Embarrassing fun for everyone on my PS3

Author's Rating:

Pros: Simple and fun for the whole family

Cons: Full screen only, wired microphones, and cannot download more music

The Bottom Line: 
The bundle cost us $50, a trip to the movie theater would cost us about the same but not offer the same amount of fun or entertainment.

Author's Review
First I’d like to say how much fun this game is. My wife is not into video games but she loves singing to the 80’s. In SingStar you can have one to eight players, the bundle we bought came with two microphones and the game.

We are playing this game on the 80gig PlayStation 3; the 40gig model does not have backwards support for PlayStation 2 games. I had a little trouble setting up the game at first. Once I inserted the SingStar disk into the PS3 the system recognized that it was a PS2 game and that I needed to create a virtual “memory card” on the hard drive. Instead of the PS3 doing this for me it kicked me out of the game and took me to the main PS3 menu to manually create one myself. After this step was complete the PS3 stopped responding, I finally had to resort to pulling the plug on the system. Once the system restarted the game started up normally and I haven’t had any problems since.

No one in my family has ever played SingStar before and though there are a few versions out we are very pleased with the song selection of the 80’s. We are not brave enough to go out and do karaoke in public and I’m not sure if this game is similar to karaoke machines but here is a break down on how the game is played.

Once a user name is entered you are taken to a menu that is similar to the one iTunes uses, the album is set up in a circular fashion and you press the controller to the left or right to rotate; there are 27 songs to choice from.

On the bottom of the screen there are two lines, the top line is what you currently need to sing and the bottom line is there to let you know what’s coming up next. To help the singer, there is a bar that moves from left to right on the top line to let you know when to sing each word. Also, there is a clear pitch bar (sorry but I’m not sure how to explain it any better) for each word and as you hit the note correctly the bar starts to fill. There are short and long clear pitch bars all ascending or descending according to the song. The game told me I was “tone deaf”… I guess I have some practicing to do.

When you select a song to sing you have the option of a short or normal version.

Overall we are very happy with the game, the microphone feels great, the music is fun and all of our friends enjoy singing too.