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Horrible song selection

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I could understand Guitar Hero and Rock Band not having any non Rock & Roll songs. But SingStar has no excuse with this kind of song selection since it is being marketed as a Karaoke Game.

No Motown, no classics, just bunch of songs that the guitar hero and rock band demographics might be familiar with.

Great Game But Too Few & So So Songs Included.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I agree with the positive reviews here and the Mics do work well. My only beef is too few songs included at 30 and most of them were very so-so low on list for me. I had to spend $20.00 for another 13 songs or so to make the singing interesting to me.
They could also charge $.99 for the songs instead of $1.49 as well.

Song selection is awful

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: July 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Firstly, I must say that the game itself is great. Hugely entertaining and fun to play. The major problem with it is lack of songs - or rather, lack of good songs.. The bundle itself comes with 30 songs, which, even if I liked all of them (which I don't) wouldn't last me more than a couple of hours of play time. After an hour or so, my husband and I exhausted all the included songs, so we signed online to download more. Out of over 200 songs, there were only about 20 he and I had ever even heard of, and of those, we liked less than 10. I am actually shocked by how poor the song selection is - no current pop artists (Christina, Justin) or R&B (Beyonce, Ciara) or popular bands (Maroon 5, Dave Matthews) - no Sting, John Mayer, Phil Colins, BeeGees, Black Eyed Peas, Norah Jones.. no Country music to speak of... and yet hundreds of songs by unknown artists? I've retired the game until a proper song selection is made available.

Another problem is the difference in volume between songs. One selection is barely audible and the next one is blowing out your ear drums, so you basically have to reset background and mic volume levels everytime you change songs.

I would suggest checking out the song selection online first. If you can find atleast 40 songs you'd be willing to spend $1.50 on, go ahead and buy the game. If not, I would wait.

No On-Line Playability Whatsoever - Don't Waste Your Money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: July 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

WARNING - ALTHOUGH THIS GAME ALLOWS THE SHARING OF RECORDED PERFORMANCES, IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO PLAY LIVE WITH OTHER USERS OVER THE INTERNET.

This is a disclaimer that should, but deceptively is not, on the packaging for Singstar.

The concept is great, and I waited patiently for this game to finally make its debut. Only 30 sings? Well, OK, I thought. I can better customize my own catalog that way. So I bought a couple of songs. It was all downhill from there.

I have always enjoyed karaoke, and this game does a great job with that, because it actually lets you know how well you're doing. That's the only good thing I can say for it.

One of the first songs I bought was "American Pie," a great sing-along song in my opinion, to which I already knew all the words. Unfortunately, after paying my $1.49 plus tax, the song faded out and ended about halfway through. Very annoying, and unexplained.

I am a fan of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and although the graphics in those games are a bit cartoonish and silly, the music videos in this game do not make up for what those games offer that Singstar does not. Rock Band and Guitar Hero have career modes, where you have to play songs and, in the case of Rock Band, set lists, in order to advance, always subject to increasing difficulty. It keeps the game interesting and challenging, especially with more than one player. Singstar has none of this. You sing the song, you check your scores. That's it. No story line, no plot. Nothing. A high score list, I guess. Big deal. Once you sing a song, there is NO reason to ever play it again, and with 30 songs, some of which you won't like (because no one would ever like the same 30 songs as another person), it gets old really, really fast.

So, I thought, the off-line play got played-out quicker than I had hoped. I shrugged a bit and decided to check out on-line play. Other games have interactive competition with other players, or cooperative play (I don't just limit this to Rock Band - Grand Theft Auto, Resistance, and MLB: The Show all have these modes, and that's just to name a few). Singstar, however, has none of this. After having my PS3 freeze for minutes at a time while I attempted to access the on-line aspect of the game, I found user galleries...and that was all. You can't play with, or against anyone not on the same system.

This game just doesn't try. It would be great for a karaoke party if you wanted to invest a couple hundred dollars to really build a great catalog of song choices. Or for the money you could actually get real karaoke equipment.

After half a night playing around with this game, I had tested just about every aspect - all one of them. This is a one-dimensional rip-off. I can't understand how anyone could give this a good review.

The failure of Sony to include songs and song packs released in Europe, where the game has been on the market with various types of included and downloadable music - is frustrating, but a minor annoyance compared to the complete lack of any sort of on-line playability.

Today's video game market is all about the ability to be interactive. The Internet is a huge part of the life of just about anyone who would buy a modern video game console. Singstar's makers pretend otherwise, when the ability to play a music-themed game with others around the world has become commonplace.

My best experience with this game was that I was able to talk a retailer into giving me a complete refund of the purchase price, due to the freezes while attempting to access the pathetic on-line galleries. You may not be so lucky. Do not, under any circumstances, buy this game.

Great product!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is great fun! I have spent many hours with friends and family trying to become singing stars. I haven't found any cons at this time, but there is one thing you will not be able to avoid. If you have always thought you could sing, but maybe you really can't and your friends won't or can't tell you the truth...you may or may not want to purchase this item because it will not pull any punches. Your delusions of becoming the next American Idol could end in a matter of moments!!!

Kudos to PS3

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I would have rated this game a five but for two things.The first being the fact that I received the bundle with a faulty Mic set, the other being that the songs given on the Singstore needs to have more variety in terms of Genre and Billboard hits on a weekly basis.OIther than this the game is a lot of fun especially when gathered with friends and family. I can guarantee any fun loving family will love this game and will sing the night away.My first night playing this and the enjoyment my family had has made the game worth every cent.

Terrific party game with one or two areas for improvement

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Well, FINALLY, Sony has seen fit to release SingStar PS3 in the US. Lord know why it was delayed so, since it's been up and running across the pond for many months. But it's here, and the short review is, it is good.

On the plus side:

-The interface is slick. It is generally pretty easy to find and play the songs you like. The microphones are very nice, although they are wired. But it's not a huge dealbreaker, since it would just be another thing to charge. In a nice move, previous PS2 mics are still compatible, so if you have those, you're not forced to upgrade a la Guitar Hero.

-Anyone who enjoys singing will generally enjoy this game. I partake of 'live' karaoke myself, and this game is both good practice as well as a great party ice breaker.

-The battle and 'pass the mic' modes are great fun. There are multiple challenges such as 'micro-medley', first to 5000 points, etc., which spin through your tracks and alternate players. It's a great way to get 8 people rocking on two mics, and a good party game.

-PSEye integration is neat. It really adds to the online segment of the game, since it involves hundreds of people posting silly videos of themselves online for others to chuckle at. If you have't seen a pair of 5 year-olds sing "Toxic" yet, you haven't seen entertainment.

-The SingStore is a great way to let people pick and choose their content, instead of booster discs which may not have all you like. $1.49 is a good price for a full song with a music video, better than competing games and better than services like iTunes.

On the minus side:

-The difficulty levels are a bit wonky and imprecise. "Easy" will allow you to be a full note up or down and still score you along the score bar "line." Not the best way to help people tune up. If you switch to "hard," the game is much less forgiving and will dock points when you are sharp or flat. This is a good thing... but where is Medium? As best I can tell, Medium is exactly the same as Easy. Pitch doesn't count for much. Maybe it demands better rhythm? Clearer delineation between difficulty levels would be nice.

-Download speeds are stupid-slow. a 60mb video should not take 30 minutes to download - especially when I can download a 100mb game from the Playstation store in less than 5! Also, this sluggish server issue permeates user videos as well.

-Some of the menu navigation choices are irritating. Why do I have to press triangle to change the name of the singer? Does the d-pad not work? Some of the menu transitions are less than intuitive.

-Volume levels fluctuate. I'll crank up a song to hear the vocal line, then when it is over, I am blasted out by the menu's generic techno music. Seriously, just level it out, it can't be that hard.

-Bizarre "line" choices, inaccurate lines. On some songs with multiple vocal parts, the "line" will switch seemingly at random from melody to harmony, and then back again. Very difficult to follow logically, especially without a space to breathe in.

Needed improvements:

-Online leaderboards with video clips. Instead of a random mish-mash of videos, how about leaderboards for each song? That way, we can search by song, and then search both by singstar score and by user ratings.

-"Real" duets. In a song with legitimate melody and harmony parts, can we please have one mic cover melody, and the other harmony?

-"Real" karaoke tracks. While I think the presence of the original videos is cool and a great way to appreciate music (especially from those wacky 80s), the karaoke singer in me would like to have real karaoke tracks that are mastered without vocals, to really give me the option to practice for the "real world."

-Song choice. I realize that different regions have different rights agreements or whatever. But why the heck isn't every track sold for the US-region PS2 games on the SingStore? Doesn't Sony already have the rights for these songs, not to mention that they already have the songs programmed for the game? Also, there are several popular genres which are WAY underrepresented. Country? Motown? Disco? Classic Rock from the 60s and 70s? We need some Doors, people...

*************
Overall, this is a very fun game with a lot of appeal, especially for more "casual" gamers. My girlfriend has played more of this than any other game I own. It is fun, accessible, and has great long-term legs with the SingStore and user generated content.

If they iron out a few technical points and get a really robust song list online, this game will get played for years by me and I am sure tens of thousands more. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys singing, anyone who wants a party game that takes less hand eye coordination than Guitar Hero, and any pop music fan.

An Ace of a social game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game builds on top of the previous generation for the PS2, with better graphics, video, camera capabilities and online support. Some improvements could include wireless mics and better selection of songs out of the box.

My favorite addition is being able to purchase songs online so that you don't have to pay for a lot of songs that you don't want as opposed to buying genre based titles as it's predecessor had you do.

Overall a great and fun gaming experience for a family or a party.

Pretty cool

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Basically a vocal version of Guitar Hero. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. I'm not sure why they made 2 versions(US and UK). The UK version has some songs the US version doesn't and the reverse is true. If you connect to a modem you can download songs, they are gradually adding new ones so I think it will even out eventually. I find it really worth buying, especially if you have the playstation eye.

The single best karaoke game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Singstar is an excellent party game, since it can split any song up into a duet, and there's a battle mode too. The original music videos (or montages for songs that have no existing videos) play as you sing, so it's fun to watch even when not playing. They are mostly presented in grainy standard-definition, but still fun to watch.

The online features, besides the very well-organized store (which lets you download songs in the background as you play), are extremely nice for a PS3 game. In-game messaging and friends list notifications are just the tip of the iceberg. Recording and sharing your performances using the PS2 or PS3 Eyetoy are where it's at.

For singing, this game is much better than Rock Band. The song doesn't end if you sing poorly, so anybody can sing just to have fun. The selection of songs includes non-rock music too. Dual microphones makes for great singing scenarios. Non-gamers will appreciate music videos more than Rock Band's 3D concert performances as well.

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