Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol
The chocolate/peanut butter combo finally comes to fruition, but not without taking some lumps.
Published: January 6, 2007
If you check out one of the reviews aggregate sites like MetaCritic to see how games are scored before you rush out and pick up a copy (and I certainly hope you do unless we say otherwise), you'll probably see a lot of reviews for KRPAI starting the same way: with the forehead-slapping realization that this was a dream match-up of licenses and existing franchises. It doesn't usually happen that way; successful franchises keep to their corner and licensed games get pumped out of that crap factory where all bad games go to die and reincarnate themselves as the next hop-n-bop platformer.
KRPAI -- or as we like to scream it randomly around the office before tourneys break out "kuuurrrrpaiiii!" -- is different. The injection of the American Idol license, while still not a right and proper integration of the concepts, actually betters the game design that was starting to get a little stale. With the entrance of Simon and Randy comes the exodus of longtime series developer Harmonix Music Systems, who are currently bathing in piles of cash after being bought by MTV Games. In their stead, UK-based Blitz Games (who actually worked on the AI license for Codemasters) have stepped in to handle programming duties.
If one were to take a passing glance at the games running side by side, it's entirely possible that you wouldn't be able to tell them apart save for all the American Idol logos everywhere, and that's because Harmonix and Konami built for themselves a simple mechanic and clean interface for it. Though I have no idea how much of the original assets were shared (the venues from Karaoke Revolution Party are back, including the ones that reference Harmonix), it's not difficult to replicate a series of lines with a little arrow that bobs up and down according to the pitch you're blasting into the mic, and so the core gameplay remains unchanged.
What has changed is the window dressing. The AI influence is everywhere, from menus to unlockable videos to music to little video transitions between songs. It's also taken over the main single-player mode, giving you an actual reason beyond just unlocking songs to want to play through the 40 or so tracks thrown into the game this time around. See, you are the next American Idol -- provided you want to be and you can belt out tunes to the satisfaction of Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and... uh, the unimonikered Laura (Paula opted out, and was replaced by a clone, apparently). In contests ranging from eight to 18 songs, you'll square off against randomly generated characters (that you don't see perform), at at the end of each, the "audience" will vote for you, with votes becoming tougher to come by as the performance goes on.
The judges are easily the biggest change to the game, as they actually will grade the entire performance and then list certain things you need to work on or did well. It's all fairly nebulous ("your pitch was off," "you started strong but buckled near the end," etc.), but it's more informative than a simple score. A branching dialogue system is obviously being used, leading to more than a few repeated comments, but it does hold up impressively well and thanks to Simon's trademark bite, you'll actually have a reason to retry beyond just nailing diamond records.
The judges are there mainly to act as they do in real life; Randy will call your pitch, Laura is the cheerleader and Simon just likes to rip on people, making complements feel genuinely deserved. It's a little weird to get a sense of satisfaction and importance from a bunch of canned pre-recorded comments, but hey, motivation's motivation. What's more, in long-term contests, the AI will reference past performances and remember if you repeat a song and do better or worse.
In fact, either because of the song selection, Blitz' grading or just the fact that I'm sucking more often these days, the scoring actually felt quite a bit harder. Granted, I didn't know 80% of the songs this time around, but I could usually fudge it. In fact, just humming along will get you through most songs, with is both a boon to folks like me that knew the chorus but not the verses, but after playing a ton of SingStar, I got used to having to work for my score because the game actually grades you on timing too. With KR, it's always been acceptable to just constantly hum until you can get the arrow buried in the middle of the line.
KRPAI -- or as we like to scream it randomly around the office before tourneys break out "kuuurrrrpaiiii!" -- is different. The injection of the American Idol license, while still not a right and proper integration of the concepts, actually betters the game design that was starting to get a little stale. With the entrance of Simon and Randy comes the exodus of longtime series developer Harmonix Music Systems, who are currently bathing in piles of cash after being bought by MTV Games. In their stead, UK-based Blitz Games (who actually worked on the AI license for Codemasters) have stepped in to handle programming duties.
If one were to take a passing glance at the games running side by side, it's entirely possible that you wouldn't be able to tell them apart save for all the American Idol logos everywhere, and that's because Harmonix and Konami built for themselves a simple mechanic and clean interface for it. Though I have no idea how much of the original assets were shared (the venues from Karaoke Revolution Party are back, including the ones that reference Harmonix), it's not difficult to replicate a series of lines with a little arrow that bobs up and down according to the pitch you're blasting into the mic, and so the core gameplay remains unchanged.
What has changed is the window dressing. The AI influence is everywhere, from menus to unlockable videos to music to little video transitions between songs. It's also taken over the main single-player mode, giving you an actual reason beyond just unlocking songs to want to play through the 40 or so tracks thrown into the game this time around. See, you are the next American Idol -- provided you want to be and you can belt out tunes to the satisfaction of Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and... uh, the unimonikered Laura (Paula opted out, and was replaced by a clone, apparently). In contests ranging from eight to 18 songs, you'll square off against randomly generated characters (that you don't see perform), at at the end of each, the "audience" will vote for you, with votes becoming tougher to come by as the performance goes on.
The judges are easily the biggest change to the game, as they actually will grade the entire performance and then list certain things you need to work on or did well. It's all fairly nebulous ("your pitch was off," "you started strong but buckled near the end," etc.), but it's more informative than a simple score. A branching dialogue system is obviously being used, leading to more than a few repeated comments, but it does hold up impressively well and thanks to Simon's trademark bite, you'll actually have a reason to retry beyond just nailing diamond records.
The judges are there mainly to act as they do in real life; Randy will call your pitch, Laura is the cheerleader and Simon just likes to rip on people, making complements feel genuinely deserved. It's a little weird to get a sense of satisfaction and importance from a bunch of canned pre-recorded comments, but hey, motivation's motivation. What's more, in long-term contests, the AI will reference past performances and remember if you repeat a song and do better or worse.
In fact, either because of the song selection, Blitz' grading or just the fact that I'm sucking more often these days, the scoring actually felt quite a bit harder. Granted, I didn't know 80% of the songs this time around, but I could usually fudge it. In fact, just humming along will get you through most songs, with is both a boon to folks like me that knew the chorus but not the verses, but after playing a ton of SingStar, I got used to having to work for my score because the game actually grades you on timing too. With KR, it's always been acceptable to just constantly hum until you can get the arrow buried in the middle of the line.
