SingStar Goes Next-Gen
Oh how we've been waiting for this, and oooooh how it was worth the wait. SingStar. Is. Awesome.
Published: June 21, 2008
Sony did a very, very evil thing showing off the PS3 version of SingStar when they did, now over a year ago. Along with updating the game for HD displays, they didn't really change a whole lot for the gameplay, which means there's little in the way of surprises here: sing along to the words, watching both pitch and timing, and you'll pretty much come out on top (except for the rap segments, which still have crap judgment as far as I'm concerned).
No, the real revelation was the game's online component, which includes the now-ubiquitous option for downloading additional tracks for a buck and a half a pop, but also offers something far more rewarding: the ability to upload videos, audio recordings and stills of, say, a drunken office party where a certain Editor-in-Chief belts out Britney Spears songs with surprising conviction. Y'know, just as an example. It's not like that actually happened and then was used for Monday morning blackmail to get free lunch from the rest of the staff or anything.
The first part of the online equation, the SingStore, is definitely good stuff. Scratch that, it's great stuff, offering literally hundreds of songs on day one, but there is an unfortunate down side to having videos up from users all over the world in that you see a ton of songs that you'd be dying to have, but they're not up on the US SingStore. It's also fairly obvious that the US Store wasn't quite filled to capacity with local hits by the time the game launched because quite a few songs were pilfered form the UK/EU store, if the abundance of Britpop songs are any indication.
Still, it's the game's community that really shines here. Being able to not only browse videos, images and audio recordings, but visit those users' pages, see their top scores and songs, and get an almost voyeuristic look into snippets of their lives is endlessly fascinating. The first two or three hours I spent with SingStar were consumed almost exclusively with finding old people to dance around to The Scissor Sisters. What surprised me even more was the decided lack of webcam boobs (due in no small part to quite a bit of policing and the ease in reporting a video, one assumes). The cross-section of people uploading embrassing videos actually manages to transcend age, race, geographical location and actual appearance.
Moreover, there are actually some very seriously talented people singing here, and since voting is done in just a few taps of a button, the rankings do a fairly decent job of sorting out the crap. You'll see embarrassing videos right alongside adorable ones, which are in turn next to strikingly decent ones and then there's just the flat-out creative ones like re-enactments of the actual lyrics to the song taken in a very... interesting direction (you'll have to hop online to see what I mean).
With so much focus on the online parts of things, it's almost too easy to forgive the track listing that rests on the actual disc. Not only does the Blu-ray version of SingStar sport the same number of tracks as the old DVD-based ones (and costs $10 more to boot), but the lineup isn't anywhere near as good as the PS2 releases. With SingStar 90s, I felt Sony had essentially done the impossible: they'd kicked out a karaoke game where every single track was one I knew by heart and couldn't wait to sing.
This time around, that list has dropped sharply. There were maybe five or six songs that I really like, another five or so that I tolerated and the rest were just simply not interesting enough. That's a ratio of songs that none of the PS2 games managed to slack on to this degree, and I suppose one could argue that the SingStore effectively gives you the option to fix this, well over half of the songs released on the PS2 still aren't up on the store, especially the ones from 90s. There was talk early on of giving people who bought the PS3 version of SingStar half physical copies of the songs and the other half in the form of downloadable credits. That would have been a far, far more interesting way to do things, as it would have all but guaranteed that just about everyone could be happy rather than trying to choose a broad spectrum of songs for them.
I suppose the one bright side to having everything on Blu-ray is that the songs are technically in HD -- at least the ones that can facilitate that. The widescreen interface is a bit cleaner, but the slick zooming menus that come before and after songs are definitely the visual highlight here. Everything about SingStar's look and feel is silky, right down to the introductory images that explain how to move around the menus as the game initially loads up.
The SingStore, it should be noted, was a little on the slow side. Navigating the videos wasn't too bad, but downloading them took ages. The fact that they're downloaded in the background meant we could do a few more rounds of "Karma Chameleon" to pass the time, but I'm hoping that things speed up a little in the coming weeks/months -- especially as more songs are added to the Store.
Though SingStar out of the box isn't quite compelling in the same way some of the more recent releases have been, tracks-wise, the overwhelmingly awesome online functionality absolutely makes up for it and then some. Hours can be spent watching things, and there's a good chance that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what Sony can do with the social interaction parts of the game. So long as you have a PlayStation Eye (an EyeToy will work too, but spring for the higher-res one), this should be a part of your library by default. Trust me, nothing beats having friends over, grabbing a few drinks and then saving all the ridiculousness for perusal the next morning.
Hey, you might even get free lunch out of it.
No, the real revelation was the game's online component, which includes the now-ubiquitous option for downloading additional tracks for a buck and a half a pop, but also offers something far more rewarding: the ability to upload videos, audio recordings and stills of, say, a drunken office party where a certain Editor-in-Chief belts out Britney Spears songs with surprising conviction. Y'know, just as an example. It's not like that actually happened and then was used for Monday morning blackmail to get free lunch from the rest of the staff or anything.
The first part of the online equation, the SingStore, is definitely good stuff. Scratch that, it's great stuff, offering literally hundreds of songs on day one, but there is an unfortunate down side to having videos up from users all over the world in that you see a ton of songs that you'd be dying to have, but they're not up on the US SingStore. It's also fairly obvious that the US Store wasn't quite filled to capacity with local hits by the time the game launched because quite a few songs were pilfered form the UK/EU store, if the abundance of Britpop songs are any indication.
Still, it's the game's community that really shines here. Being able to not only browse videos, images and audio recordings, but visit those users' pages, see their top scores and songs, and get an almost voyeuristic look into snippets of their lives is endlessly fascinating. The first two or three hours I spent with SingStar were consumed almost exclusively with finding old people to dance around to The Scissor Sisters. What surprised me even more was the decided lack of webcam boobs (due in no small part to quite a bit of policing and the ease in reporting a video, one assumes). The cross-section of people uploading embrassing videos actually manages to transcend age, race, geographical location and actual appearance.
Moreover, there are actually some very seriously talented people singing here, and since voting is done in just a few taps of a button, the rankings do a fairly decent job of sorting out the crap. You'll see embarrassing videos right alongside adorable ones, which are in turn next to strikingly decent ones and then there's just the flat-out creative ones like re-enactments of the actual lyrics to the song taken in a very... interesting direction (you'll have to hop online to see what I mean).
With so much focus on the online parts of things, it's almost too easy to forgive the track listing that rests on the actual disc. Not only does the Blu-ray version of SingStar sport the same number of tracks as the old DVD-based ones (and costs $10 more to boot), but the lineup isn't anywhere near as good as the PS2 releases. With SingStar 90s, I felt Sony had essentially done the impossible: they'd kicked out a karaoke game where every single track was one I knew by heart and couldn't wait to sing.
This time around, that list has dropped sharply. There were maybe five or six songs that I really like, another five or so that I tolerated and the rest were just simply not interesting enough. That's a ratio of songs that none of the PS2 games managed to slack on to this degree, and I suppose one could argue that the SingStore effectively gives you the option to fix this, well over half of the songs released on the PS2 still aren't up on the store, especially the ones from 90s. There was talk early on of giving people who bought the PS3 version of SingStar half physical copies of the songs and the other half in the form of downloadable credits. That would have been a far, far more interesting way to do things, as it would have all but guaranteed that just about everyone could be happy rather than trying to choose a broad spectrum of songs for them.
I suppose the one bright side to having everything on Blu-ray is that the songs are technically in HD -- at least the ones that can facilitate that. The widescreen interface is a bit cleaner, but the slick zooming menus that come before and after songs are definitely the visual highlight here. Everything about SingStar's look and feel is silky, right down to the introductory images that explain how to move around the menus as the game initially loads up.
The SingStore, it should be noted, was a little on the slow side. Navigating the videos wasn't too bad, but downloading them took ages. The fact that they're downloaded in the background meant we could do a few more rounds of "Karma Chameleon" to pass the time, but I'm hoping that things speed up a little in the coming weeks/months -- especially as more songs are added to the Store.
Though SingStar out of the box isn't quite compelling in the same way some of the more recent releases have been, tracks-wise, the overwhelmingly awesome online functionality absolutely makes up for it and then some. Hours can be spent watching things, and there's a good chance that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what Sony can do with the social interaction parts of the game. So long as you have a PlayStation Eye (an EyeToy will work too, but spring for the higher-res one), this should be a part of your library by default. Trust me, nothing beats having friends over, grabbing a few drinks and then saving all the ridiculousness for perusal the next morning.
Hey, you might even get free lunch out of it.