Lips Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 4th February 2009

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We try out our best singing voice.

Lips Details:

	Music
	Xbox 360
	iNiS Corp
	Microsoft

12+

Out Now

1-4

With Sony enjoying the success of the Singstar games on the PlayStation 3, Microsoft needed an alternative for Xbox 360 gamers that filled the need for them to sing to their hearts content. So they came up with the slightly dubiously titled Lips, unfortunately they haven’t quite pulled it off!

Lips was always going to be compared to Sony’s Singstar and with good reason, it’s almost identical to the PlayStation sing-a-long title in every way, the aim of the game being to match the pitch rather then having to worry about matching every note. Lips developers have included some of their own ideas into the game, such as the ability to import songs from a music player, computer and so on via an USB link, which will then play in the game, although without the words scrolling along the bottom.

The game features single player, versus and co-op modes, with the addition of a party mode which includes three games, Vocal Fighter in which players use their voices to duel, Kiss is a co-op game that features a couple on screen and the aim is to get them to kiss by singing and in Time Bomb you have to sing to fill a glass of water so you can extinguish the time bombs fuse.

Lips, also features a Guitar Hero style, Star Stream feature that allows you to score bonus points. This is activated by copying an on-screen pose, which involves something like thrusting the motion sensing microphone into the air or swinging it from side to side! Other features unique to Lips include noise makers, this allows a player not currently singing to make a noise trying to keep in time with the beat using the 360 controller. What’s the point of it? We couldn’t work that one out either, it just seems to have been thrown in as a gimmick!

The games microphones are very good quality and have the advantage of being wireless, unlike those included with Singstar. They’re pretty well made and have a nice feel to them and also feature integrated lights that flash to the rhythm of the current song you are playing. They also allow you to score extra points in the game as shaking them in time to the music will score you a bonus.

Lips features 40 on disc songs with a mix of pop, dance, indie, R&B, rock and classic songs featuring the likes of Chris Brown, Rihanna, Johnny Cash and Radiohead to sing along to. Problem is not many of them are very good to sing a long to with the highlights being Queen – Another one bites the dust, Kaiser Chiefs – Ruby and Ramones – I Wanna Be Sedated.

Despite Lips not having the best library of sing-a-long titles, this is not the games biggest weakness, this lies with how easy it is. Very little effort has to be put in to end up with a good score. In fact very little effort has to be put in with some songs, so much so that you don’t even have to bother trying to sing the words and can simply hum along or even just tap the top of the microphone. What’s worse there’s no option either to adjust the difficulty which seems bizarre to me.

On a more positive note, the game does feature some nice visuals, most the songs included feature the actual music video and those that don’t have nice animated custom videos. Sound as you would expect from a karaoke game is top quality.

Whilst Lips isn’t the best karaoke game going, if you’ve got friends round who don’t mind having a good sing a long then this may make your night more enjoyable. Don’t expect much if you want to sing in your bedroom on your own, it might just convince you, you are good enough to audition for X Factor.