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Sony’s SingStar series could well be one of the most inspired creations of the PlayStation 2 era. With this, the EyeToy, and the Buzz series of games, the company has got the non-gamer crowd pretty much sewn up. Keen to capitalise on SingStar’s current popularity amongst the post-pub party gamers, SingStar Anthems brings together twenty so called ‘anthems’ in a budget priced collection. The big question: how drunk do you need to be in order to sing the songs included in this latest pack?
If you’ve been avoiding the SingStar phenomenon (it’s certainly not for everyone), the game is basically a video game version of Karaoke, played to the music video of each track, and scored by how well the singer performs the track that’s been selected. Being an expansion (although you don’t need to own any previous game in the series) this plays exactly the same as all the others, but the collection of tunes is solid karaoke material – especially if you’re more than a little inebriated.
The collection consists of the likes of “It’s Raining Men” through to more modern pop tunes such as Girls Aloud’s “Biology”. If there’s a problem, though, it’s that the collection is very much skewed towards women’s anthems, sung and adored by women, and rather awkward for most males to sing along to. There’s no denying that classics along the lines of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” can be sung by men and women alike, but being of the female sex certainly helps.
Another weakness of the collection (although this clearly depends on your individual tastes) is its varied selection of tracks. I guess a 70 percent hit ratio isn’t bad, but does anyone really want to sing or listen to people butcher such ‘classics’ as Take That and Lulu’s ear-bleedingly bad “Relight My Fire” or the equally nausea inducing “Crazy Chick” by angelic pop starlet Charlotte Church? There’s only so far you can go to achieve a broad appeal before all the appeal is lost. Thankfully, Anthems doesn’t quite fall into this category.
So, the collection is generally very good, but its lack of great songs for men to sing lets it down somewhat. While the forthcoming PlayStation 3 version of SingStar will allow for a much greater mix of tunes, all from within the same game, the current PlayStation 2 games require you to load up different game discs should the tunes you’re after not be on the disc you’re playing. In a mixed group, the collection on Anthems will leave all but the most fun loving men feeling a little left out.
What’s also becoming obvious is that the game really needs some new life injected into it. The PlayStation 2 hardware may well be holding the development team back, but some advancement in the way the game rates a singer’s voice would have been nice. Hopefully we’ll see a bit of an overhaul in the PlayStation 3 game, which by all accounts should be the ultimate Karaoke-style video game – even if the prospect of thousands of micro-transactions is a scary thought.
There’s not much else that can be said about SingStar Anthems. If you like SingStar and like the twenty tunes listed on the back of the box, you’ll love Anthems. The majority of the tunes are the kind that everyone knows most of the words to, although whether or not everyone will want to sing them is another matter, especially if you’re a butch man with a deep gravelly voice. Bring on the PlayStation 3 version, where angel-faced pop stars can live in harmony with long-haired rock legends, without the need to swap game discs.
