Lips Hands-on Preview

As far at WTF? moments go, this one has to go down as one of the all time greats. The assembled throng, a mix of game hacks from the UK and mainland Europe and impossibly attractive women hired just to sing and dance, were half expecting Microsoft UK to chuck Welsh singer Duffy on stage inside the swanky Belgravia venue, as they did at E3 in July, to sing ‘Mercy’ for the hundred millionth time. How wrong we were.

When Aha’s Morten Harket took to the stage, grabbed the wireless microphone (complete with flashing LEDs that pulse to the beat of the song), and belted out his classic hit ‘Take On Me’, nailing that high note without breaking sweat, all thoughts of the horribly underwhelming E3 Duffy performance melted away in a sea of 80s nostalgia. Absolutely awesome.

Unfortunately Morten won’t come bundled with Lips, Microsoft’s SingStar killer, when it’s released on November 21. And neither will ‘Take On Me’, which is being reserved for a day one download. But it will come with two of those lovely wireless microphones, which, somewhat impressively, can be activated just by shaking them and have motion sensing technology built in. And you know what that means people, don’t you. That’s right… movement.

At certain points in any given song you’ll see a symbol flash on screen that prompts you to mimic the action it’s displaying. For example, two hands in the air requires you to raise both your arms in the air. Another requires you to spin 360 degrees. Others require you to simply jerk out an arm, or shake it wildly. For some, this will be great. It certainly looked great when the the lovely ladies Microsoft hired to demonstrate Lips before and after Morten’s seminal performance were doing it. Not sure how great it would look if we were doing it, though.

Thankfully, you don’t have to do the movements, and that’s because, while you will get a score at the end of each song in Lips that tells you how well you’ve sung, you can’t fail a song. Any song. Even if you put the microphone down and go off and make a cup of tea, the song will keep playing in your absence. You’ll get a rubbish score, of course, but at least you’ll have enjoyed the officially licensed music video.

We know you’re dying to know, so we’ll tell you. Morten got 2.5 million points for singing his own song, which landed him the ‘Big Bang’ award. Later, the game’s product manager told us he’d never seen such a high score. Well done Morten. Well done.

Lips, as you might have realised, is part of Microsoft’s three-pronged assault (which includes Scene It? Box Office Smash and You’re in the Movies) on the ‘staying in is the new going out’ crowd, an audience that has traditionally ignored the perceived to be hardcore Xbox 360 thus far. It’s obviously designed to be a game that people will play with friends, perhaps those who don’t normally play games, or perhaps those who do, but just enjoy singing. Everything about the game smacks of accessibility – the way a second player can jump into a song just by shaking the microphone, or a third or fourth player can add basic percussion with standard Xbox 360 controllers. Every track is available from the off, too. There’s no gamer-style unlock track progression you get with Rock Band, for example.

So far, so good. But even this close to release there are still a few Lips-related questions that haven’t been answered to our complete satisfaction. At E3 it was revealed that you’ll be able to plug an MP3 player (Microsoft will hope it’s a Zune) into your Xbox 360 and Lips will make sing-along versions of your DRM-free songs. Microsoft is still a bit fuzzy on this feature, and it wasn’t demonstrated at the preview event, which is always telling. We do know that lyrics won’t display with songs from your music collection, that not every MP3 player will be compatible and that the songs will be streamed, not downloaded, but it will reduce the volume of the vocals so that your own singing can be heard in the mix, and it will score you, which is impressive in its own right. What we want to know is how it’s all going to look – what images you’ll see, how precisely the game will determine how well you’re singing, and might you be able to download lyrics?

As with most music games, your interest will largely be determined by the track list. Lips will come with 40 songs on the disc, and the types of music available are varied, ranging from straight up pop to grunge. Highlights for us include ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ by Radiohead (Wes), ‘Virtual Insanity’ by Jamiroquai (Seb), ‘Listen To Your Heart’ by Roxette (James) and ABC by The Jackson 5 (Tom), but we’re sure someone somewhere likes Umbrella by Rihanna. And of course you can expect loads of songs to be made available as DLC after the game’s released, and, theoretically, if you don’t like any of the songs you can use the ones you’ve got on your MP3 player (which we assume you like).

Lips is shaping up to be a worthy rival to Sony’s SingStar series and should fill the karaoke game void on the 360. Will it be better than SingStar? The fact that the microphones are wireless gives it an advantage in our eyes. The MP3 integration is potentially brilliant, but right now that’s just it. We’ll know soon enough if that potential will be realised. One thing’s for sure, Aha like it, and any friend of Aha’s is a friend of ours.

Lips is due out exclusively for the Xbox 360 on November 21.