EDIT/DISCLAIMER:
Please don't bw offended by my strong words, sometimes my word choice is poor due to large amounts of stress and fatigue, but I try. :)
Usually, I will just change a review if I made some errors, but in this case, I'm not because in some ways they were intentional, if you want to call them errors. YES, this game is merely overseen and distributed by Konami, I am fully aware of this, and I am more than a little irritated that people would assume I don't know this when I have stated I've followed the series since its inception and am fully aware of the Japanese games that these are based off of, which I also stated in the review. Also, let it be know that I am NOT bashing people for liking SingStar (as a disgruntled person seemed to have thought), but I am merely stating my personal distaste for it as a singer. I still also feel that all the companies (if you understand the dynamics of marketing and product design and such it makes sense) that essentially these games are all targeted to a similar crowd, copy off one another, and are competing for your attention, this is the way of the market and especially with games, denying this fact is like ignorant because it is especially easy to see trends like this in food and fast food especially (vanilla coke and pepsi anyone?). If you own a particular console, that company wants to cater to you and will do what it takes to insure you keep buying their games, that's the way of the market. So, with this in mind, enjoy the review. :)
REVIEW:
I tried to make this review as detailed as possible, I will probably come back and revise it as I play the game more! :)
Once SingStar started being released here, people started forgetting all about Karaoke Revolution and that it is the ORIGINAL singing game (from Japan) that the British ripped off and the shipped here known as "Singstar", I'm not gonna lie, I feel SingStar is very boring because who wants to sing along with the original artist, I like to turn the vocals off, it is karaoke after all and NOT the radio or MTV. Okay, now that I've vented...
I will be honest up front, in terms of where this ranks in the series, this is probably, for me a 4 star game, it is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY above the last two American Idol games which were just rehashes of the first one which was fun and inventive, but it is still behind the original and "Karaoke Party" or "3" or even "Country". I own them all except #2 because I found that one to be very boring, but had some good songs, it was just a rehash of the first one with couple new venues and "Encore 2" was, as Simon would say, "Abysmal".
I disagree that this game offers nothing new, it does, or at least revamped features. The old scoring system to my dismay was not re-instituted, but actually, this is what I found for me gave it the most re-playability. The scoring on the games on the PS games up to "Encore 2" used the a score meter and a maximum of 50,000 points that you can get. They through out a good system and brought in a crap one starting with the XBOX version of "Encore", the scoring was way, way, way too easy for me and I hated it. So, when I stated playing this game, this was a very big thing for me personally, and although the old score system is still gone the new one is almost as pitch-sensitive as the original game. I don't like that fact that you cannot lose on one hand because it gives you little incentive to keep playing if you always "win", but at the same time it is nice if you are playing with people who do not sing so well. Also, they take a bit from the score system on "Rock Band" and actually improve upon it. I often get annoyed by the star power thing on "Rock Band" because it goes down NO MATTER WHAT. In KR it rather goes down ONLY when you are actually singing and it also makes your score multiplier go up faster and so I enjoy that part much better than "Rock Band's" scoring, but I still enjoy the original score system better on KR.
As for the character design, I am sorely missing the funny and inventive costumes that littled all the other PS3 games (besides Encore), like the cat costume, mic costume,bathrobe, ect. Instead of the cartoonish character look we get a more realistic look similar to that of "Encore 2", but it looks a 1,000x's better AND you can pretty much customize everything on your character from their teeth to their ear shape, weight, age, eye color, nose shape, jaw shape, and a lot more!!! I enjoy this feature of the game, it really makes it fun in that way to see what kind of characters you can create.
The venues are more fun and less fun at the same. They barrow from SingStar a bit and you can put screens in any of the venues to view music videos for songs that have music videos. In this game, you can design the venues yourself and change the stage and background ect. So far, from what I could tell in the game you can only unlock new venue items and not songs, which is a major let down, that's one of the reasons I enjoyed the old games... However, it is still fun to see what you can come up with when you design your own venues. :)
Now, as for the songs, they are probably, okay, A LOT more varied than in past games. Usually, in the past, the game relied heavily upon having primarily pop songs or songs of others genres that were still just pop songs, but although its still essentially the same, the uniformity that was in the song selection of games like "Party" and the original "American Idol" are just not here, so I can see why other people may not enjoy the song selection, but I myself found it refreshing after getting past some of the odd song choices like "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab for Cutie and the 5 Spanish songs and the host of Jackson 5 songs which I assume is a tribute to the dead King of Pop.
I really feel what Konami was trying to do with the song selection was give everyone something they liked, which is good for playing in a group, but not so much for playing alone sometimes. The spanish songs I am assuming were added to appeal to the growing Latino population in the US, which in my opinion was a SMART move by Konami as no one else has done that yet in the US; this is made even more obvious to me by the bilingual box and instructions. They are really searching for a new niche, and I get the feeling it will take a few games for them to get it, I just pray they get to make a few more games.
The songs in the game are also a lot more mature than in previous games. Because all the songs are by the original artist (except the old downloadable tracks, they haven't made any new downloads available yet), the original words are there so this is no longer a family appropriate game like the old games. The only games tried to keep family friendly songs as well as clean up any songs that weren't, and I am certain this is part of what kills the uniformity in the song selection as well. I certainly wouldn't want my children singing "Beautiful", "Just Dance", or "Beautiful", but for me to enjoy or older teens, its no big deal.
I am really hoping they open up new downloads soon because I think that will really help with the replay value. I have downloaded many of the songs from the older games already, but I want to see the new stuff!!!
As for a comment made on no true duets... THERE ARE. There are just only 5 of them as of yet, my guess is that when they bring out the downloadables, it will expand, but there are a few duets, I know, because I sang them with my friend. "American Boy", "Solid", and "Beautiful" are a couple of the duets among a couple others. So, I would say wait and see what comes in to download in the near future, I personally am mad there are not already downloads (other than old stuff), the game has been out for two weeks!!!
The Career Mode in this game, I must admit is sorely lacking because it is a lot like "DDR Supernova" or "Exteme 2's" career modes. Shame on you Konami for being lazy here, you really need to come up with something more innovative!!! I know you can!!! My suggestion is to create an actual game mode where you sing battles and against a computer kind of like an RPG, or at least bring back the fun mini games!!! Seriously though, there is so much that hasn't been tapped in to here it is crazy!!! Get off your butts and create, I know you can because the Japanese games are insanely creative!!! Come on!!! Okay, done ranting...
One last bit, I do like the fact that you can due several songs without out even knowing what they are, for me, that has increased the replay value more than anything else. :)
I may be in the minority on this one, but I feel that Konami really redeemed themselves after the mishap of "Rock Revolution" (Its even more sad know that the other companies stole the technology from Konami/Benami) and the last couple games being totally lazy, it DOES save the series, but just barely. If the game gets some really good down-loadable songs it'll be even better, but I know Konami can do better, it was better in terms of game play but in terms of fun, it definitely has lost some points. I give it a five on Amazon because I am being generous, but in reality I give it a 4 star rating.
God Bless ~Amy
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