Lips Review:

The Social Interaction And Music Game For Xbox

by Lame360Gamer:

©2008-9 Warren Marshall:

Now before I begin with this review I need to make a few things clear to the reader. I am approaching this as a gamer and certainly not as a singer. So keep this in mind:

1) I do not sing. I don’t sing in the shower, in the car, doing any form of work and especially not around friends or family (and strangers for that matter).

2) I have never played a home karaoke or been invited to a party where there was a set-up and I have stayed clear from Singstar on both PS2 and PS3.

Have you seen the Lips commercial (the cute little lips with legs) or the introduction video on the game? Don’t buy this game if you see yourself playing the game like shown.

Chances are you wont be sitting around in your trendy apartments with stylish friends singing perfect duets of Young Folks.

You will be stumbling around the lounge after downing a slab of beer and screaming out the Australian classic Khe Sahn in your friends faces, loud enough to cause partial deafness and for your neighbors to hear your terrible singing. This is what Lips is all about.

It was only a matter of time before Xbox was to release its own version of Singstar, which did so well for the Playstation consoles. Social interaction and music games are becoming wildly popular over the last year or so, but can Lips take a slice of that musical pie that Sony has held for so long?

Now before we get to the guts of the game it is sold as a some-what introductory pack with two Xbox wireless microphones and surprisingly they have done a good job on making these feel like a quality addition to the game. The microphones themselves feature LED’s which pulsate and change as you sing (or when the batteries get low).

You can also hit the microphone during songs to create the sound of a tambourine or other musical instruments, however ours always seemed to have a delayed response and was difficult to keep in time with the music.

These microphones being motion sensitive also gives you the ability in-game when instructed to tilt the microphone as you sing for bonus points.

Syncing the microphones was easier said than done. Following the instructions still took many attempts and due to not having a ring of light as the controllers feature it proved difficult to tell what LED’s represented what.

However once all that is up and running it certainly is easier to grab a mic and play the second time around.  For those wondering, the microphones are not compatible (at the moment anyway) with games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

The most important aspect of karaoke would be how the music is delivered in the game itself and how much fun can you have playing (singing) it. The music selection itself to sum up in one word is varied, and that is certainly a good thing.

There is slightly over 40 tracks featured in this game with Young MC to Johnny Cash and the good news is that there are also region based songs so us Aussies get classics such as John Farnham’s You’re the Voice, Missy Higgin’s Scar and some Olivia Newton-John (personally I would prefer to trade any of these and attempt 99 Luftballons from the German region but thats just me).  Editor’s note: So would I!

Once you have selected a song, you are thrown into the game itself and like all karaoke based games you are scored and judged based on the performance of your timing and pitch. This can make things forgiving at times however and soon you will have the singer that would prefer just to hum into the microphone and score highly.

While there is nothing stopping you doing so it certainly takes the fun out of the game. There are medals awarded for achieving varying criteria during the song but this is more of a personal achievement rather than much in terms of bragging rights against the other singers in the room.

Two people can choose to sing together in co-op mode or against one another in a VS style battle while others can use the controllers to play some other instruments such as the tambourine or cow-bell but the game does seem limited in terms of choices and options and that is probably the biggest downside to this game – lack of options. I guess it isn’t so much the game’s fault: how far can you push a game when it simply revolves around singing without turning it into a gimmicky game?

The options were there, they just chose not to take it. While you can send a challenge to a friend to beat a personal best score there is no option to actually sing against them or together online.

Naturally they have included an option to download additional songs over the Marketplace which is going to be the key to this game’s survival. Have one too many parties and all songs have been sung.

The option is given to simply plug an MP3 player into the console and copy across some of your personal selected songs. Of course there will be no text to follow and will just be your voice singing over the song itself. I found the 40 odd songs enough to satisfy my musical needs but for the aspiring vocalist, a welcomed addition which I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony’s Singstar was to include in a future release of their own games.

There is no other challenge and unlike Guitar Hero, which give players the ability to adjust the difficulty to match the level of play they are up to, there is no pass or fail in Lips which means that when you have a few people over there will be the one person that stands out above the rest (I for one managed to win singing ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ and successfully lose at everything else).

If you have people over often or your group of musical wannabes are wanting an alternative to Guitar Hero and such then Lips is the perfect remedy, though only to be taken in small doses. Sure you will have fun, but you will also be wishing that this game offered more.

“7.5/10

©2008 Warren Marshall:

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Filed under: 1st Party Titles, Console gaming, Microsoft Games, Parental Gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | LIPS, Lips review, LIPS reviews, singing games, Singstar, xbox 360 singing games