I Want to Break Free
SingStar Queen adds a ton of great new songs, but treads incredibly familiar ground while doing it.
Published: August 8, 2009
This is probably one of the hardest reviews I'll have to write this year, not because the game itself isn't a blast (it is, without a doubt), but because the addition of some of the best scream-along songs in existence arrive with absolutely nothing in the way of new features. I still insist that the SingStar series is the best pure karaoke experience you can get, but after countless releases over the years, the actual core of the game has budged so little and the supposedly new approach to adding songs with the SingStore introduced in the first PS3 SingStar has been so painfully squandered that it turns a golden opportunity to introduce a new audience to one of Sony's best franchises into another major miss.
I said it with the SingStar ABBA review, and it goes doubly true here: this retail disc shouldn't exist. On the PS2, where there is no online store, it at least makes a little more sense, but when contemporaries like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are not only delivering hundreds of songs every year, but are doing it with a full band, it just makes Sony's efforts in securing the rights to 20-some songs with their videos seem... lazy.
I realize there are plenty of licensing issues with things, but it's honestly not something I as a consumer should even fret about. There is a store begging to be filled with more content than a bunch of hand-me-downs from the Euro SingStore, Sony has two dozen HD videos (or at least videos upscaled to HD, as little of Queen's stuff was actually shot on HD-friendly formats), and could thicken up the store while providing a track pack that people would absolutely buy -- especially if it was cheaper than the frankly ludicrous forty bucks they're asking for the disc-based release.
Compounding the issue is the fact that there's nothing here that's exclusive to the new disc that was pressed. No new modes (the included Voice Control option that lets you speak a genre, song title, band title and so on was patched into all versions of SingStar, as were Trophies), no enhancements, nothing. You're literally paying about $1.60 for a collection of 25 songs. How would that not make an awesome SingStore update?
For those curious, here's what you get for your $40:
"A Kind of Magic"
"Another One Bites the Dust"
"Bicycle Race"
"Bohemian Rhapsody"
"Breakthru"
"Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
"Don't Stop Me Now"
"Fat Bottom Girls"
"Hammer to Fall"
"I Want It All"
"I Want to Break Free"
"Innuendo"
"Killer Queen"
"One Vision"
"Play the Game"
"Radio Ga Ga"
"Somebody to Love"
"The Show Must Go On"
"These Are the Days of Our Lives"
"Tie Your Mother Down"
"Under Pressure"
"We are the Champions"
"We Will Rock You"
"Who Wants to Live Forever"
"You’re My Best Friend"
It's a fantastic list, and some of the songs (particularly "Under Pressure") are tons of fun to sing as duets. I just wish you were paying for more than a bunch of new songs and videos if you're going to add another disc to your library -- or at least had the option to download 'em. In the end, the lack of new features or options relegates SingStar Queen to the same place as SingStar ABBA: a once-proud franchise that is growing more and more stagnant with each release that doesn't embrace the very online store that was meant to breathe new life into things and offers nothing new in the way of gameplay differences.
C'mon, SCE Studio London, you're so much better than this...
I said it with the SingStar ABBA review, and it goes doubly true here: this retail disc shouldn't exist. On the PS2, where there is no online store, it at least makes a little more sense, but when contemporaries like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are not only delivering hundreds of songs every year, but are doing it with a full band, it just makes Sony's efforts in securing the rights to 20-some songs with their videos seem... lazy.
I realize there are plenty of licensing issues with things, but it's honestly not something I as a consumer should even fret about. There is a store begging to be filled with more content than a bunch of hand-me-downs from the Euro SingStore, Sony has two dozen HD videos (or at least videos upscaled to HD, as little of Queen's stuff was actually shot on HD-friendly formats), and could thicken up the store while providing a track pack that people would absolutely buy -- especially if it was cheaper than the frankly ludicrous forty bucks they're asking for the disc-based release.
Compounding the issue is the fact that there's nothing here that's exclusive to the new disc that was pressed. No new modes (the included Voice Control option that lets you speak a genre, song title, band title and so on was patched into all versions of SingStar, as were Trophies), no enhancements, nothing. You're literally paying about $1.60 for a collection of 25 songs. How would that not make an awesome SingStore update?
For those curious, here's what you get for your $40:
"A Kind of Magic"
"Another One Bites the Dust"
"Bicycle Race"
"Bohemian Rhapsody"
"Breakthru"
"Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
"Don't Stop Me Now"
"Fat Bottom Girls"
"Hammer to Fall"
"I Want It All"
"I Want to Break Free"
"Innuendo"
"Killer Queen"
"One Vision"
"Play the Game"
"Radio Ga Ga"
"Somebody to Love"
"The Show Must Go On"
"These Are the Days of Our Lives"
"Tie Your Mother Down"
"Under Pressure"
"We are the Champions"
"We Will Rock You"
"Who Wants to Live Forever"
"You’re My Best Friend"
It's a fantastic list, and some of the songs (particularly "Under Pressure") are tons of fun to sing as duets. I just wish you were paying for more than a bunch of new songs and videos if you're going to add another disc to your library -- or at least had the option to download 'em. In the end, the lack of new features or options relegates SingStar Queen to the same place as SingStar ABBA: a once-proud franchise that is growing more and more stagnant with each release that doesn't embrace the very online store that was meant to breathe new life into things and offers nothing new in the way of gameplay differences.
C'mon, SCE Studio London, you're so much better than this...
