We Sing Review – Fun For The Whole Family

Recently the team here at OneLastContinue received an invite to an exclusive review event for the recently released Wii title We Sing.  Not a site to turn down an invite to a party Team OLC made our way to London, England for what we were expecting to be ‘bleh’.   A good few hours of traffic, and a couple trains later, we arrived at Lucky Voice Soho in order to have a blast at the latest dish from Nordic Games.  And ‘bleh’ it was not.

Despite my lack of experience within the social circle that is ‘karaoke superstardom’ I must say straight off that I really, surprisingly actually, enjoyed this title.  We Sing, we were told, is the first title of its kind to be released exclusively for the Wii – as well as being the first to introduce the use of four microphones simultaneously.  Also, it uses a engine we’re told is much different from those of Singstar and Lips. So let’s have a look at it, shall we?  Sure.

As you would expect from a vocally empowered game you’re presented the words of the song on screen along with a pitch meter to help you sing in tune and in time, much like the other titles in this genre such as Singstar, Rock Band and Lips.  In game there are three levels of difficulty, easy, medium and hard.  The gap between these difficulties isn’t really a huge one, making the jump between difficulties achievable for even the most basic of beginners; however,  it’s still large enough to make the jump worth it and give more experienced singers something to aim for.  In the higher difficulties they player needs to be more accurate with the pitch as one might expect, but you are still given a good warning of the lyrics so it does not become too much of a challenge.  As well as the differing difficulties each higher level allows for a higher top score, so if you want the top score of ten thousand then you’ll have no choice but to play in hard mode.

There are several modes of the game to play through, all of which add replay value, as well as making the game more fun in many social situations.  Fairly obviously, the game has a solo mode – allowing you shy ones out there to sing your little hearts out in the privacy of your room, or alternatively allowing you to practise while you wait for your friends to come round.  Whilst the game is more of a party title, this is  good for learning those songs you think you know but you’ll soon realise you don’t, and will help you to not look such a fool in front of people – unless that’s the plan then ignore that and don’t play solo mode.  As well as solo mode there are several multiplayer modes to play through, ranging in levels of competition.

To start with lets talk about the least competitive mode, and that’s the ‘We Sing’ mode.  In this mode every player sings into a separate microphone but individual vocal abilities aside, the score in given to the group – not each person – allowing no one to turn round and claim dominance or fling other such terrible insults in hoarse voices.  During play of this mode it does not show each player’s pitch so even the clever ones can’t really figure out who did best, unless it’s blatantly obvious by their voice.  So say you have three awesome vocalists and one not so great, a high score may thus lead the fourth into believing they can sing when they can’t, running off to X-Factor and being disillusioned by the harsh, yet often truthful, words of the dark messiah Simon Cowell.

After that we’ve got ‘Versus’ mode – fairly self explanatory.  In this mode each players performance is scored separately – giving you a separate pitch meter for each microphone during play.  At the end of the song each player’s points are displayed on screen to let the mocking begin / see how you did, if your friends are nicer than mine that is.   In this mode the winning player who beats a high score can enter their name using the Wii Remote which is then displayed on the ‘Charts’.  I found this mode to be enjoyable, with just the right amount of competition for casual play – especially if one of you is wearing a wig as you can see from the press event coverage photo below.

Similar to Versus mode is ‘Group Battle’.  This mode takes the competitive elements of Versus, with the combined score functions of We Sing mode and essentially allows you to sing in groups against each other and the players with the most combined points wins the round.  It’s pretty good fun to be honest but it’s not as crazy as the next one.

This mode, which I would judge to be most competitive, is called ‘First to 5000’, which, as the name suggests, is a mode where players attempt to get 5000 before the opposing team.  Whilst this mode is great for those serious players, the fact the song cuts away as soon as 5000 points are reached makes it less enjoyable if you are having fun singing the song – definitely one for the more serious singers.  If a player does not reach 5000 points by the end of the song the player with the most points is announced the winner – but hopefully that if you’re going to play this mode you won’t let that happen.

Finally in the multiplayer, or ‘Party’ modes, there’s ‘Pass the Mic’.  Another fairly obvious mode, this is one for those who only have one microphone, allowing you to ‘pass the mic’ during the song so you can still play together.  I like the concept of this game, especially with the rate I lose my microphones, but the implementation is a little off.  You are given one line warning to pass the microphone, but this is often timed at points where if you have issues with people in your space then there’s going to be some points lost in the transfer.  Apart from perhaps some timing issues however, I think the mode is a great idea and if you just want to have some fun together then give it a sing-song.

As well as these modes, all of which involve point scoring, there is also Karaoke mode in which there is no pitch meter and no scoring at all – you simply sing along as you would if you were drunk/full of Coca-Cola at the pub on Karaoke night.  This mode allows you to sing your heart out with no worries of the Wii judging your performance, though the dastardly machine probably is in secret, enabling you to just have fun.  In this mode however, from what I can tell at least, it only picks up one microphone for input.  Though the input is not as important in this mode, if you want to hear your voice out of your television speakers then this may, or may not, bother you.

An important aspect of this game to mention is that there are no unlockables in game.  Each and every one of the thirty tracks (including ‘Poker Face’ , ‘Monster’ and ‘Barbie Girl‘, full list can be found here) are available from the moment you start the game.  This may not be appealing to the more serious gamers out there, but it seems a smart decision for the target audience as well as for people like me who wouldn’t really play through for extra songs.  On this topic however I did ask the team from Nordic Games at the launch event regarding DLC and for the time being there is no downloadable content and currently no plans to incorporate this.  I was told however that if a new version of the Wii was to be released with substantial internal memory than this would be something that would be considered.

To add to the singing there are also some other pretty cool features in the game.  To begin there’s a range of background images to choose from, all bold, powerful and something you’d expect from one of the old iPod adverts.  You can also change the colours of the buttons in the menu – mine being a lovely royal purple colour. When choosing songs the album art for each song is shown, and during loading there is a random fact displayed on screen, usually relevant to the song you have chosen.  However my favourite part of the game is the comments you are given after each play and while I can’t mention any names, these are all quotes from someone I find particularly funny, and being told I sounded like the bastarding Crazy Frog did make me laugh.

Pluses

+ Awesome track list – You’ll have a hard time finding someone that doesn’t know at least ten tracks on there.

+ Simple and intuitive – Obvious how to play and not too challenging for beginners.

+ Simple yet appealing visuals – Menus are simple and slick and music videos are of great quality.

+ Four microphones – More players means less people waiting around bored.

+ Plenty of modes – Modes for different levels of skill and varying occasions

+ Difficulty levels – Gap between them is not too hard to reach.

Minuses

- Looks ‘bitty’ – Due to real time engine on screen scoring can appear fragmented.

- One ‘buggish’ – On at least one song I found I couldn’t hold a single note for about thirty seconds and still got perfect throughout.

- No downloads – Due to lack of internal memory in Wii, as well as the target audience, downloadable content is not currently available.

To summarize I actually, really, enjoyed this game, its track list and I had great fun playing.  While I’m slightly embarrassed that my best song is ‘Barbie Girl’ I still had fun singing it, and despite it not being a particularly serious game it was still good to sing my heart out to Meatloaf this morning whilst trying to gather the brain power to write this article.  As well as this I was informed by the team at Nordic Games that they’d like to look at voice recognition for menu control which I think would improve the game quite alot.  Finally, I did like how by calling the game ‘We Sing’ they’ve effectively stopped Nintendo creating their own singing title….maybe, so that makes it Nordic Games 1 – Nintendo 0.  Well done Nordic games, this is definitely one for New Years Eve!