Games Booth

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Well over the last week or two I’ve been testing a singing game and a new dance game and my god what a laugh I have had, and been!

So I thought I’d do a joint blog post here for them.

First up is We Sing 80’s for the Nintendo Wii.

While I was born in the 70’s, my music memories are of the 80’s wow what years they were and what great songs came out of them – songs that’ll stick around forever. As a big fan of Queen and Adam Ant when I was given the chance to check out that latest We Sing game I took it up eagerly – hoping that I can re-live my youth, belting out Stand and Deliver or I Want To Break Free.

This game is the first of the series to allow four people to sing together, however as I only own two mic’s it was solo or duets for me.

Much like all the previous We Sing games and the Playstation Singstar’s etc the format is simple, while your selected song plays the words across the bottom and you aim to sing along in tune and at the right pitch.

I loaded up the game and clicked on the song list. Yes, there it was, Queens’ I want to break free, it just had to be done. I wasn’t going to put on a kitchen apron and put my hair in rollers but I was feeling the zone for sure. What a laugh!rkli

I don’t class myself as a singer by any means, so I was pleasantly surprised that I scored really well on the first track, mind you I knew the tune and the words off the top of my head so it wasn’t a hard start.

Second up I launched into the Musical Youth’s Pass The Dutchie, that didn’t go so well but by this point my wife had joined me in the living room, mainly to laugh at me, but she’s one for this type of game, so I handed the mic over to her and sat back!

One thing to note about this game is that the play list is very female orientated, there wasn’t many songs that could be sang by a man. There’s a few songs by men, but they're effeminate men songs, such as Culture Club, Cameo, Frankie goes to Hollywood etc which I know was the case in much of the music in the 80’s, but my vocal range can’t compare to theirs. You can see all the songs available on the game on the song list by clicking this link - the We Love 80’s official webpage complete with misspelled ‘Bangles’.

Other features of the game aside from the four person multi-play include singing lessons, star note and player statistics – detailing how and where you perform well or bad (something which the lessons could potentially help with).

A great game, only downside is purely personal and that goes back to the song list, I wanted some Adam Ant, maybe a bit of Erasure or The Communards – if I’m going to make a fool of myself I wanted to do it singing songs I knew and loved!

So onto the second of the games, this time it was the fourth in the popular Just Dance series – Just Dance 4.

My wife wanted this review to be purely visible, but I’m not really sure I’m ready to release my unco-ordinated moves into the wide world.

This game is fantastic, there’s not much I can say about it apart from that, but I’ll try. We experienced it on the Xbox Kinect, and experience is just the right word for it.

If you’re looking for a fun night in then this has to be it. We laughed and laughed at ourselves on this game, not so much during the dancing but during the playback mode when we simply realised that dancing really wasn’t our forte. The Kinect enables your game play to be recorded live and then while you’re recovering and getting your breathe back, it pulls it together, picks out your funkiest moves and makes a compilation video - this just sums up the games fun point.

The track list has almost 50 songs available for you to get your groove on with and that consists of solo dances, duets and group from One Directions ‘ that What makes you Beautiful to Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, Just Dance 4 has a mass selection - you can find them listed on this link.

This game has to be added to your collection, we own all the Just Dance games but this one really will get played the most. We loved it and plan on sharing it with many friends over the Christmas party season.

GAMESBOOTH RATING -WE SING 80s 9/10

GAMESBOOTH RATING-JUST DANCE 4 9/10

PRODUCT INFORMATION

We Sing 80s