Singstar Rocks Bundle (with microphone)

My wife absolutely loves karaoke (and singing in general). Going to a bar, singing karaoke and watching tipsy bar patrons attempt karaoke is a common event for my wife and I so naturally a karaoke game belongs in our house. The choices are somewhat limited, it's either Karaoke Revolution or Singstar Rocks. For our first karaoke game I went against the odds and purchased Singstar Rocks. Part of me wishes that I would have picked Karaoke Revolution, however.

Before digging into the game mechanics lets see what you get. First I must say that the packaging is very attractive. You get two surprisingly good quality microphones with this game. Typically you would expect cheap, plasticy mics - but not here. The mics feel very solid and durable which was a nice surprise. Also in the package is a USB adapter that allows you to plug both microphones into one USB port. The microphones for this game are proprietary, so there is little chance that these mics will work with any other karaoke games that may come out. These mics will not work with Karaoke Revolution games. The other USB port is left open in case you have the Eye Toy. We don't have this peripheral at this time so little will be said about this.

In it's core Singstar plays as follows:
You pick a song (or medley) and sing it as you would if you were actually singing karaoke. The words to the song are displayed on the bottom of the screen. In real-time the words are highlighted, much like a real karaoke machine. Above the words are horizontal bars that show the target pitch you need to be at. As you sing your pitch is highlighted either above, below, or right on the target pitch. The more you can stay on the target pitch - the higher the score you will get. There are three difficulty levels - easy, medium and hard. The main difference in the difficulty levels is how sensitive the game is to your pitch. So for example if your pitch slightly fluctuates then easy mode is much more forgiving then hard mode. This game will definitely train you to become a better singer.

There are a total of 30 tracks in this game. Both my wife and I believe that the song list could have been stronger, but that will not affect this review because that is an opinion. Below is a complete list of all of the tracks.

Gwen Stefani - Cool
Fall Out Boy - Dance, Dance
The Killers - Somebody Told Me
Coldplay - Speed Of Sound
KT Tunstall - Black Horse And The Cherry Tree
Aretha Franklin - Respect
Elton John - Rocket Man
Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
The Cure - Friday I'm in Love
0.D.J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince - Summertime
The White Stripes - Blue Orchid
Naked Eyes - (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me
B52s - Love Shack
Dusty Springfield - Son Of A Preacher Man
Joss Stone - Super Duper Love (Are You Diggin On Me?)
Blur - Song 2
Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
Hole - Celebrity Skin
Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back in Town
Scissor Sisters - Take Your Mama
The Rolling Stones - Paint It, Black
Bloc Party - Banquet
The Police - Every Breath You Take
The Offspring - Self-Esteem
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
Keane - Everybody's Changing
Scorpions - Wind Of Change
Good Charlotte - Girls & Boys
The Hives - Hate To Say I Told You So

As you can see, some of the songs like Sweet Home Alabama, I Will Survive, Black Horse and the Cherry Tree along with a few others are must haves (well, they are very popular amongst the crowds we sing with anyways). You can form your own opinion about this track list though. We enjoy about 70% of these songs.

The interface for this game is pretty slick. Menus are easy to navigate. While singing the songs you get to watch the bands videos in the background. From what I read if you opt to use the Eye Toy then you get to watch yourself on screen with trippy visual effects... I can't comment much on this though because we don't own the Eye Toy.

With a decent song list, slick interface and good quality hardware it seems that this game is the perfect karaoke package... but it's just not. This game is definitely geared more towards multi-player rather then single player which is a bit disappointing. Of coarse games like this really shine in multi-player modes, but for the karaoke lovers like my wife it would have been nice to see more single player modes as we don't always have a group of karaoke singers at our house.

The biggest disappointment for us is that there is absolutely no career like mode in this game. All 30 songs are available to you right off the bat so there is nothing to unlock. If you are playing in single player then you will spend most of your time simply singing the songs and achieving the highest score possible. Although the game does keep track of your highest scores, the scoring system doesn't really provide much insight into how well you really did. You may get a score of 4,500 on Sweet Home Alabama but when you're viewing your highest scores what does that really mean? How good did you actually do on that song? Did you nail 50% of the song or 90%? Who knows. The single player mode feels more like a practice mode. Even a very simple career mode would have really made this game better.

Well, enough griping about the single player mode. The multi-player mode is where this game tends to shine the most. There are modes such as duet, battle and a mode where you pass the mic. In duet you simply sing the song together and achieve the highest score possible. In battle mode you sing against each other and see who can achieve the highest score. Pass the mic is probably the best mode for larger groups because you play in two teams (up to 4 players per team, so a total of 8 players) and the teams battle against each other. In this mode you play a few mini-games of sorts. One of them throws medleys at you to keep you guessing, another is a test of who can reach 5000 points the quickest and also there is another that forces you to stay in the "good" zone to keep playing. The variation pass the mic really keeps the game fresh and fun for all who enjoy singing karaoke. I do have one major complaint about multi-player. Players do not have their own difficulty levels. This is really too bad because good singers will beat the lesser skilled singers every time - hands down. For example my wife is actually quite the singer. She likes to play on hard mode because easy mode is just too simple for her skill level. Lesser singers such as myself are forced to play hard mode (or she is forced to play easy mode) and she will beat me every time. There is absolutely no chance that I will defeat my wife in battle mode. It would have been much better if each player could set their difficultly level to provide some sort of handicap for the lesser skilled singers such as myself.

One other complaint is that you can't adjust the volume of your mic. This is too bad because it's quite hard to hear yourself through the game. The options are very limited.

With all the gripes aside this is a fun game, especially when played in groups. The single-player mode was quite disappointing (which hurt the overall score the most) but if you're looking for a good karaoke game to play in groups then this is a decent choice but don't rule out your other options.

As a fan of the Karaoke Revolution (K.R.) series, I purchased this game hoping to have something to keep me until the next release. I found myself disappointed with the lack of "game play". It did not hold my attention for long.

This game seems to assume that you've played others in the series.

CONS: There are no songs to unlock; the thirty listed are all you ever get.

I found it a bit more difficult to play than K.R.. There is no real-time pitch information for those who aren't spot-on which means if you aren't familiar with a song, there is little hope of scoring well until you become familiar. (I was able to sing songs I'd never heard before with K.R. and score in the platinum range)

The easy level seemed to be a bit more picky than K.R.'s easy level.

Occasionally the game throws you for a loop by forcing you to sing the harmony in addition to lead.

There is no tutorial or training mode to help you learn how to play and what all of the markings on the screen mean (you can read the manual but even that doesn't appear to explain much).

There is no microphone setup to adjust the input volume (although you can play with the volume that is output).

The ability to effectively mute the original singer appears to be missing.

PROS: The actual artist sings each song as opposed to re-recorded (albeit easier) versions of your favorite tunes.

If a video of the song is available, it is included behind. If one isn't, they've made video collages about the band and song to keep your interest.

You can playback your performance and even add sound effects to it like robot and reverb (there are four different ones I believe). These performances can even be saved to the memory card.

The microphones work on my Apple Macbook.

This would be a great game, had Konami already not released five (six when the American Idol one comes out) better Karaoke games for the PS2. You would think that when releasing this game in 2006, Sony would look at its competition and make it equal or better. They did not. I apologize that so much of the review is comparing it to the Karaoke Revolution series, but it's a natural comparison, and unfortunate for Singstar Rocks, as SR is by far an inferior product.

I have a lot of the same complaints as others. There are no unlockables. Even though KR's strange costumes are seldom used in our household, it's nice to see things being unlocked as you sing more and better. Singstar Rocks does not do this.

The big thing is with the PS2 having two standard USB ports, why they would utilize the mini to USB adapter. This renders the mics useless to the KR games. If they're worried about being able to use an EyeToy simultaneously to two mics, maybe they should have included a USB mini hub instead. It infuriates me that with all the decent USB mics on the market that Sony again would go proprietary (of sorts).

Another complaint is the lack of adjustments. In song, KR (dating back to the original) allows you to adjust the vocals, mic and music. Singstar Rocks has only a master volume that doesn't see to do much.

It's also unfortunate that Sony stuck with only Sony artists, as they are missing out on a ton of others. The song selection is very random due to this and a couple are very strange selections to have on a sing along disc. There are multiple songs on here that do not make a lot of sense. Of all the Rolling Stones catalog, why would Forty Licks' "Paint it Black" be the one to appear. Lame!

In a vacuum, the game is fun, but its song selection, lack of options and its proprietary options all make it fall extremely short to any of the other Karaoke Revolution. Don't waste your time with this one. Get *any* of the KR series over this one.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 46 reviews  3.4 out of 5 stars