You just make me wanna play !

"A singing game ?... Oh no, that is probably gonna be a lame karaoke, with crappy songs, lousy microphones."

Well, Singstar could've been all this. After all, what's so difficult about putting together a list of song, buy cheap microphones and sell the bundle at a nice 60 € ? It would've been brilliant marketing on Sony's part, cashing in on the real-TV trend.

But London Studio, the Sony team behind EyeToy Play and Groove, isn't a bunch of slackers ! So there it is SingStar : a singing game !

Sing ? Hey but wait ! Nooooooo

A singing might sound like an odd idea given how many people refuse to sing because they consider they don't sing well at all !

But Singstar features a nice 30 songs playlist of all styles of music, and you'll eventually find a song your reluctant friend/relative/lover/anyone will feel comfortable singing. I guess this is one of Singstar's strength, because musically it can appeal to everyone, even those who don't speak english, since the game is localized

How does it work ?

Singstar comes with two microphones right out of the box. Setting the game up is easy and takes really short time. Once the game has booted, the user is presented with a menu with many modes : quick song, team play, become a star (=Career mode), free play (you are not rated), etc...

After choosing the song from the list, and its length (each song comes in a short version and a normal one) the original video starts playing and then the lyrics appear on screen. The actual tone of the note you're supposed to hit is represented by bars over the video : the higher the bar, the higher the note.

This system proves to be very intuitive and everybody can adapt to it instantly. The microphones are pretty directional so you don't have to worry if your mate is screaming into his mic, this won't decrease your performance. The microphones do a very good job overall, they really do detect the right frequency so there's no problem. The game displays instantly the position of your voice compared with the bars. This tour-de-force adds a lot to the game's dynamics.

Later on, you can alway listen to your catastrophic perfomance if you want to, and even save it on your memory card ! ^^ The game is compatible with the Eyetoy and captures you at key moments of the song. Those two are nice features, but it's not worth buying an EyeToy solely for that purpose...

Multiplayer is handled by the game very well if you're numerous enough to form teams. There are 7 trials at the end of which the team with most points wins. It's as simple as this. If you don't want to play through this mode, for example you like to pick the songs you get to sing, you can use the Quick Battle mode, to sing either a Duo or fight each other : the best singer wins !

All in all, Singstar is a brilliant game which may lose a bit of its interest after a few weeks. Don't worry though, add-ons are on their way, and they look good :-)