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Review: Lips

Well, I finally got my hands on a copy of Microsoft’s karaoke game Lips. Regular readers probably know how I wanted it, but not really, so I put it on my Christmas list in the hopes that someone else would buy it for me. And they did. Phew! Problem solved. But now that I’ve actually played the game… is it any good? Read on to find out!

First off, let me just say that because I don’t own a PlayStation 3, I can’t compare this to SingStar, Sony’s karaoke game series. All I know about SingStar is that they put out awesome collections like the ABBA one, and I hope Microsoft follows suit. And they have a camera so you can embarrass yourself online. Anyway, with Lips, you select from 40 different songs and use the wireless microphones to sing your little heart out. Yeah, no, that’s pretty much it. There’s honestly not too much game to it.

There is scoring, as singing at the right pitch will earn you points, and eventually you can fill up a meter and waggle your wireless microphone to activate their version of “star power” for bonus points. And in addition to singing co-op duets, you can sing versus your friend and see who can score more points. Unfortunately, these scores aren’t saved or anything, so unlike in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, there’s not really any incentive to try and beat your previous score. Players are also awarded medals in each performance if they’re good enough, in areas like pitch, rhythm and stability. But again, the game doesn’t keep track of them aside from the total number you’ve been awarded over time. There are three different game modes besides regular versus mode: Vocal Fighters, where your singing will make one of the two poorly-animated on-screen characters beat up your opponent to see who comes out on top. It’s basically a more visual representation of standard versus mode. In Kiss, you sing co-op, tilting your microphones up in unison when the on-screen lovers are close enough to lock lips. In Time Bomb, singing well fills up a glass with water that you can use to put out the constantly relighting fuse on a bomb. Just tilt your glass repeatedly to put out the fire until the song is over and you don’t get blown up.

But the lackluster gameplay modes simply underscores the point that this game is just a fun karaoke title. All 40 songs are available right from the start, and you can just jump right in and start singing any of them. A wide variety of genres are included, and most have original music videos that run behind them. Although to be fair, some of them have aged better than others. Some simply weren’t meant to be blown up onto a widescreen HDTV display… Singing is fun and easy. The game is extremely forgiving at times, and you can never fail out of a song. Lips is clearly meant to be a party game. In fact, you can set up playlists of favorite songs that you can use in Jukebox Mode so you never have to waste time shuffling through menus to pick another tune. Just wait for the next one to start. The wireless microphones sparkle with different colored lights that not only pulse in time with the music, but help you keep track of who is supposed to sing what part, depending on the color.

Indevus

You can hook up your MP3 player (I’m sure Microsoft would prefer it be a Zune) or import songs to your 360’s hard drive and then bring them into your Lips playlist. Naturally, these songs won’t have music videos or on-screen lyrics, but it can be fun to sing along to your favorite tunes anyway. There’s already quite a bit of downloadable content available, and in a variety of genres. I’ve already noticed a lot of 80s classics making their way onto my hard drive…

You can use the “My Lips” area of the menu to track your progress in the game, but as I mentioned, it doesn’t keep track of high scores. It does note the total number of medals you’ve achieved, and which songs you’ve sung most often. There’s also a list of friends who you can challenge to sing-offs, but either my friend didn’t want to compete with me or I did something wrong, because I never found out which of us sang that Maroon 5 song better.

If you don’t have a PS3, Lips is basically your only option for a karaoke-style party game. But that’s not to say that it’s no good. I actually have quite a lot of fun belting out my favorite songs, and it’s great fun singing with others (as long as no one else is any good either!). The only problem with Lips is that it’s more of a glorified karaoke machine than a videogame. With no high scores to beat, and nothing to unlock, there isn’t much incentive to keep playing. At least n …

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