Reviewed: June 9, 2008
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
SCEA

Developer
SCEA London

Released: May 20, 2008
Genre: Music
Players: 1-8

7
7
9
7
7.5

Supported Features:

Being mostly tone deaf and having not taken any music classes my entire life has prepared me well for SingStar to get those nice wannabee dogs and the cute cassette tape attached with the amateur status I can usually rate. SingStar is the next iteration of the franchise for the PlayStation 3 and does the system justice for the most part; I just can’t claim the same for me.

There are some others for download from the PlayStation Network that cost about $1.50 each and include the music video for you to enjoy as you try to sing along to the words. The entire game with all the menus to navigate and even uploading your videos and audios are very easy to use and the game works very well from a technical standpoint.

SingStar is a decent enough game but can really be enjoyed with a group and not alone, alone seems too much like rehearsing or practicing for a singing gig. SingStar has the usual karaoke style of having words for each line appear on the screen and you have to sing the words when a small bar moves across the screen and hits each word. There is also a tone bar that shows where the words are supposed to be sung according to tone.

If your blue lines for each word appear above your singing too high, bring it down, too low and you need to deepen your tone. It’s actually pretty simple and with a few go practice sessions on each song you can do pretty good. It does a bit of practice figuring out what each word should be sung at and having the words up on the screen one sentence before you need to sing them is helpful.

They don’t go too far ahead so you don’t have too much on the screen to confuse you but some songs can get a bit fast so you do need to keep on your toes. In order to get good scores you need to end up better than you started, when a song starts they give you half of the points available and either give you more for good singing or take away for tone deaf bellowing.

You can choose either a shortened version of each song or the full song for a real go at pretending to be a singer, you have the thirty songs of the original game to try your luck with. The download works fine and there are some 220 songs currently on the PlayStation Network for you to purchase with each costing $1.50.

There are supposed to me more songs coming but this is not a lot of variety as most of the songs are either rock or pop with a few Rhythm and Blues, RAP and other genres. There just is not the selection I would have liked or even thought for this expensive a game but they are adding more in a variety of genres but mostly the typical karaoke fare.

SingStar offers a good selection in how to play with the single player solo and practice but the stars of the show are the battle against another person, duet and pass the mic. You can sing your hearts out playing against others in a head to head fight or try to duel by passing the mic along and getting the highest points in each song. There is also the duet where you sing duet songs and try to get a good score or you can play teams and try to beat each other’s scores.

The entire multiplayer, which is where most of the emphasis on SingStar is, has plenty of choices in how you play and with how many people so there is no worry for variety in your party gaming. You cannot however go online against others but there is a large online community of people adding their vocal talents trying to make others go deaf with their performances.

You can save audio clips, video clips and stills of your performance and upload them to the online community for others to watch, and laugh over. While this does not add much in the way of actual gameplay online it does add enough humor and fun to a game that is all about having fun and trying to make yourself look silly.

The practice portion of SingStar simply plays the video and you can listen and watch to your heart’s content to help you remember the words or just enjoy the great quality video music. Having the music video on the screen where others get to watch it while one belts out the tunes is a great way for the party game to run so others who are not actively singing at least get to watch the video.

The music video is kind of behind all this and it is quite clear that this is not the same definition while playing or watching. The videos are not in high definition but only in standard definition throughout the game regardless of when the video came out.

This is kind of disappointing but they must have a reason, the game other than this is great and even just watching the videos are a nice change of pace from listening to music. You don’t have to surf through an internet site to go see some professionally made video music and they are always on your PS3 once purchased. The graphics were nice and they did a nice job of keeping things simple and yet have everything work well.

There is a good section in the options to reduce latency if there is a problem with the vocals being off time with the video and you have a vocal reduction. The vocal reduction is a great feature that either has the singer’s voice coming through strong and clear, is fainter so your voice comes out clear, even if you don’t want it to. The reduction also lets the singer’s voice fade out when you actually are hitting the words and tone correctly.

They did a great job with SingStar of getting that correct balance of a great group karaoke game and plenty of different multiplayer fun in a music game.

The game has plenty of sections in multiplayer from duet and the battle section as well as the pass the microphone for a good variety of multiplayer gaming. You also have the fun and added goofy uploading of your own videos to the website to compare and contrast your style and talent with others.

After all where can you so easily immortalize yourself and your talents, or lack thereof, or check out the singing Storm Troopers and Chewbacca or the great duet of singing hamburgers. I really think this game should be used as a qualifier for American Idol as well as a fun game for parties.