Singstar vs KR: American Idol questions

[Lady Jaye]

As many of you know, I love karaoke. I own most versions of Karaoke Revolution (save for the CMT version cuz I don't like country music and the American Idol edition because I just never got around to getting it -- I don't care for AI but liked the songlist published). My qualm with KR is that, aside from the CMT edition, the other versions offer a bit for everyone instead of thematic discs.

Anyway, last year, Sony finally brought to North America its Singstar series, which was already well established in Europe. There are currently 2 editions of Singstar available here (Singstar Pop and Singstar Rock). Is either edition any good? How does it compare to Karaoke Revolution?

*edit* modified thread title to reflect more of a comparison between singstar and KR...

[walrusmonger]

i had the first singstar, which was singstar rocks i believe, and it was ok. not as fun as KR, songlist was average, but they had music videos in the background which was cool.

pick up karaoke revolution AI instead, the track list is awesome :)

[Ponyone]

I agree with AI, it's got a good songlist and it's sort of fun being judged by the judges... until they start repeating themselves.

[Lady Jaye]

At least with all the KR versions, there's a traditional karaoke mode (considering the quality of the covers, it's actually a great song-price value compared to CD-Gs of songs published by the likes of Soundchoice)... and thanks for the advice. Guess I'll stick to KR then...

*edit* oooh, just checked bestbuy.ca -- not only is KR - American Idol still available, it's actually $10 cheaper than either mike-less edition of singstar (for an extra 10 songs...)! Also, global scores for KR - AI are much higher too (average of 78% according to metacritic).

[walrusmonger]

I didn't play KR:AI for the judges, I just played through the regular quick play styled mode. There's a lot of stuff to unlock when you get the platinums.

[PapaStu]

Singstar is only good when factoring in a love of licensed original music and original music videos playing as the background. I don't like the singing meter nearly as much as I like Karaoke Revolutions meter. Yes you can cheat your way through KR by holding a tone, but with SingStar all you have to do is make 'noise' when the word portion is lighting up.

[YoshiM]

Singstar is okay. My bro-and-sis-in laws picked up Rocks months ago and recently Pop (as they are the only ones in the group that owns a PS2).

Personally I think the Singstar series pales in comparison so far. At first I thought the music videos were cool but as I played I found them to be more distracting as the vocal meters are superimposed over them. Speaking of the vocal meters: what's nice about KR is that the vocal range and the words scroll together in the same place and the indicator is "real time". Singstar really isn't and it's sometimes hard to try and correct your voice as your progress line tends to "jump".

Songs aren't bad in Rocks. I always wanted to belt out "Rocket Man" in a KR type situation along with some "Winds of Change" (thankfully you don't have to whistle). Compared to KR, Rocks seemed to have more recent stuff like Coldplay or Blur. Still a good mix of older staples like "Respect" or "I Will Survive". Pop! has your classic "pop" staples as well ("Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", "Take on Me") but also has more modern stuff on there as well by James Blunt, Ashlee Simpson, Hinder and Rihanna. Basically a lot of songs I only passively heard or never heard of (along with some of the artists like The Raconteurs-who?!). It's probably a decent mix of songs that will make both the adults and the 18 and younger crowd belt out their songs while the others scratch their heads in confusion. For a lot of songs, I was in the head scratching department.

The games seem to be more like a "karaoke machine that keeps score". As far as I know there aren't any unlockable songs (or anything for that matter) so the scores are more for old school posterity than anything else. In KR I dug the extra clothing, characters and songs that opened up when you got enough points. Also with Singstar there's no risk of failure-the worst thing you get is a bad score. In KR if you sing bad the crowd leaves and the song ends. Another negative point is the microphones you get with Singstar: they only work with Singstar AFAIK.

Even though we don't karaoke-it-up much anymore, KR wins hands down for me.

[kingpong]

Singstar pales in comparison to KR. The thing that ultimately differentiates these games is the manner in which the lyrics are presented. As YoshiM mentioned, KR is the clear winner here. In KR the notes and lyrics continually scroll horizontally. Singstar doesn't scroll, instead just popping up new screens of notes and lyrics - a more traditional karaoke approach perhaps, but it doesn't work here.

The problem with the Singstar approach is the lack of continuity between the last note on one screen and the first note on the next screen. It can be difficult to tell what note you're supposed to sing when you don't have the context of the previous note - just how high is that note? Unlike real music where one recognizes the position of the notes on the staff, in these games there is not an absolute scale and everything is relative. When Singstar pops up a new screen of notes you can't really tell what that first note is. Sure, most of the time you know the song well enough to know what to sing, but key changes and such are a nightmare.

While this is the fatal flaw of Singstar, another significant problem is that there is no way to turn off the backing vocal. In KR you have re-recorded songs with independent music and vocal tracks. Singstar is just playing a music video and you're singing along with it. I don't want every song I sing to be a duet, but it is with Singstar.

KR:AI was a disappointing game, as the AI content, especially the forced song inclusions (who wants to sing a Fantasia Burrito song?!?), and new interface didn't measure up to the usual standard. The song list was also fairly short if I remember correctly. I liked it better than the country version since I liked more than 5 songs, but it wasn't as good as the mainline KR games.

[FlufflePuff]

I own Singstar and I've played quite a bit of AI. I would personally tell you to get the AI KR first. Singstar has some fun songs, but its also not very forgiving of my bad singing (which is a downer). I've actually been looking for the country version of KR and found that it's nearly impossible to find.

[ianoid]

Question answered. I was wondering about Singstar and the answer is clear, it is the lesser competitor of the two.

[Lady Jaye]

I tried Singstar today at Arcadia. Meh for the karaoke engine. KR is much better. Like the song selection though, so maybe if I find it cheap... but KR: AI comes first.

[Rob2600]

If I buy Karaoke Revolution Party for the GameCube, will the microphone work on the Wii?