Entitled, Karaoke Revolution Volume 3, Konami brings the fun and excitement of the series back again for the ultimate party game. For the unfamiliar, Karaoke Revolution allows you to pick a virtual persona; from pop diva look-alikes, Goth expressionists, and even a jolly old pirate. Once you pick your profile, name your character, and pick your outfit, you put your skills to the test. Each location has a number of songs each ranging in difficulty. You pick the song best suited for your “talent” and you sing along to the music. You have a few options here as you can sing along with the words and music; allow only your voice with the music, and more. Now when you sing, you not only need to perform the song correctly by the words and beat, but in tune as well. The better you do and the more accurate you are, the higher your score and combos become. The object is to obviously score the best and hit the right notes and words consistently.

This can lead to some very good times, whether you are a wannabe professional or hopelessly tone-deaf victim, fun can be had by all, and it is better in groups. Speaking of groups, Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3 is better with more people this time around as the options to sing duets is in the options. This adds a completely new area of game play depth as you can sing together in duet mode, or head to head in a sing off. Added also this year is a completely new slew of crazy charactera that will compliment your voice. It also seems the longer this series is out, the weirder it becomes as we now have an option to choose a ventriloquist and dummy combo where the dummy does the vocals. There are also new locations such as a music video set to play upon. Konami has packed in the bundle box this time around, the handheld Logitech Microphone that suits this game better than the Bobby Brown headset. I also believe the sound quality is better with the handheld than the headset as well.

What fun would all this be without a good variety of songs? Thankfully, KRV3 brings the goods again, and while I think this is the weakest lineup so far, some songs are just classics that were meant for this genre of singing. You can expect such hits as ABC, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Beat It, Careless Whisper, Don’t You (Forget about me), I Got You Babe, Love Shack, My Immortal, Oops! I Did it Again, Respect, Twist & Shout, Unchained Melody, and many more. I guess my biggest beef is that I am too old for some of the songs not listed above that come from the latest top 40 archives. I really think that 90 percent of Karaoke Songs should be classics that everyone knows, not just a handful of a few.

Another concern I have for this series, is besides the new songs, outfits, duet modes, and a few new characters, the game is virtually the same as the previous two. With too little additions each time around, I begin to wonder where my 40 bucks is going. In the beginning, the game was supposed to have expansion discs as in Japan, but alas, the money talks and we have to pay a hefty price for our addiction. Nonetheless, until fools like myself cannot get enough of this series, we will continue to pay whatever Konami wants for the series, if just to caterwaul one more tune for our friends and neighbors.