Sony is getting involved in one of the most talked about genres in the motion control gaming world and that’s the dance genre. It seems there’s at least few games on every console that’s trying to jump on and give their take on it from Just Dance to Dance Central. Is Singstar Dance the game which dances it’s way all the way to bank with it’s quality or should you pass on this dance and wait for somebody else to come a knocking.
Before I get to the new and biggest reason to be interested in this edition of Singstar I’ll gloss over the old and unchanged part of the game. Like every Singstar before it, use the included wired mics to sing karaoke to all 30 songs that come with the game. Nothing has changed with the gameplay since the days of the PS2 games, you can still sing alone, cooperatively or competitively. Like every other karaoke based game it doesn’t check for the words sing but your pitch of whatever you’re singing so you can easily get away with just humming away the song if you can’t be bothered to check out the words on the screen. This is no better or worse than any other game of the same type so I wouldn’t call it a negative per say. You also have half a dozen different objective team based game modes in the “pass the mic” mode where two teams of up to 4 players compete in a choice of 7 different singing events that switches up the members of the team singing, the winning team being the first to reach whatever goal you picked. Anyone who has bought a Singstar game in the last couple of years will be familiar with all this and it is a good distraction for lovers of karaoke. Despite the fact that having 8 people playing the game at the same time can be confusing if they forget whatever username or player number they’re assigned to it’s still a fun game to whip out during a party without anyone necessarily needing to be a gamer. Just as long nobody minds embarrassing themselves and they enjoy music it’s a guaranteed good time just like karaoke at any bar.
Now that I gave the obligatory lip service for the karaoke gameplay I’ll get into the meat being the dancing. The game ass well as letting you have two people singing the game it also let’s you use up to two PlayStation Moves to let you have a maximum of four people playing at once. While I’d like to talk about the incredibility cool looking “dance partners” mode that forces two players to work together to execute cooperative dance moves, I only had one Move controller so I couldn’t test out anything besides having one person dancing and two people on the microphones. Now with that out the way Singstar seems to stand somewhere in between Just Dance 2 and Dance Central as far as how accurate you have to be with your dancing. The game will accurately track your motion as far as the PlayStation Move being held in your right hand is concerned but besides that the game pays no attention to any other part of your body. It’s completely optional whether you copy the full dance moves or not being shown to you on the screen by the dancing character or just their right hand actions. The game leaves me wishing it could let one player hold two Move controllers at the same to have something closer to a full body tracking experience. The game is really fun at first but after you figure out a lot of what you do is pointless you lose the motivation to go through the motions killing a lot of the fun. To put in perspective, it’s tracking more than just the accelerometer data in Just Dance 2 but it’s nowhere near the full body tracking you find in Dance Central. As far as the choreography I’d they stay true to the original songs with “Bye Bye Bye” you do the same puppet motions you’ve always seen in the music video or “Baby Got Back” that involves a lot of butt shaking as the song might imply. I do commend them for picking a good 30 songs that are solid numbers for a dancing game with fun and different choreography that keeps things fresh.
The game includes the Singstar Store that now has over 1000 songs to choose from. Though when I say 1000+ songs I mean songs you can sing karaoke since as of this review there at 11 additional songs you can dance to. As far as DLC there are weird choices with one of them being “The Final Countdown” which is known for it’s cool guitar intro more than any dance moves. The DLC costs $1.50 for the Karaoke and then 50 cents more for the dancing add-on. From the selection there so far I’d recommend staying away until they add some more worthwhile content. Also a quick note there also is half a dozen songs that support guitar controllers, I didn’t try it with none of the songs seeming appealing but it’s there if you want to try it out.
The graphics are what they are; the menus are clean, and simple. Each song you have the choice of seeing the music video, most being in SD since a lot of them are from the time before HD existed. You can opt out of the music video and watch yourself on the PlayStation Eye, if you’re using the Move you can also see a handful of effects come out of your controller which is fun for 2 minutes but it gets old fast. The sound is crisp and clear with none of the tracks sounding like it came from and old cassette or anything like that.
Singstar Dance is a fun distraction but at $40 for 30 tracks I feel like you’d be better waiting for it come down in price. Sure the package comes with 2 microphones but they’re not the wireless ones like they have in Japan now or like in Lips with are both two wireless mics in the box so the value is questionable. The dancing is okay but once you figure out it’s deep dark secret it starts to get boring really quickly.
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Buy SingStar Dance for the PlayStation 3 online from EBGames.com
Click here to buy SingStar Dance Online for the PlayStation 3 from EBGames.com
