Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Laura Burke

SingStar Amped! is the 4th North American release in the SingStar series. There have been multiple editions released in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Spain. Amped contains 30 rock songs ranging from classic rock anthems like Blue Oyster Cult’s "(Don’t Fear) the Reaper" to alternative rock selections like Alice in Chains’ "Would?". This is a divergence from the ½ and ½ female/male demographic they seemed to covet with this series. The only female artist in this line up is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with the track "Gold Lion". So how would this testosterone laden singing game fare for a female voice?  Let’s find out! What is there to complain about when you have the original music videos and artists backing you up? It is certainly cool to see the videos to a lot of these songs but it can be extremely distracting. You tend to watch the video instead of your queue to start your verse, at least for the first couple times you sing a new song. The only song that didn’t have a video is Steppenwolf’s "Born to Be Wild". The animator had a bit of an acid trip with a cougar face, some butterfly chick, a kaleidoscope of a tree, and bike riding dudes. All the other older songs seemed to have concert footage which could prove to be equally distracting. Some of the videos are so old that they are grainy - Blue Oyster Cult’s video was a concert performance from the mid 70’s. But for the 1981 movie "Heavy Metal" and the fact that I had hippie parents who listened to everything from Black Sabbath to Jim Croce, I wouldn’t even know about some of the artists on the game. The song selector is a collection of album covers, albums are what we use to call CD’s for those of you born after 1990. They scroll to the left and right giving you a sampling of the track so you can figure out if you recognize the song or not. That’s about it though; the graphics in the game are somewhat lackluster. No cool tribal backgrounds or rocker fonts - just white, orange, black, and blue. You’d figure for a game called Amped that they’d amp it up a little.

For a music title, sound is absolutely crucial. I’m happy to say that the songs in SingStar Amped are not covers, but actually master tracks. This means that you’ll be singing the original song, not some weak knock-off. Therein also lies the problem. Since your voice is overlaying the artist's voice, it’ll sound a bit off when you listen to it on the included playback mode. We’ll get to that in a moment! As I previously said in the Controls section you can turn the volume of your voice up to hear it better but you tend to get feedback when you do. The quality of the songs is top notch for this game just as it has been for the other editions. Ultimately it comes down to the individual taste in the selections provided. I personally felt the selection was great if you are a tenor or bass. Since your mileage may vary here’s the list of songs so you can figure out if you will be rocked like a hurricane.

Alice in Chains -- Would	O.A.R. -- Love and Memories
Audioslave -- Cochise	Pearl Jam -- Alive
Blink 182 -- I Miss You	Poison -- Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Blue Oyster Cult -- (Don't Fear) The Reaper	Queens of the Stone Age -- Go with the Flow
Boston -- More Than a Feeling	Quiet Riot -- Cum on Feel the Noize
Cheap Trick -- I Want You to Want Me	Radiohead -- Creep
David Bowie -- Changes	Ramones -- Blitzkrieg Bop
Fall Out Boy -- This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race	Steppenwolf -- Born to Be Wild
Foo Fighters -- Best of You	Stone Temple Pilots -- Vasoline
Free -- Alright Now	Sublime -- Santeria
Iggy Pop -- Real Wild Child (Wild One)	Talking Heads -- Burning Down the House
Judas Priest -- You've Got Another Thing Coming	The Killers -- When You Were Young
Motorhead -- Ace of Spades	Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- Gold Lion
Nickelback -- Savin' Me	Yes -- Owner of a Lonely Heart
Nirvana -- Come As You Are	ZZ Top -- Gimme All Your Lovin'

The sensitivity of the mic system is very developed so it will pick up the slightest dip in your voice or staccato in your words. SingStar Amped has a few sound effects that you’ll hear pretty often after each song. If you receive a Tone Deaf ranking you are met with booing and a glass breaking noise. If you get the Wannabe ranking there’s a disconcerting baby laughing at you. If you achieve the coveted SingStar ranking you are met with an angelic "ahhh ahh" in a ‘thou hast descendith upon the Earth from the Heavens’ sound. If you decide to quit a minute or a second into the song however, you will be hearing the booing and glass breaking a lot since it accompanies anything under a set score attained. Now, enough teasing, lets talk about the playback mode. This is greatest thing I have heard in a long time. Follow me for a moment. There is a little SFX menu you can access after the usual play/pause, rewind and fast forward options. In this menu you can add some finishing touches to your One Hit Wonder. Robot voice, reverb, increase and decrease octave, or adding vibrato to a flat sounding track. Me? I like adding them all and getting this odd sort of half orca whale and half trilling ghost sort of noise. You can adjust them throughout the song playback so no need to settle on one at the onset, play with them all till you find your power animal. Slide. All in all the sound is phenomenal so I think it deserves top numbers for this section.

For those of you who have played previous Singstar games, absolutely nothing has changed here, so you can just move along – you know what you are getting.  For those of you who have not, you’ll be happy to know that the controls are fairly simple.  First you’ll decide if you plan to play single player, in party mode, or freestyle.  Once that is decided you’ll use the D-pad to navigate the menu system, tapping the X button to make selections.  Honestly, there are only two things that are counter-intuitive - the fact that you have to back out to the main menu to change the difficulty level, and that you have to use the same difficulty level for everyone in your party.  This is a problem when you play with two teams of four people as it is likely that somebody will be the ringer and want to play on Hard while everyone else hums along on easy.  It’d be nice to be able to do something similar to the Face-Off mode in Guitar Hero II, allowing players to select a difficulty that matches their skill level. The system comes with an adapter that plugs in via USB and give you access to two mics at a time. You can control the level of your voice over the track but turning it up all the way causes feedback and it is still hard to hear yourself over the track. This is what playback is good for but we covered that in the Sound/Music section already, didn't we? So how does all this work out? Not as well as I'd like it to, let me tell you. As a semi-professional singer the tracks selected tend to put me just outside my range at some point in the song which can make for a less than desirable end product as I am forced either way too low or up into a higher octave. While the note may be correct for the registry line the sound is horrid. Despite the 9000+ score received I would hardly call it a hit! The songs are great and some of my favorites but I would have liked to see more of a mix so it was more unisex. Let’s face it, guys don’t get together for the sole purpose of singing rock songs with each other, no matter how bitchin’ the songs are! They’d get together to play some "Resistance: Fall of Man", so including some cool chick rock songs in the line up would probably help this maintain its party game stature. Maybe they can make an "Amped 2" which could feature some Heart, Evanescence, or Lacuna Coil, some of my personal favorites. As a female these songs proved to be difficult for me. If sung the same way each time about 400 points will divide your scores on each level of difficulty. The other problem I ran against is that I sing more than just in my shower or at a drunken Karaoke outing. I am used to making a song my own and adding a roll or sustain somewhere which in this setting takes you completely off the pitch lines and will cost you points. On the reverse however, if I sing it horribly bad and flat it still registered the note correctly if it was on pitch. There just doesn't seem to be enough power left in the Playstation 2 to compute whether you are singing the right words or just humming at the right pitch.  Perhaps with Singstar on the PS3 we'll see an improvement in this area. The game retails at $29.99 if you already own the mic bundle. If you are a SingStar virgin then the bundle will set you back $49.99. All in all not a bad price point. That’s about a dollar a song which is comparable to what you would pay on iTunes for those same tracks. But you aren’t buying the game to listen to some cool music, you are buying it to put you in the shoes of that artist. Does this game do that? I don’t believe it does this successfully. You can hum the words in tune to get the score up. You are singing over the artist which does not sound good for anyone - probably not even the artist themselves. It’s a great game for parties as long as you like the song selections. There is no career mode or any engaging single player mode to keep you working toward a goal, it's just a sing to be singing game. Party mode does give you a competition feel but only if you have 2 or more people that know the song equally and are on the same ability level. If your dad only knows the older songs and a few of the 80 era songs then he is going to sing the same 5 songs each time he plays. If you only know the newer tracks because you were born in the 90’s then you are only going to sing those 5 songs. Its not exactly fair to compete against each other if you know the other person doesn’t know the song! What if dad is in a band and you have never sung a song in your life but want to try it? The half life on this title is pretty short unless you want to sing the same songs over and over just to get a higher score. Of course, they say practice makes perfect and out scoring your big mouth buddy who says he knows "Best of You" backwards and forwards goes a long way for bragging rights. An online competition mode would extend its replayability, but that is being saved for the Playstation 3 version. SingStar Amped! continues in the same vein as the previous titles, good and bad. Whle the game doesn’t make any huge improvements other than the soundtrack, it also doesn’t make any new mistakes. If you are a fan of the previous titles you will also like SingStar Amped!

Gaming Trend Score

83

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 100
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 75
5. Value/Replay: 75
6. OVERALL:83