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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.

Karaoke Revolution is MUCH more fun

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: June 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

From all of the hype this product got, I was actually quite disappointed. The number of songs to select was not that great. You can get more, but that requires purchasing them. I was hoping for a wider variety of songs for the older and younger crowds ... but they seem to only focus (or mainly focus) on younger people - teens. This means people who are older will probably not be as familiar with the songs.

I'm sure this game could get better ... once they include a wider variety of songs. Until that happens, my experience was quite bland. I'm sure some will enjoy it ... but I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Karaoke Revolutions 1, 2 and 3.

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.

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, lacking good songs

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: May 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The is great! Love the fact that you can do the karaoke thing on the ps3. Only thing that dissapoints is the song selection. I mean, there are good songs on the 80's and little on the 90's. But the rest of the selection.... Are of bands you never ever heard of in life and the songs are really boring or not great to sing for .

Here's the punch line, these (unknown bands) are what mostly populate the singstore song titles, I mean... who is going to spend $$ on those songs!!
THey need to get better selection soon or this game is just a gimmick that is going to die fast without content.

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.

Just get it...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am really picky about my games. I only own one COD4, greatest game ever. I also loved Uncharted Drake's Fortune, but I rented it. Both games are 10's in my opinion.

I have played them all including Rainbow Six 2, Assasin's Creed, GTA4 all are subpar 7 ratings and below. This singstar game I'd rank an 8. Could be a 9 with a better playlist. With online battling it would be a 10. There is so much multimedia features in this game you will definitly get your fun and $ out of this game.

They really should sell the game with a blank playlist give them a song allowance, and get the fans into the habit of buying songs from the Singstore. I don't care too much about the online battling. I'm such a closet singer I'd be embarrased there as well.

Downsides: Playlist, Better track of scores for each song you complete, leveling system would increase the fun.

Everything else is a fantastic strength. People that are complaining about mics, volume, etc, are beyond nitpicking and it's unfair and unwarranted.

Good game, not great songs

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The game itself is very good. It is easy to understand, and pretty fun the play. The song list isn't as good as I initially thought. Many of the songs really aren't good for karaoke and most of them are by male artists.

I have not yet purchased any additional songs for $1.50 each.

Very entertaining

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Will supplement to what other reviewer's have said. Bought this for my wife. I have Rock band. Never owned a SingStar title before. If you like Karaoke this is the game for you. Much more difficult than the Rock Band vocals part, especially rapping which is tough. Resolution of videos varies from artist to artist, depending on resolution on which it was recorded originally (thus older videos or indie bands will have lesser resolution videos). Game with bundle brings 30 songs from different genres. Each additional song on the online store is $1.49. For those of you that are multilingual you can have access to some songs (limited still) in your language by switching languange. Right now the store has about 250 something songs (excluding the multilingual thing I said) with some known bands and some I have never heard off. Adding the PS Eye adds another dimension to the game. You can record audio only and video tracks and export them to a media stick. The online features are also very interesting. Quality of music is very good. Some people have complained of the volume of the vocal tracks, which I don't find so distracting. I seem to get more distracted by the videos (especially the Blink 182 video, which in some parts i just burst out laughing.) I liked the vocals for Rock Band more but I have only played Sing Star this twice. I think its a great party game provided your guests know some of the songs. I have heard that they will bring some new songs every so often on the store. Rock Band owners: Very little overlap in the songs in Rock Band and Sing Star!

It's worth the money

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I really like the original music video. It's only $50 and worth the money. Thinking about buying eyetoy for it. It's fun!

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