We Sing

We Sing is a clean, simple effort. Every song's unlocked from the beginning. There are no complicated set ups to go through upon start up. All you need to do is plug in a USB microphone, select your mode with the remote and away you go. You can be in and wailing like a strangled cat to a variety of pop songs within a minute, which I'm sure your neighbours will be only too pleased to hear. Better yet for them, it's the first singing game to allow up to four USB microphones at any one time - thanks to a handy USB hub chucked in with the microphone packs - so the caterwauling is quadrupled. Which, combined with alcohol, sugar or plain old hyperness could lead to some complaints. But at least you'll have fun doing it.

The 30 song-strong soundtrack is gathered from the last few decades and the approach taken has clearly been 'something for everybody', as there is no real focus on any particular sound or genre. The result is Tom Jones' Delilah rubbing shoulders with Chesney Hawkes' The One And Only, Culture Club's Karma Chameleon nestling up to Sugababes' Girls and Meatloaf proclaiming that he'll Do Anything For Love to Lady Gaga's Pokerface. You get the idea. There's a nice wide range, so there's bound to be something for everybody in there somewhere, as long as you don't mind some cheese with the inevitable wine you'll be consuming while playing. The fact that there are only 30 songs does feel like it holds back the varied approach somewhat, however; it works in the likes of Rock Band due to the 80-odd songs going on the disc. Maybe they could go the SingStar route and focus on specific genres, decades, etc., for any new entries in the series.

Unfortunately, there's no downloadable content or anything like that, so what's on the disc is what you're stuck with. It's enough to keep you busy for a while, but compared to the likes of SingStar there's no contest in terms of variety. The lack of internal memory is a reason that's been given for the lack of online support, but it doesn't sound too convincing when you see that Guitar Hero is using SD cards to store downloadable songs on Wii. That is until you realise that the downloads would be a tad bigger for this, as each song is presented with the full original music video - with a couple of exceptions - that plays in the background, which would largely drive up the space required for each track. Still, Lips and SingStar both manage it on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 respectively, so fingers crossed for a change in stance for the future. SD cards are cheap nowadays!

 

If you feel like having a sneaky practice while your mates aren't about, the solo mode is there. Click in, select your song, away you go. Or you could make a playlist of a few that you want to do in succession. If you can't even be bothered to pick a song or feel like you can take on anything thrown at you, flick the remote and it'll do a random shuffle for you. As with other singing games, the lyrics will appear along with bars that you must fill by singing at the correct pitch. Making noise will fill those bars for you well enough, but it's only when matching the pitch that you will actually score significant points. Higher difficulty settings, of course, tighten up the sensitivity so that you'll have to up your game to do well. You can't fail songs, and once you reach the end you're given a score and a ranking telling you just how rubbish you've been. If judgement, score and pitch control isn't your thing, no worries - select the karaoke mode instead and you will be shown nothing more than the words and the video, just like a karaoke machine.

Being a four player game, though, the main emphasis is on the Party mode. The mode from which the game takes its title allows between two and four singers to co-operate, either singing the same parts or choosing different singers if there are multiple vocalists in the song. Versus pits players against each other; highest score at the end of the song wins. Group Battle is for three or four players only and does what it says on the tin. The teams don't have to be strictly even, so three of you can team up on one unwitting punchbag. Pass The Mic is ideal if you're anything like me and lose microphones/controllers in a pile of wires and accessories under your TV stand on a regular basis, as it only requires the one microphone that is passed amongst the crowd to sing sections of the song in alternation. Everything works as it should - in fact, the only infuriating mode is First To 5,000 points. You'll be bellowing your lungs out and then as soon as somebody hits the magic number, bam, it's all over and cuts off instantly. Very disappointing if you're getting to a bit you like - you're best off sticking to the other modes.

We Sing is a decent first whack for Nordic Games, and with releases promised for the future and a website asking for song suggestions it appears that they are committed to the series. The 30 included songs are generally a decent bunch that will get people singing along, but perhaps if the plan is for a continued franchise the tracklistings could do with being slightly more focused in further editions. The main issue is the longevity - when you compare it to other music games the lack of downloadable content is a sore point that could lead to a limited amount of play in the long run. For some Christmas shenanigans, though, the timing for this release is great, especially since you can get it for bargainous prices.