SingStar Take That & Motown Review - PS3

8

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8
Audio: 9
Multiplayer: 7
Innovation: 6

Introduction

Sony’s very own London Studio has been developing games for Playstation consoles since 1993, with the karaoke SingStar games being their largest and seemingly most popular series. They’ve released many expansions for the original SingStar game over the years, and were quick to get the series onto the PS3 almost as soon as it was available. SingStar Take That & Motown are the latest expansions for both the PS2 and PS3 versions of the game, and I’ll be reviewing them together as they are by nature extremely similar.

Gameplay

Being a karaoke series, the gameplay is of course based on the players singing. The game comes with a bundle of two wireless microphones, or two wired ones if you buy the PS2 version. By singing into the microphone, players interact with the game in the sense that their performance is constantly being monitored by the game software so as to compare them to what it considers to be the ideal pitch and tone for each part of a given song.  Players are given a guide as to how they are faring during a song in realtime thanks to a performance display which takes the form of bars displayed across the screen in varying heights and sizes. Higher bars represent parts of the song which should be sung in a higher pitch, while longer ones indicate the length of time each syllable of a lyric should be sung for. Speaking of lyrics, they are displayed line by line at the bottom of the screen at all times, so players always know what the next line is before they sing it.

Meanwhile, as players sing a song, most of the screen is taken up by the associated music video which is constantly playing with the performance display appearing on top of part of it. Being able to watch the original performer(s) while you sing certainly makes things a lot more interesting, and they are all the full length versions. Not all songs have an official music video however, with those that do not having a video montage. Players are given the choice between both a long and short version of most songs, which can be selected from the menu before starting to sing. Short versions are handy for practicing the timing and pitch of songs, as well as helping to keep a faster flow to the game in a party environment, as by nature this is a party game.

While Take That & Motown are expansions for the original SingStar game, they can also be played as stand-alone titles as long as players have the required microphones. Each expansion simply adds its own library of songs to the list, and each disc can be swapped with another at any time on the menu screen in order to change the selection of songs on offer. In addition to the expansions adding songs, the PS3 versions also have the unique feature of accessing the SingStore. The SingStore acts as an online marketplace where players can choose from hundreds ...