The idea was to do the same as other Singstar games and allow you to sing along with popular songs, but to incoroporate the Playstation Move so you could dance with the song as well, attempting to add an additional layer to the gaming experience. Does it work?
The actual music videos look pretty good, but I just could not get around the horrendous video from the Playstation Eye. The colors and pixels are very poor, and the Playstation Eye was one of my main points of concern in the hardware review. I realize that this allowed Sony to keep the price of the unit down but it just feels so low tech compared to the rest of the Playstation Move package, and in a game like this where the video gets displayed on-screen? It's much more distracting.
Sound & Music - 8:
The tracks sound really good. I mean, this is not a game where you have to worry about the surround sound helping you succeed like in a Call of Duty game, but everything sounds professional and crisp, and in a music title like this, that is very important. Also, the track selection is fairly good. It's not really my type of music, but my youngest daughter loves pop music, loves to sing and loves to dance, so I figured this game for a hit.
Gameplay - 4:
Unfortunately, this is where things start to come off of the rails a bit. The music component is fine, for those who like that sort of thing. It never really seemed to grab my daughter's attention though, despite the fact she liked several of the songs and listens to them away from the PS3 as well. She played it a couple of nights, and never touched it again. One thing that made the experience worse however, was the attempted Move integration. Honestly, it just feels broken. The 'dance' element is really rough, not terribly responsive and just takes away from the experience instead of actually enhancing it.
Here's the thing: this game is meant to really help break some boundaries and better entice players into enjoying not just the music, but the movements. However, the movement controls barely work, and are much more of a barrier than anything. The musical aspect is solid, if this is your type of game, but if it is not there is very little here to bring you in and the Move controls feel tacked on and gimmicky.
Overall - 6:
If this is your sort of thing, it might make for a fun party game. I'll be honest, it's really not my sort of thing. My wife showed no interest in it, and neither did any of my three kids. For the most part, that did not surprise me - but my youngest daughter's indifference did. She loves to sing and dance, as I mentioned before, but she just showed no real interest in this game. I had to suggest it to her for four nights running before she gave it a chance, and after she did, she never fired it up again. It's not a bad idea, but the execution was clearly lacking.
"One thing that made the experience worse however, was the attempted Move integration. Honestly, it just feels broken. The 'dance' element is really rough, not terribly responsive and just takes away from the experience instead of actually enhancing it."
ReplyDeleteWow...this is one reason I think the Just Dance games have done so well on the Wii. Sure, the motions aren't tracked "1 for 1", but the game-play is more designed to be about dancing for fun it appears, and learning the dances...whereas with this game, and games like Dance Central(the Kinect one), I feel the accuracy level could be more of a hindrance, than a help to "new" gamers.
Exactly - here it feels like they were just tacked on, and just don't work. Where as Just Dance really seems to get it right. My daughter loves to sing and dance, and this title held her interest for about 15-30 minutes was all it seemed - and some of the songs are even ones she likes to listen to normally. It just wasn't long until she was playing Little Big Planet again and blowing off this title.
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