Lips, great with friends and a guilty pleasure on your own!

User Rating: 7.5 | Lips X360
Lips is the first karaoke game to grace the Xbox 360 and is developed by iNiS developers of the standout DS title 'Elite Beat Agents'. The game features 41 songs of different genre's to sing along to. Furthermore the game is bundled with two wireless microphones to allow for co-op singing.

The game is similar to the popular 'Singstar' franchise in that the player must match the right pitch in order to get points and bonuses. Once enough points are collected the player can do a pose in order to receive bonus points while singing. This is similar to 'Guitar Hero's' power up that players receive for strumming the right note consecutively. There are other mini-games such as singing the right notes in order to stop the bomb exploding. Playing alone can be boring; however this game comes into its own in the 2 player modes. The second player can join in with just a shake of the microphone which is very efficient as you don't have to start the song over again. Shaking of the microphone allows for an instrument to be played such as a tambourine. Doing this to the beat will fill up your bonus bar, however this feature seems very gimmicky and doesn't really aid the overall game play, in fact it can be seen to hinder it as it is almost impossible to maintain a note while trying to a star jump in midair.

Once the song is finished you are given a score and a ranking, the smallest being biscuit and the largest being infinity. A recent update has allowed your score to be compared to others around the world. This will see you singing the same song numerous times just to move up the leader board singing voice permitting, this adds to the games longevity. The different types of songs are pretty impressive ranging from 'Another one bites the dust' by Queen and 'With You' by Chris Brown. This ensures that all audiences are catered for. Nevertheless 41 songs doesn't seem quite enough as you are bound to not know all of the songs. This is where Downloadable content comes in; many songs have been released on Xbox live at 160 points a piece. This might anger consumers who would expect these songs to be present on the disk.

In Conclusion Lips is essentially a party game and a good one at that. However when you are not with a group of friends Lips really doesn't offer much for the single player. There is no voice playback which is a common feature with karaoke games. Furthermore there is only one difficulty meaning that it's relatively easy to maintain those notes. If you love a casual sing song then this game is for you. However if you are a die hard karaoke fan then you are bound to be disappointed. Lips is fun and can be enjoyed by the whole family. It's not as good as 'Singstar', however if the next installment has more depth to it, it may just pip 'Singstar' as the best karaoke game around.