acts like Brittney Spears, Justin Timberlake, the Backstreet Boys and many, many more had been churned out of the Disney music factory – it all began to make sense.
Disney Sing It! Has absolutely nothing to do with their illustrious history of classic animated films and live action musicals, and everything to do with the latest wave of teeny-bopper phenoms like the aforementioned Hannah Montana / Miley Cyrus (apparently they are one person) and Jonas brothers, as well as a number of other teenage acts like the Aly and AJ, The Cheetah Girls, Jesse McCartney, and Corbin Bleu. And to make the kiddies even happier – Sing It! features a bevy of songs sung by the casts of both High School Musical and Camp Rock. Not to leave the moms behind, the game features a ballad by the newly re-handsomed Billy Ray Cyrus (father of the beloved Miley).
Let me first say that this music is not my preferred choice of tunes to be singing to. In fact, nobody in my family – including my 8yr old daughter – had heard any of these songs previously.
We started with the game’s opening song – Aly and AJ’s “Like Whoa” – which has an fairly cool guitar riff and electronic backbeat. The gameplay is nearly identical to any other karaoke title – measuring the singer’s pitch and duration from of the included USB microphone and grading based on the match to the song. The judging is definitely looser that you find in the Karaoke Revolution family – most likely due to the young target audience.
My daughter quickly became a fan of “Like Whoa,” playing it ad infinitum, until she really mastered the score. We scoured through the 35-song set list, and found a couple of tunes that really stood out – most namely The Cheetah Girls “One World” and, well…that’s pretty much it.
The songs are delivered superimposed over the actual music videos from the Disney Channel, which will probably be the biggest draw for fans of the music for whom owning this disc will be like having an interactive DVD of all of their favorite Disney bands.
Choosing different difficulty levels basically results in different degrees of HUD the gamer will receive during gameplay – easier modes will give items like onscreen pitch clues and lyrics for current and upcoming verses, whereas harder difficulties will remove the upcoming lyrics, onscreen pitch clues, and eventually all overlays – forcing the gamer to sing without a net (but always with along with the video).
It was a bit disappointing that while the menu screens show in true HD widescreen, most of the music videos show in upscaled SD, and often only in a 4:3 inset. The quality is very inconsistent, with some videos looking crystal clear 16:9 (yet definitely upscaled), whereas other are grainy and pixilated – looking like a mid-quality YouTube video.
Thankfully for us (or maybe more for Disney) my daughter had a gaggle of friends over – and Disney’s Sing It was the hit of the day. Those girls swooned and crooned with the likes of Miley and High School Musical, for hours on end. When I asked them for their thoughts – they all agreed (in no uncertain terms) that it was their “favorite game ever made”. My daughter just smiled.
More so than pretty much any other game on the market – Disney’s Sing It has a very particular target audience, and any of those gamers are not reading this review. If you are a parent of a child who is infatuated with High School Musical or any of the other Disney acts, and you really want to be on your kid’s (or kids’) favorites list – then wrap up Disney’s Sing It and pop it under the tree (or the appropriate holiday gift place).