Filed under: Hands-on
Singstar is touted as a party experience - alcohol not required. Every part of the game has been designed around the party environment, meaning that you’re never more than a few button presses from another section of the game. Pressing the Start button at any time whilst navigating the menus allows you to move directly to any of the online sections of the game, including the SingStore, Media Gallery, and even your PS3 friends list. Access to the friends list in game allows you to read or send messages to your PS3 owning pals.
the gameplay is identical to previous iterations of the franchise. While it’s possible to play Singstar on your own, there’s no way to escape the slightly sad feeling it brings. The multiplayer modes allow you to mix up the gameplay with co-operative play, competitive play or team based play. Again, the emphasis is put on in-the-same-room multiplayer, as there is no online play available.
Out of the box the game comes with an eclectic selection of 30 songs across a variety of genres. You’ll be hard pressed not to be able to find at least a few songs that grab your attention. Pop artists such as Britney Spears and Pussycat Dolls are found rubbing shoulders with Radiohead and The Killers. If you do somehow find the original tracklist lacking, then you will probably find yourself visiting the in-game SingStore quite often.
The SingStore allows you to buy new tracks from an ever-growing range, with each song competitively priced at £0.99 [Editor’s note: US pricing has not been announced.]. Currently only the European SingStore is open (the game reads your region from your PSN account, not from the disc or console region, so it is possible to visit the Store of every country just by switching to a different username) and payment is processed through your PSN Store wallet. In order to prevent the game (and the party) from coming to a standstill when buying content off of the SingStore, downloads occur behind the scenes, allowing you to continue playing while you wait for you new song to arrive.
The main draw of My SingStar Online, however, is the YouTube style user videos. Obviously these vary from good to awful to intriguingly imaginative. From viewing a video you can rate it or go straight to that person’s profile to see what other content they’ve uploaded. Sony seem to be very interested in developing a community for this game and so far it seems to be working. We would’ve hoped that they could have gone a step further, however, and brought the My SingStar Online experience to the web. There’s always the possibility of it arriving at a later date, however. Not only would it be an excellent extension to Singstar’s community features, but it would be a wonderful bit of viral marketing at the same time.
With 62 tracks already available, and more promised soon, Singstar is the best supported rhythm game with regards to downloadable content. Though, once Rock Band starts getting those promised album downloads, that could soon change.
The second big new feature found in Singstar PS3 is the myspace-esque “My Singstar Online”. This allows you to upload photos and videos that the PlayStation Eye takes during the game to your very own profile page. This includes various information about you, including your best score and a profile image. Profile images must be selected from a collection of 20 on the disc, or from one that the PlayStation Eye has taken in-game. We’re a bit disappointed that you cannot use any image found on the hard drive of the PS3.
So far our experience with the online services have been hit and miss. While the SingStore and My SingStar Online are great fun and intuitive to use, we often find our connection timing out or waiting for 20 seconds for it to load the next page of videos. This is obviously something which will be improved on in the future, but in the meantime, it’s a bit of a turnoff.
Overall, Singstar PS3 does everything that is necessary for a “next gen” version of the franchise with the SingStore, My Singstar Online as well as high-def music videos. The gameplay is as intuitive and fun as ever (or, rather, it hasn’t changed).
Expect more on Singstar in the coming months.
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