Lips xbox 360

JimJimBinks

Is anyone planning on buying this game? I wasn't able to find a thread about it.
Here's the track list...


I was tempted because my wife loves karaoke games, but the latest commercials have gone a long way to change my mind and keep me far away from it.

* a-ha "Take on Me"
* Alicia Keys "No One"
* Aly & AJ "Potential Break Up Song"
* Avril Lavigne "Complicated"
* Ben E. King "Stand by Me"
* Beyoncé "Irreplaceable"
* Blondie "Call Me"
* Chris Brown "With You"
* Coldplay "Yellow"
* Depeche Mode "Personal Jesus"
* Destiny's Child "Survivor"
* Dido "White Flag"
* Duffy "Mercy"
* Duran Duran "Hungry Like the Wolf"
* John Denver "Take Me Home, Country Roads"
* Johnny Cash "Ring of Fire"
* Leona Lewis "Bleeding Love"
* Lil' Mama "Lip Gloss"
* Lupe Fiasco (featuring Matthew Santos) "Superstar"
* Maroon 5 "Makes Me Wonder"
* Nirvana "In Bloom"
* Peter Bjorn and John "Young Folks"
* Queen "Another One Bites the Dust"
* R.E.M. "The One I Love"
* Radiohead "Fake Plastic Trees"
* The Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated"
* Rascal Flatts "Stand"
* Rihanna "Umbrella"
* Roxette "Listen to Your Heart"
* Sara Bareilles "Love Song"
* Sheryl Crow "Soak Up the Sun"
* Taylor Swift "I'm Only Me When I'm With You"
* The Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian"
* The Fray "Over My Head (Cable Car)"
* The Jackson 5 "ABC"
* The Police "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"
* The Raveonettes "Love in a Trashcan"
* Trace Adkins "Ladies Love Country Boys"
* Weezer "Island in the Sun"
* Young MC "Bust a Move"

Steev

All I know about this game is that it's made by Inis, creator of Ouendan and Gitaroo Man, and therefore it had my attention longer than any other karaoke game would. But my attention quickly faded when I realized that nothing can make me want to play karaoke.

Etch

Well I do like Take on Me...

But why make a thread if you don't want the game?

Aoi

It seems interesting, but the song list, while having some stuff I like, is mostly stuff that I either don't know, or don't care about.

Have they gone into how songs straight off an mp3 player/the HD are handled in game?

JimJimBinks

Etch wrote: »

Well I do like Take on Me...

But why make a thread if you don't want the game?

I really wanted to see what other people thought of it. See if there was something I was missing that would make me want to pick up this game.
I'm looking for a good game to play with my wife.

Dirty

I think its silly when people let TV commercials sway their judgment in either direction.

Looking at the screenshots, the interface is almost completely ripped from SingStar. However they did fix the main problem that led to my girlfriend returning SingStar (despite loving to sing in Rock Band and liking the SS track list), and that is having the words next the pitch level. In Lips, it looks like you don't have to choose between focusing on the words and focusing on how well you're doing.

Maybe this will make SCEE realize their interface needs a refresh and release a patch.

I don't know if I dig Lips using motion gestures for "Star Power." If it turns out they don't detract from the game, my potential reasons to buy a 360 just went up a notch.

darleysam

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=284068

That seems like quite a good preview of what to expect from it. Well worth a read for anyone looking for information.

Aoi

Blocked from work Any indication on how personal music is handled?

UnbreakableVow

This game has the worst magazine print-ad I've seen in years.

ArcSyn

Wasn't this supposed to be able to connect up to your Zune and load any song? Or has that functionality been stripped?

PeregrineFalcon

darleysam wrote: »

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=284068

That seems like quite a good preview of what to expect from it. Well worth a read for anyone looking for information.

Some Generic Trashy Blonde Whore in the first EuroGamer Review Image wrote:

"But I gotta stay true / My morals got me on my knees"

Yeah, I bet they do. :winky:

darleysam

That's Duffy, and despite what everyone else on here will tell you, she's cool. I may be biased having played at the same festival as her, but still.
:x

KalTorak

darleysam wrote: »

That's Duffy, and despite what everyone else on here will tell you, she's cool. I may be biased having played at the same festival as her, but still.
:x

I like Duffy. Not enough to buy this, but I like her music.

darleysam

KalTorak wrote: »

darleysam wrote: »

That's Duffy, and despite what everyone else on here will tell you, she's cool. I may be biased having played at the same festival as her, but still.
:x

I like Duffy. Not enough to buy this, but I like her music.

Yeah, I wouldn't exactly describe myself as a fan, but she seems like a pretty cool person and Mercy is catchy as hell.

UnbreakableVow

Holy shit, this has "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic".

If I had a 360, this would be so bought.

Etch

JimJimBinks wrote: »

Etch wrote: »

Well I do like Take on Me...

But why make a thread if you don't want the game?

I really wanted to see what other people thought of it. See if there was something I was missing that would make me want to pick up this game.
I'm looking for a good game to play with my wife.

That makes sense

Maybe you could by rock band or something that has the singing in it, but other fun instruments as well, but it would cost more.

UnbreakableVow

"Speaking of score, this is another area where Lips really has an edge over SingStar. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sony's game largely rewards you for being dull and boring. Genuinely good, entertaining singers do badly at SingStar (and Rock Band, for that matter) because the game rewards you for holding perfect notes, rather than actually singing."

Fucking sweet.

Singing in Rock Band tends to never equal fun unless No Fail mode is turned on. This sounds awesome.

arod_77

Most of these are already in either singstar or rockband

UnbreakableVow

arod_77 wrote: »

Most of these are already in either singstar or rockband

The problem with this is

A) SingStar PS3 is basically all anyone should pay attention to. Otherwise it's a constant hassle of switching the 50-trillion disc versions on PS2.

Rock Band is too focused on, well, the band experience for people who just want to have a good karaoke game. I've always really prefered the setup of having the music video play in the background; having your 3D band play shows in the back just isn't the same.

Not to mention that this game improves over SingStar/Rock Band in a few important ways.

darleysam

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

"Speaking of score, this is another area where Lips really has an edge over SingStar. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sony's game largely rewards you for being dull and boring. Genuinely good, entertaining singers do badly at SingStar (and Rock Band, for that matter) because the game rewards you for holding perfect notes, rather than actually singing."

Fucking sweet.

Singing in Rock Band tends to never equal fun unless No Fail mode is turned on. This sounds awesome.

Yeah, this is a big point for me, too. I can sing, but unless I've spent years meticulously learning every nuance of a song, I can't do a good job on it in Rock Band (I own Creep on Expert, suck at a bunch of easier songs because I don't know them as well and can't match every single note). The ability to actually perform the song a little more personally is great.

JimJimBinks

Etch wrote: »

JimJimBinks wrote: »

Etch wrote: »

Well I do like Take on Me...

But why make a thread if you don't want the game?

I really wanted to see what other people thought of it. See if there was something I was missing that would make me want to pick up this game.
I'm looking for a good game to play with my wife.

That makes sense

Maybe you could by rock band or something that has the singing in it, but other fun instruments as well, but it would cost more.

She's not a big fan of Rock Band. None of the songs are that fun for females to sing and she doesn't love playing the instruments.
This looks to have a lot more female friendly songs.

I got a call from my wife about half an hour ago and she really wants me to buy Left 4 Dead, so I guess if I get Lips it won't be for a few weeks. Maybe it'll be a good Christmas gift.

maximumzero

I liked Singstar. I don't have a PS3, thus I might check this out.

UnbreakableVow

Wait, your wife wants you to buy Left 4 Dead to play together, and you're sitting here making Lips threads?

JimJimBinks

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

Wait, your wife wants you to buy Left 4 Dead to play together, and you're sitting here making Lips threads?

Heh. Pretty much, yeah.
Apparently she checked out the left 4 dead demo this morning and loved it (She's a big fan of Resident Evil games, but hates FPS games so I wasn't sure how she'd like it.) I'll be picking up Left 4 Dead on my way home.

Jurg

I like the developer, but I'd rather rock and roll my way through adolescence with the help of a talking robot dog than look like an idiot destroying some pop music.

Maybe I'll check it out if I can pry my brother away from the 360.

Nickle

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

This game has the worst magazine print-ad I've seen in years.

Yes, this.

I'm not sure I can recall ever seeing an ad that's filled me with such anger. And I can't even explain why. Anytime I flip a page to see that big-mouthed douchebag and his douchebag friends it ruins my bathroom reading.

Lips is ruining my morning shits, and for this I can never forgive it.

Accualt

I haven't seen the magazine ad but the 1 minute commercial I saw, with the walking lips, amused me.

What is with the microphones? They have fancy lights in them. I like lights.

Aoi

Accualt wrote: »

I haven't seen the magazine ad but the 1 minute commercial I saw, with the walking lips, amused me.

What is with the microphones? They have fancy lights in them. I like lights.

The lights apparently sync with the music.

Ergandar

The clincher for this is that you can connect any mp3 player to the 360 and load your own songs on it to perform to.

Recoil42

I like the TV ad for this. So weird, and yet so awesome.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/290965.html


Of course, it could just be "Take on Me" doing it for me.

Raijin Quickfoot

I might get this. My fiance and I have always enjoyed Karaoke Revolution.

brynstar

I just got my Gamestop call and it said it would be available...Tuesday afternoon. Instead of Wednesday. Oops!

darleysam

Eurogamer's review of this is meant to be going up at 5pm GMT, so in 2 and a half hours. Could be interesting..

brynstar

darleysam wrote: »

Eurogamer's review of this is meant to be going up at 5pm GMT, so in 2 and a half hours. Could be interesting..

Good to know, thanks for the information.

JimJimBinks

Could you possibly post highlights here when it goes up? I promise I'm not being lazy, Eurogamer is blocked at work.

darleysam

Damnit, I just went back on there and the notice that it's up at 5pm has gone. It might still be going up, but now I guess it might not, too.

Sorry for getting hopes up

darleysam

Eurogamer review:
5/10

Wall of text in the spoiler

SingStar, anyone? Judging by more than 15 million sales and more than 2.2 million song downloads, the answer is yes. Microsoft wants in on the action, just as it does with EyeToy (You're in the Movies) and Buzz (Scene It?), and so it has enlisted respected Japanese music game developer iNiS to create an alternative that matches the Sony game almost word for word and hopefully builds on it.

The result is a karaoke experience fundamentally indivisible from Sony's vision of how it should work - right down to an outright refusal to use the 'k' word anywhere near it. Players of Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band will recognise the formula too; your singing is rated according to pitch and timing rather than exact notes. However, Lips also aims to outdo the competition by celebrating and rewarding vibrato, rather than punishing it as deviation, and although it often denies you points for brief and low starting points, the way you react to sudden changes in a song's pitch is marked with greater sympathy.

Lips also has solid, flashy and - most crucially - wireless microphones, which none of its competitors has. Each is powered by a pair of double-A batteries concealed by a removable mic head, and some of that acid fires up lights that change colour to show you which on-screen lyrics the mic is waiting to hear. As you sing, you also build up a Star Stream bar above the music, and once it's maxed out you're invited to strike a pose with the microphone, which is motion-sensitive as well, to enter a period of star-earning and points-multiplying. Shaking is also used to activate microphone number two mid-song, and to extend short versions of songs if you want to keep going for the duration.

Much has also been made - not least by us - of iNiS's music game credentials, and the result is three multiplayer modes that go beyond the traditional versus and duet options that are the defaults. Kiss involves coordinating mic gesture timing to get a couple of on-screen silhouettes to embrace, Time Bomb is about using gestures to pour water on a burning fuse, and Vocal Fighters is versus mode with points scored when one player builds a sufficient lead over the other.

Less to do with iNiS, and more to do with the Microsoft Game Studios personnel who occupy twice as many of the credits in the manual, is the line-up of songs. There are 40 in total and there are some classics among them - "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen, "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash, "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead and perhaps "Yellow" by Coldplay - that lend themselves well to karaoke. Around half, though, left little impression. (We've posted the full UK track-list on the Editor's blog so you can draw your own conclusions).

More disappointing than that, however, is the paucity of online options - something we're not used to saying about Xbox Live. You can post challenges to your friends, which they then have to acknowledge to initiate, but you can't record your singing in video or audio, which has been a standard feature in SingStar since the beginning. Our experience with SingStar's online features has been mixed - the shop sometimes hangs, and we can't always get online - but it works most of the time, and when it does it's hilarious: a vast timesink full of bizarre video that helps fuel a thriving online community via PlayStation Network and the official website. SingStar also has over 350 downloadable songs.

One thing you can do with Lips, at least, is import songs from your iPod or other compatible devices, but our luck with iPods was mixed. Our iPod Touch didn't work and our iPod Video crashed the Xbox 360 outright a number of times. When we finally got it to work, with an old iPod Nano, we duly transferred a few songs across - except it doesn't transfer them, and demands the device be reattached again if you ever want to access them again. There are no lyrics or music videos to back the action, of course, so when you select the songs they're simply played back with the microphones live, and you can adjust mic volume up and down as you can for any of the regular songs. Still, if you can tolerate giving personal usage data away, you can report what you import to Microsoft so the Redmond DLC machine can make decisions about what to license.

Having to buy your songs again later (thanks to the horrendous music industry) is of course stupid, but it's the norm for music games. The reason people do it is for things like the note charts and collaborative elements, in the cases of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and for the competitive and community elements - whether locally or online - for SingStar. The problem that Lips is going to have is that it has no community features worth talking about, and that the competitive elements are fundamentally flawed.

Play through a few songs, and it becomes clear that Lips is easier than any of the other singing games, and with no adjustable difficulty level. Play through a few dozen, and you encounter glitches and hilarious shortcuts to success that neuter the online challenge aspect as well. Beware people who challenge you to rap songs, for example, because they can simply hum a monotone to hit every single note perfectly. For singing, Lips seems to focus on when you're wrong rather than right, and sometimes just gives up and pretends you're wicked, like when you're dragging the mic head back and forth on the carpet during Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" and it reckons you're hitting every note and doing vibrato on the long ones. At one point, player one's mic claimed to be receiving a brilliant but slightly imperfect rendition of every song we queued up, despite nobody making any noise and the TV having been muted. Only after we reset the 360 did it behave properly.

With such a wildly positive - if not simply wild - reward system, it's also debatable whether the gestures affect the outcome drastically. You may benefit from timing the use of Star Stream, but your opponent may simply score higher due to bugs or craftily rubbing the microphone against his leg. The motion sensitivity is hardly perfect, either, and this also spoils the tambourine, which lags behind your microphone shakes. As for tapping away with buttons on the regular 360 controllers, it's a fleeting novelty that allows you to earn additional medals and Achievements.

On a cost basis, at least, Lips ought to be ahead of SingStar, since they're both 40 quid and Lips has more songs and nicer microphones. But when you consider what else SingStar has over Lips, it's harder to make the argument. Thanks to DLC in particular, music games often defy what's-in-the-box reviewing; in the same way that World of Warcraft improves with Blizzard's ongoing support, music games become more attractive as their creators offer a broader range of downloadable music, and it's only fair to reward it once the potential has been realised. It has for SingStar, but it won't be for a while with Lips.

But the saddest thing about Lips is that it suffers in comparison to SingStar's gameplay. We've long moaned about legacy issues with SingStar - that it can't cope with vibrato, punishes you for tailing off at the right time, and has a bit of lag in audio playback - but despite Lips' fancy mics and superficial improvements, it's too easy, too isolated from other players, and too buggy. The irony is that SingStar has glitches as well, now and then, and casual gamers seem to put up with this, whereas Microsoft - architect of the Red Rings - has little goodwill left to cash in on that front. Casual or not, though, you should only buy this if you can't get SingStar.

brynstar

I'm a little disheartened, but still fully plan on picking up my copy this afternoon because I love iNiS.

darleysam

Yeah, that was kind of a shame reading that. It sounds like it's just not very well made, unfortunately. I guess it depends how easily they can patch out some of the bugs (like just making random noises and having it counted as correct). I'd guess that's not just some errant code, but would need quite an overhaul

brynstar

Yes, it's a shame, as the microphone hardware and the importing of songs both hold such promise.