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Upon hearing the news that Sony was developing a Karaoke game, I was excited, as the Sony Music library is vast and full of great artist of the past and present. As the development cycle continued, I read they would incorporate music videos and original studio tracks from the actual artist. Finally, when I found out that Sony was packing two mics with the game for great multiplayer and duet game play, I thought how could this miss? Well Sony found a way to take this fantastic concept and make it no more than a mediocre attempt at trying to take down Konami’s already famed Karaoke game. Titled Singstar Rocks!, Sony’s singing game has all the features mentioned above, but the execution of the game fails to impress. First of all the song selection consists of only 30 songs, and it is just only a decent list. Stand out songs are Every Breath You Take from the Police, Rocket Man from Elton John, Paint it Black from the Rolling Stones, Blur’s Song 2, Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man, KT Tunstall’s Black Horse in the Cherry Tree, and only a couple more. You have medium appeal songs like The Cure’s Friday I’m in Love, Wind of Change from the Scorpions, Summertime from DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and for those party games, Love Shack from the B52’s. Then you have the forgettable songs that really do not fit this game when you think of great vocalists such as Self Esteem from the Offspring, Girls and Boys from Good Charlotte, and Cool from Gwen Stefani. On top of the song selection is the fact that the sound quality is below average, and sounds more like a low fi MP3 than CD. Overall, I am sure there are songs here that some people like, and they are originals not covers, but I can’t say I found enough songs that I would really merit a purchase for.
Next, the boasting of the music videos would have been great if the quality of the streams would have been higher. These videos are far from DVD quality but they are at least better than Sega CD-quality right? It doesn’t help that some of the videos are down right silly or studio tracks with concert footage that don’t synchronize well with the mouth movement of the artist. While Singstar Rocks! offers a good variety of single and multiplayer modes for singing, it is very disappointing to find that you can NOT lower the vocals of the original artists. The options to hear the vocals is good when you need guidance for a song you haven’t heard, but to not be able to turn them down ever is a sin in itself. Especially when the game has a feature that allows you to keep your personal singing performance, yet you still are accompanied by the original artist’s vocals as well. This makes the game feel more like a sing-a-long than a Karaoke game. It is a shame too as the during the playback of your vocals you can add reverb and other sound effects to your voice which is innovative in itself. Lastly, the game is marred by a strict and weak scoring system that forces you to be spot on with very little incentive other than keeping a long streak going. Sure, you can sing freestyle without the scoring system, but that mode takes out what is left of the fun. In the end, it is hard to recommend Singstar Rocks! to anyone who loves to sing, especially with four volumes of Karaoke Revolution available with a new one on the way in January. If you do not mind the low quality audio, short and forgettable music selection, and the fact you have to sing along instead of hearing your glorious voice emulate or taint the original tracks, then I guess Singstar Rocks! is passable. For me though, Singstar does anything but Rock.
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