News

• Lips
• Reviewed on: Xbox 360
• Also available for: None
• 
  
• The Good: Wireless microphones; certain songs accompanied by artist's music video; low-stress party game vibe. Second player can join at any time. Compatible with a range of audio devices including the iPod
• The Bad: Imported songs don't have music videos or lyrics sheets. Can't sing imported songs unless host device is connected to the console. Jukebox mode doesn't play the whole video. Short mode cuts song off half way through
• The Verdict: Singing game's success hinges on downloadable content

At first I thought I was watching a commercial for the lofts in that trendy new condo development downtown. The scene opens with a couple of young adults trying to awkwardly connect at a social gathering. They pick up microphones and start crooning Peter, Bjorn & John's Young Folks, people crowd around them and dance, another song is loaded onto the Xbox 360 (via Microsoft's Zune audio player of course), and the urbanites presumably party on into the night. All thanks to Lips, Microsoft's answer to Karaoke Revolution and Singstar.

An opener that contains that much contrived hipness usually signals something very lame, but not so with Lips – a slick and low-stress, if clumsy at times, singing game that promises to be as good as you're willing to make it (by shelling out extra money for downloadable content).

Looking good

The Lips package comes with two pretty sweet wireless microphones that light up in a range of funky colours when they're turned on, and then continue to pulse in time to the beat. They're motion-sensitive too, so if a player wants to join in on a song all he or she has to do is give the microphone a shake. You can also shake the microphone rhythmically to mimic backing instruments like tambourine or cowbell.

The mechanic is similar to other singing games that scroll lyrics and melodic indicators across the screen and record how accurately you're able to match pitch and rhythm as you sing. Lips is less about mastering songs, though, and more about establishing a certain social vibe. You're awarded star points and medals for “good” performances, but it's a poor indication of true talent because it's easy to run up your points by just tapping the microphone, blowing into it or humming a single note.

Lips gets props for having a visually appealing interface. In the freestyle Sing! Mode, songs are represented by their album art like in Windows Media Player. When you click through and start to sing, the artist's music video plays in the background (if one exists, which isn't always the case for older songs like Ben E. King's Stand By Me).

Songs can be sung in Full or Short length, but Short is disappointing. In other music games, songs in Short mode have simply been re-edited by removing long instrumental passages and extra verses to form an abridged though complete-sounding version. Lips' ham-fisted solution is to literally just cut the song off after a certain amount of time.

There's also Time Bomb mode, where you fill up a cup of water as you sing then tilt the microphone to pour out the water and extinguish a bomb's fuse; Kiss, where a couple moves together as you sing and then finally kiss; and Vocal Fighters, a two-player verses mode where singing better than the other player pushes their character off of the stage.

Karaoke with video

Jukebox Mode is the party mode that the condo-dwellers in the video so aptly demonstrated. It cycles through songs by playing the music videos on your television. If people hear a song they know, they can pick up a microphone and the game launches into “sing” mode while the video continues to play. This is a pretty cool concept – it's basically like setting up a party playlist that adds the visual element of music videos as well – but it's carried out a little clumsily.

For one thing, Jukebox mode doesn't play the entire video unless you commit to singing it. Otherwise, it plays the first 20 seconds or so before fading in the next one. So as part of a party background music strategy it's really not that effective. Also, after someone has committed to singing, they can't just seamlessly transition back out into Jukebox again because the mode will simply start to cycle through every song in sing mode. If you don't know a song, you have to use the Xbox 360 controller to end it and return to Jukebox.

Lips comes with 40 preloaded songs from artists including Nirvana, REM, Radiohead, Avril Lavigne, Blondie, Depeche Mode, Johnny Cash, Maroon 5, Lil Mama and Rihanna. It's not a bad cross-section of music, and through the Get Music tab you can buy more for 160 Microsoft Points per tune.

Import your own tunes

At press time the downloadable content was looking pretty anaemic, but Lips will also read your own music content from the Xbox 360 hard drive or a variety of removable media. You simply plug in a device and wait for the list to populate, then click on the tunes you want to add. I tried the procedure with a Zune, third generation iPod nano and a Creative Zen Mozaic player and it worked each time.

It's a cool feature, but there are some significant limitations too. One, you can't sing the songs unless the source device is connected to the Xbox 360. If you've imported songs from multiple devices, it can get very confusing to remember which song belongs to what device, so your best bet seems to be to store playlists on the hard drive. Second, imported songs don't display music videos or lyrics, and you can't earn medals for them.

The ability to cycle through music videos and let people jump in and start singing with wireless microphones is a brilliant idea that Lips could have implemented slightly better than it has. Overall, though, it could be the start of something promising, especially when and if Microsoft decides to support it with the same rich downloadable content that Activision and Harmonix have with Guitar Hero and Rock Band.