December 2, 2009
Although my parents might claim otherwise, I have never been much into video games. Outside of two years at 12 and 13, when I would pump quarters into video games at The Wizard or the Double Dragon game at the local Mac’s Milk, I have been significantly less interested in video games than my peers.
Sure, I had a Nintendo, have played games on my PC, and enjoy hockey and puzzle games. But I have not had a dedicated game system since that Nintendo, and have simply not put the kind of time (or money) into games that I see others doing all around me. I prefer (in no particular order) sports, board games, roleplaying games, books, television, movies and surfing the internet to these. And they all take up enough time to make gaming something that just is not Mr. Topp’s cup of tea.
The most recent changes in gaming have perked my interest, however. The Wii is intriguing, but I have hardly been exposed to it. More interesting are the Guitar Heroes, Rock Bands and Singstars of the world. Karen is a proud owner of a PlayStation 2, so around this time last year I spent more money on video games than I had in the thirty-two years previous. Singstar and Guitar Hero came to our home.
These games are fantastic — Guitar Hero is all about pretending to play music. Singstar is karaoke. Newer versions of Guitar Hero incorporate both — karaoke together with pretending to play music. As a lover of pretending, music and karaoke, these games are clearly designed with people like me in mind.
But Singstar, as fun as it may be, strikes a sore spot. In Guitar Hero you just pretend. If you miss a note, the music stops. If you hit the notes, the music plays on — completely identical to the original recording. Singstar? The sounds coming out are the ones you make.
Fantastic — I like this …
… except …
… it’s a game. And in games, you keep score.
Scoring in Singstar is based on how close you come to replicating the exact notes in the original recording. How close depends on the game’s settings. As a great party game, this seems to most often be set on “easy”. Easy allows full points if you’re within a fairly wide range of the note — and this range is both too wide and too narrow.
When you sing karaoke, the best results often come when you do not sing the song note for note as found in the original recording. You can sound fantastic singing a song, while singing it entirely (or mostly) differently. Think of bands that do covers — the ones that attempt to replicate a song exactly usually suck. Those that reinvent the song can sometime be incredible.
Alternatively, think of bands playing their own music live. Live versions of a song are very seldom note-for-note with the original. Particularly the singing.
Singstar’s points system does not reward singing a song well, but differently. In particular, singing in harmony with your opponent will net you zero points, as decent singers in group play often discover. However, singing almost, but not quite in tune will often get you lots of points.
In short, Singstar rewards those who make the cringing noises that we usually associate with karaoke the most. The good karaoke singers — the ones who go up, sing the song their own way and have fun along with the audience — are punished by Singstar‘s scoring system.
Thus, Singstar and its bretheren disappoint me regularly, by bringing out the worst of karaoke every time it comes out of its box. It ought to be a little bit smarter and somehow reward a good, fun karaoke instead of the spine-chilling slightly-off warbling.
But I still love it.
Photos by Mr. Topp. Click to see ‘em big.
