SingStar killer or SingStar imitator?
Microsoft's take on the musical party game was developed by Japanese studio iNiS, the makers of the catchy rhythm title Elite Beat Agents, who have crafted a slick interface which is both easy to use and strikingly cool. Not to mention that it has a few nifty functions such as rating songs and creating custom playlists so that you can enjoy a game with your friends without having to sift through the dregs to get to the good tunes.
The other part of the slick Lips package is the inclusion of wireless microphones, something that Sony has been promising PlayStation 3 gamers - a promise that currently remains unfulfilled. The microphone peripherals are well crafted and pretty to boot, retaining a comfortable grip and weight that make it seem more like the real thing than a plastic videogame peripheral. Once you're in game, the microphones really show off their magic with built in LEDs that strobe and change colour in time to the music. The only downside to these bad boys is that they do not feature rechargeable batteries meaning that you'll need to keep a fresh set on standby for emergencies. We would have liked to have seen a rechargeable battery built-in so that gamers could connect their mics to the console via USB to charge - which would also allow for players to keep playing the game without any downtime for fiddling with batteries.
Slicker than your average.
When you finally take your eyes away from the pretty lights on the microphone and get into the game, you will find that it feels very similar to the singing portions of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Accompanying the music video is a pitch line which scrolls horizontally across the screen. Players are rewarded points for keeping in time to the music and hitting the correct pitch. If you warble along to the song well enough, an icon appears on screen telling you to perform an action with the microphone. By striking a pose, you will activate Star Stream - think of it as Guitar Hero's Star Power. Once activated, Star Stream will give you double points for every note that you hit. This is where the mic's built in motion detector comes into play, although simply shaking the mic rather than doing the exact move can set it off anyway. Players can also move the microphone to become a noise maker, where the act of tapping or shaking the microphone has it acting as a a tambourine or hand clap to accompany the song. Apart from making noise for the hell of it, performing this action helps players boost their Star Stream meter more rapidly than purely singing a tune would.
As well as the standard game mode, Lips also contains three mini games in an effort to freshen up the gameplay. The 'Kiss' mini game features a cutesy 2D rendered scene with two people running towards each other, where the objective is to time the movement of the microphone just right so they will smack lips. 'Vocal Fighters' is is like two divas trying to share the one stage - impossible. The aim here is to sing better than your opponent so that their stage light will dim and they will ultimately be forced off the stage. 'Time Bomb' is the most fun of the included mini games, it features a large bomb with a lit fuse. The objective here is to sing well enough to fill up a glass of water, once the glass is filled you can shake the microphone to put out the lit fuse and keep your turn from ending.
Sometimes the lyrics don't lie....
While these modes do provide some diversity into the title, they cannot make up for the game's biggest flaw - there just really isn't any incentive to sing well. Yes, you are scored on how well you belt out a tune, but at the end of the day, there is nothing for you to do with the points once you've earned them. Unlike SingStar, you can't fail a song, and as you accumulate points there are no unlockable songs or difficulty levels for you to spend them on. Essentially your points score means nothing more than bragging rights with your friends, which is ultimately disappointing when games like Rock Band have shown that music game can include a quality single-player experience to coincide with the ultimate fun of party play.
The game's track list consists of forty tracks (all of which are master tracks performed by original artists) which cover an eclectic range of artists and genres. While the sentiment is right, the problem with this approach is that it tries to appeal to too many people, and ultimately the collection of recent one-hit wonders and ho-hum oldies doesn't really appeal to anybody. The game lacks that cheesy anthem or classic hit that gets people screaming out lyrics at the top of their lungs. What is even more disappointing is that several of the title's decent tracks have been directly pilfered from the SingStar back catalogue.
Similarly, another disappointing feature of the title is something that was originally touted as one of its strong suits - the ability to upload your own music from an external device, such as your iPod, PC, or even your own existing 360 playlist. In theory this feature alone could be enough to knock SingStar off its perch, but thanks to two glaring issues, this is nothing more than a convoluted mess. Firstly, thanks to intellectual property issues, you cannot view the lyrics to any of the songs that you have loaded into the game via your own music devices. This makes for some boring and uninspired play as you'll find yourself racking up points, but not actually knowing how you are being scored. Although, this isn't much of an issue if you are one of the unlucky people that has an incompatible mp3 player, meaning that unless you happen to own a last-generation Zune or iPod, there is a slim chance of you even being able to upload your favourite tracks into the game anyway.
The final big failure of Lips is that there is no real online mode to speak of. The game's lacklustre community function allows you to post up your best scores, but it doesn't provide any functionality to use the Xbox camera to record your songs and upload silly videos ala the PlayStation 3 iteration of SingStar, nor does it allow for you to test out your vocal chords amongst other players in the Lips community.
Ultimately, there are many good features to be found in Lips, but the sloppy execution of other facets of the game means that Lips hasn't really brought anything new to the karaoke table to give gamers an incentive to go out an purchase the game. IF all you are looking for is an Xbox 360 clone of SingStar, then there are plenty of fun moments to be had with Lips. But for those of you looking for the solid single-player focus of titles such as Guitar Hero then you will be sorely disappointed.
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