Music games might be all about rock lately, but many years ago karaoke served as the original music game for alcohol soaked patrons in bars. Lips brings things back to its roots for the best karaoke title on 360, but more impressively, it stands up well against Sony's SingStar. The layout and presentation looks fantastic and the game is easy to navigate. Gamers who like a more colorful experience can alter the clean white backdrop to a few different patters. The splashy horizontal menu scheme and album cover-laden song displays look great. Once you get into the actual songs, the game begins to show some room for improvement. The on-screen floating ball hovering over the words can be difficult to follow for songs you are not already familiar with, since it does not give you any visual cue that the line is about to begin. It can also be tricky to see whether your pitch is in tune with the song, due to the smallish tube and pale green pitch indicator zipping by. Pitch also seems inconsistently picky.
There are times you will seem to hit notes that you know in your heart you have missed, and other times where you appear to nail them but find the pitch meter a fraction of a centimeter up or down from the sweet spot. For the most part, it works fine, but the near misses are frustrating. Without a multiplier ramping up or negative points to deter you, there is nothing preventing you from falling out of rhythm with the song. There is no detraction from singing where there is supposed to be silence, keeping sloppy singers competitive. To that end, it is also impossible to fail a song; making it a nice party game even long after the alcohol has sapped the vocal skills from your guests. On the plus side, for each section you hit perfectly, you add to your 'star stream' meter. When full, an icon pops up asking you to mimic a pose with your mic. Performing it correctly activates star stream, adding ‘stars’ to each phrase until the meter drains back down to zero. Each star you correctly sing over in a phrase adds them to your star total, which goes a long way to determining the winner of each song in competitive modes. The game also gives bonuses for good pitch, rhythm, and a handful of other categories. The game excels at providing interesting gameplay for the single-player and multiplayer experiences. All the modes are available as either single or multiplayer, but the majority of the specialty modes are more enjoyable with a second singer. Bomb mode is the one that works best as a single-player experience. A lit fuse begins winding its way toward a giant bomb. Your job is to put the fuse out, which you do by filling a glass of water by correctly singing phrases, then tilting the mic to pour the water on the fuse. The fuse relights after several seconds, starting the process over again. The additional element to think about when trying to sing on-key is a blast, and the motion-sensitive mics work well.
The battle mode works well as a multiplayer versus mode, pitting the two singers against each other for a couple phrases each time; awarding a point every few seconds and tallying up the winner at the end of the song. The chunky colorful art style gives the mode a look all its own; something the game does well throughout. The kiss game is a co-op experience, where two players sing their way to each others arms. When within reach, the two must simultaneously raise their mics, as if reaching for each other. If they pull it off correctly, the two players kiss with birds aflutter. If they are out of synch, the girl slaps the guy and the sequence starts over. Those who want a more straightforward experience can always play with the original music video in the background for songs on the disc or downloaded from Live, or a virtual video that looks like a more crudely generated version of the classic iPod ads. The modes are great, but it would be nice to see a bit more of them. Jukebox mode gives you a nice option to just set the game up at a party and let it go. The ability to rate songs and set up playlists makes sure your guests never need to know what a big Avril Levine fan you are. The ability to turn any single player game into a co-op experience by just picking up and shaking a mic is smooth and a welcome addition with friends over.
On the multiplayer front, more than two players can join in by picking up the 360 controllers, but it is anyone's guess as to why they would want to outside of the related achievements. There are a handful customizable sounds available to assign to the buttons on the controller, but they all sound flat and cheesy. The wireless mics have similar functionality, but only have one sound linked to the tapping or swaying of the mic. They actually work worse here, with a slight delay in the swinging of the mic and the game registering the action leading to clunky off-rhythm play. The motion-sensitive mics get a little overly sensitive when it comes to the sound effects. Just swinging your mic to activate the star stream often results in an off rhythm maraca shake. Thankfully, the game allows you to turn off the mic sound effects off. The mics themselves work great and pick up the vocals well. They work on two AAA batteries, with sets for both mics included in the package, and have the ability to turn off the lights on the shaft for those who want to conserve the battery power a little better. Even with the lights on, the batteries last plenty long. The 360 controllers can also alter the volume of the mic sound for singers who do not really want to hear themselves.
The forty songs on the disc spray to all fields; giving just about everyone with a few they will really like, but you will be hard-pressed to find anyone really happy with more than half of them. Some of the choices are rather confusing. It is nice to see current artists like Coldplay and Beyonce on the list, but the tracks they selected are at least an album; with Coldplay's "Yellow" actually four albums old at this point. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you notice "Violet Hill" in the marketplace for $2. The game needs some work in terms of playing anything not actually located on the disc. The ability to play music files you have on an iPod or Zune sounds great on paper, but you might as well sit at your desk with your headphones on and sing aloud. Hum along to the music and give yourself some imaginary points while you are at it. That is essentially all the game does for self-imported songs. There is no pitch recognition or option to add your own lyrics; which is actually an option in iTunes. The game makes no attempt to grade your performance, only awarding points as you make any sound, on-key or off. It feels aimed at the same audience as Wii Music. While the downloadable content works much the same way as songs on the disc, the game forces you to add it to your list of songs before it recognizes it. The additional step makes sense for tracks off your iPod, but you should not have to tell Lips that you want to play a song you just paid for. It will take a strong DLC support to keep this in heavy rotation at your parties. The DLC thus far has been lukewarm at best, with too few current tracks available. Hopefully it is more a function of the time of year, with Christmas classics making up most of the offerings at the time of this review.
It is a solid offering, but Lips still has plenty of room for improvement. Options to save and share your performances, both with the Vision camera and audio-only modes, would go a long way to start a community. Competitive play over Live would also keep the game in consoles when friends are not around. The My Lips section provides a decent look at your overall stats, including a list of your top played songs. You can send song challenges to a friend, to compete head-to-head in a score battle, but it is not quite the same pulling it off in-person. As it stands, Lips is a solid purchase for anyone looking for a karaoke title, but you will be hoping for a sequel next holiday season.
