Lips

5 Responses to “ Lips ”

1. Hung Ju Lin
   02/19/2010 at 3:37 pm

   Hi, i am sure that this game is with a very cool idea. it allow you upload your own songs. but the point is, does it allow we upload songs other than english?? how about if I wanna upload chinese songs???
   Rating: 5 / 5
2. Michael Kerner "Michael Kerner"
   02/19/2010 at 3:58 pm

   There are just so many great music games out there. While you have the guitar standards that are based on rhythm like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and those that make you step to the beat of the music like Dance Dance Revolution, there is just the feeling of games that you have to sing your way to the top. With lackluster games like American Idol and Disney’s Sing It!, just appeal to tweens and teeny-boppers wannabes alike, there just doesn’t feel like there is a universal appeal to sing-a-long games alike. For those who’ve played Singstar so much from the PS2 and Playstation 3, the Xbox 360 has taken that notion to a whole new level that makes it more than just meets the eye.

   Lips for the Xbox 360 takes in the appeal of what the Singstar! series had for the PS2, and brings in the appeal as a first for Xbox 360 players. While the game might seem like a gimmick, there actually is surprisingly more. You have the usuals like Singstar, from singing along to over 40 tracks that appeal from recent favorites like Duffy’s Mercy and the extremely overexposed artist of 2008 Rihanna with Umbrella, to classics like The Jackson 5′s ABC, and Everything She Does Is Magic by The Police. You also have the ability to download videos from the Xbox Live marketplace to add on to the fun. While the graphics and sound might feel like it is similar to Singstar!, as well as the concept of the downloadable content, what makes this unique to the gameplay is Lips secret weapon.

   What makes the gameplay more unique is that you can plug in your MP3 player or Ipod, and connect it to the 360, and sing along to your favorite songs off their personal MP3 Players in the game as well. This feature makes the game a whole lot more exciting and addictive to the gameplay for parties everywhere. Sadly, there is one big disadvantage to the MP3 playback. The only music downloads that are compatable, are ones that are MP3 DRM-Free capable. Which is the only problem, is that if you download music off of sites that use other music files in Windows Media Audio or WMA, they will not be playable on the game. That is sadly, the only major flaw in the game. Also, I was hoping that with the price of the Singstar! games for PS2 and Playstation 3, I really thought it would also be a bit less expensive.

   All in all though, Lips for the Xbox 360 brings in the singing along concept well for those who want to have a great time listening to their favorite songs. If you’ve gotten pretty tired of Singstar!, or if you don’t own a Playstation 2, or PS3, than this would be a fantastic buy for music lovers and 360 gamers all around the world. I really hope they make this concept for more music games like this soon. At around $65, you really get a great game, that doesn’t feel like it is a gimmick.

   Graphics: B

   Sound: B

   Control: B

   Extras: B+

   Fun & Enjoyment: B- for solo play; A- for multiplayer

   Overall: B
   Rating: 4 / 5
3. Patrick H. Nguyen
   02/19/2010 at 4:32 pm

   I’m a big Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero fan. Lips is a pretty good first try. The songs are pretty good but the selection could be a little bigger. Also, some of the songs are really nice to listen to, but they’re hard to sing in that a lot of the songs have choppy, quick phrasing. Almost feels like you’re rapping to some of the songs instead of doing melody.

   I wish they copied the above games more in terms of singing. I’ll use karaoke Revolution as an example. As you sing, it’s very easy to see the words as well as what pitch you’re singing at because they have an easy to see arrow and if you notice that you need to sing higher or lower you can adjust. This is all while still being easy to see the words to the songs.

   But on Lips, the words are totally separate from the pitch bar. So if you follow the words, it’s hard to see the pitch bar unless you have fabulous peripheral vision. And if you follow the pitch bar, you better know the words beforehand. Plus, you see the glowing light of what pitch you’re at but it’s not as easy to follow as the arrow you see in Karaoke Revolution or Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

   They make up for this fault by taking away all of the game aspect. there’s no chance to fail. There’s no difficulty level to choose. There’s no computer audience to boo. So it feels like a karaoke machine rather than a game. But you don’t get that sense of accomplishment the other games give where you feel like you match that pitch bar and feel like a singer.

   They should also give you options of how the text and pitch bar scroll like in the other games. The best scrolling is Karaoke Revolution and Rock Band. Pretty each to read the text and pitch bar.

   Guitar Hero/Band Hero is bad at scrolling text. But it offers a static mode that is really good too. Lips is like a combination of the two but it’s not as good as either mode individually.

   I’ll be honest, I bought it for the wireless mics, not the game. The mics are really cool. They have glowing lights that change color. And the colors sync up to the music. the setup for the mics is much harder than it should be. trust me, you won’t get it the first time or rather, you won’t be sure you got it or not until you start the game. there’s very little visual indication that it’s been properly set up. And it’s hard to turn off the controllers too. Because the same action (hold down the button on the bottom of the mic) does 3 different things. You need to do it twice to setup the mic. but you also do it to turn off the mic. so sometimes, you want to turn it off and then you accidentally you put it in pairing mode. when I thought the mic was off, it was on.

   in terms of the sound, I liked my mics for Karaoke Revolution more even though they were wired. the sound was just more natural. the sound coming out of these wireless mics seemed a little artificial. almost a tinny quality. and they were not as good at filtering noise.

   also, you can use the mics as instruments by shaking them to simulate various instruments like tamborine, etc. but again, there was a lag to when you shook the mic to when it played the sound so if you shake according to the music, it’ll sound really off sync with the music.

   i love the feature of how you can join a song just by shaking the mic. and the tilt features of the mic are gimmicky but is hilarious in a group situation when both singers raise up the mic in tandem.

   Also, there seemed to be a delay between when you sing into the mic and when it comes out the game. but after playing around with the game, I got a downloaded update to the game from MS and it included a cool sync tool. and it’s by far the easy calibration tool I’ve ever used for a music game. You just put up the microphone to the TV speaker while it’s running and after a few seconds, it calculates the delay.
   Rating: 4 / 5
4. C. Neifert
   02/19/2010 at 7:31 pm

   This game is very fun, the only downfall is the short list of songs it ships with and the downloadable content engine seems to be really glitchy. I was also promised new songs every week for the first 8 weeks because I pre-ordered it through amazon. However, the first track i tried to download via zune said it was “free” and then charged me 240 microsoft points with out warning. It took me about 3 hours of being passed back and forth between microsoft, zune and xbox – all the same company – because none of them wanted to give my points back. I finally got them back, however, i still didn’t receive any of the “free” downloads for the promotion. Even though the game itself deserves 5 stars because we had a blast playing it… the support behind it is LOUSY!
   Rating: 3 / 5
5. Daniel Kleinfeld
   02/19/2010 at 9:33 pm

   Yes, Lips is a karaoke game. So if you’re self-conscious about singing, you won’t like it. But if you actually enjoy karaoke, a very good time can be had. Early versions of the game were far too easy, but the recent patch for this title has given it more of a challenge—I’d compare it to singing in Rock Band on Hard difficulty, though with No Fail mode on. What Lips has over Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour is the Duet option—it’s a whole lot of fun to trade lines back and forth and join in for the chorus, and Lips supports that beautifully. Duet mode alone would make the game well worth trying.

   Presentation is nicely done, with a lot of original videos, plenty of flashing and glittering lights, and a generally smooth design. Also of note is the noisemaker option, where people who aren’t singing can use 360 controllers as additional percussion instruments.

   The biggest drawback is the paltry song selection. Lips only comes with 45 songs, and I guarantee you’re going to hate at least a third of them. There’s a decent amount of music for sale as additional DLC, but it stings to have a game ship with so little, and it stings even more that Microsoft is slowly jacking up the price on Lips DLC. Yes, Rock Band Beatles only shipped with 45 songs too, but those were 45 of the best songs ever. The song variety in Lips is nice, but it means that you’re sure to only like maybe 30% of the music on the disc.

   Oh, and speaking of Rock Band Beatles: My main motive in buying this was to get two wireless mics to use with RBB, for a lot less than buying them separately. And it works! So aside from the game, it’s an excellent deal on wireless RB mics!
   Rating: 3 / 5