Rent to try, decide to buy... is my theory. The game is definitely not for everyone, but it'll make one whale of a party game.
It comes with a headset included, but my problem is that it's too small for those of us with larger heads. The Konami one is made by Logitech, but I believe you can use the SOCOM one if you have that. It plugs into the USB port.
The game is divided into two parts: karaoke and game modes. You can sing the 35 songs without playing the game, but it's kind of pointless, unless you like vanilla karaoke. For me, it's the game portion that makes this interesting.
Basically, you pick a character, arena, and song. The characters are pretty much like DDR's dancers. They mouth the words along with the text. It's your voice coming through.
The arenas are pretty generic, with varying backgrounds, but you have to earn bigger venues. For instance, at the beginning of the game you might have access to the 'county fair', but not access to 'American Idol' (no, AI is not in the game, I'm just using it for an example).
Songs are rated by # of microphones. One is easiest, three is hardest. Think of it as Light / Standard / Heavy. 'Billie Jean' is Light/one mic, 'Hey Jealousy' is Standard/two mics, and 'One Week' is Heavy/three mics. You have to unlock harder songs through performing.
There are also different courses. Beginner mode you sing 3 one mic songs. Intermediate is 2 one mic songs and 2 two mic songs. Advanced is 1 one mic song, 2 two mic songs, and 2 three mic songs.
You can watch movies of gameplay here .
During the game, the objective is to get as high a score as possible by combos. The more words and pitch you get correct, the better the score and crowd reaction. Crowd reaction enhances your score by adding more points at times.
The mic is pretty good at detecting pitch, but not great at voice recognition. So I could theoretically sing Cher's 'Believe' by just 'la, la, la-ing' my way through it. The score won't be teriffic, but I'll pass.
The real fun is in multiplayer mode though. 3 to 8 people can play 'Karaoke Competition'. What happens is... one person sings a song, and the other players vote in secret on how well they sang. Once all players sing their songs, the computer tallies the hidden votes and shows the winner. No computer scoring is involved. You can also play multiplayer the normal arcade way too, but KC is more fun.
In single player, there is also a 'career mode' where you can earn all kinds of costumes, characters, etc.
Best of all, they will be selling expansion discs in the future. You just pick the option 'expansion disc' from the main menu and it'll load the new songs.
Overall it's a fun little game. It's made by Harmonix (Frequency, Amplitude), so if you like those, you might like this. It might be a hard game to rent (due to the headphones), but if you can find it, try it. It's fun.
Hope that helps....
-Chris
*** This post was edited by Chris Rettig 11/8/2003 4:56:21 AM ***
That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength. Ladder start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games a government for hire and a combat site. Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped. Look at that low playing! Fine, then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common food, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and the revered in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down. Watch your heel crush, crushed. Uh oh, this means no fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament, tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I dreamt ot knives, continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...
(It'll kill you. Most of the long songs at least have guitar solo to break them up... this one doesn't give you even much of that.)
Good thing I know all the words to both! ;)
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- John
Homepark: CP Home-away-from-homepark: PKI
My Campusfish Blog
On a Konami side note, I played the new TMNT game the other day and it's really fun... old-school like the original TMNT arcade game. I will buy it.
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A day is a drop of water in the ocean of eternity. A week is seven drops.
I'm not sure I'd be caught dead singing in front of anyone, but this seems fun. And, hey, one of the arenas is an amusement park, complete with a Dragon Wagon.
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--Maddie--
What do I Listen-To?
Hot stuff.
I never realized how hard some of these songs are until I tried them again. 'When A Man Loves A Woman' (high pitch throughout the song), 'Son of A Preacher Man', I'm Coming Out' are all pretty difficult. Not 'It's The End of the World' difficult, but difficult none-the-less.
This one is definitely a keeper as a party game, but it is rather limited as a solo outing. I went out and bought a SOCOM headset because the one that comes with the game is too small. It helped dramatically, but that's a rather hefty price to pay for something that should've been thought of initially.
-Chris
I'm starting to think I want this game. No video stores have it.
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A day is a drop of water in the ocean of eternity. A week is seven drops.
It's a decent purchase, but just think about how often you'ld play it if you're just playing it solo or with your spouse. Like I said, it is much better as a party game. If you can, definitely try it first.
-Chris
In other words, is there a verse that has the lyric "Yoda's a really really old guy" (the insert's lyrics)?
ray p. (who still likes DDR better, but finds KR to be a good change of pace)
Despite what I said earlier in this thread, I did buy this game without playing it. Got bored with it really quickly.
The reason I bring this topic back from the dead is that I just read that Karaoke Revolution 2 is coming out soon, with all new songs. No, NOT an expansion, a new game that costs $39.99. How lame is that?
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