SingStar Dance Game Review

The SingStar franchise is well known throughout the Playstation community, with it's simple concept appealing to many of us around the world. You buy the game, along with a microphone and begin you're karaoke dream in you're very own living room. You can try to fill in pitch and timing bars with you're voice to earn points, but we all know the only reason to buy this game is to blast out you're favourite tunes along with a group of friends and feel like celebrity's for the night.

The SingStar franchise has always been about singing, however, now they have taken advantage of the Playstation Move's motion sensing technology and added dancing to the mix. Now the 30 songs also have dance routines and this certainly adds much more value to the content. As always the singing part of the game is fun and great entertainment in a party environment, the dancing however, is just a frustrating mess.

I am not a fan of these dancing games which seem to be popping up quite frequently these day's, they only seem to be any kind of fun when playing in a party and i personally like to play solo when i am playing a game.

One of the biggest problems with this game is that you never know what's coming on the dance floor front, unless you have seen the routine before. Whenever i would start a song, i would find myself failing almost all of the first half of a song. The game doesn't even provide any information on how to correct you're mistakes. If this was meant to be a solo experience then it would feel less frustrating, but this is a party game and when a group of friends get together all they want is to jump into the game and get started. When a party game doesn't feel easy to access and frustrates you then you know it's a complete failure. It's also likely a group of friends won't want to hear the same song over and over again, this would mean learning each new song and that would take hours. The game just doesn't deliver the fun party experience and enjoyment that other top franchises in this genre do.

With the success of Microsoft's Dance-Central, a game which uses Kinect motion sensing technology, SingStar will likely be thought of as a failure in comparison with this game. That game allows players to see what moves are coming next on screen, as well as slowing down the action in practise mode to nail a routine. SingStar does neither of these two valuable things, it's just a trial and error game. The on-screen character doesn't hold a move controller, so while you can watch him dance it can sometimes be slightly confusing. You will also need a large area of space to play this game (especially if you play two singers & two dancers). There are various way's to play the game, just sing, just dance, dance and sing, but no matter what way you play it's never fun and when the Move controller gets involved, everything becomes a mess.

Perhaps the saddest part about it all is that SingStar actually comes with a great track-list. While allot is reused from previous SingStar games, songs like NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" never loose their place on the karaoke and dance floor. It's just a shame that these great songs can't be enjoyed because of a poorly made game.

It's also important to keep in mind that only the 30 songs on the disc are functional with the "Dance" part of the game (using the Move controller), so any imported songs will not work. This also feels like it is just one big lazy package.

Overall i was not impressed at all with this game. It was made for a party environment, yet it doesn't feel easy to access. The song list is great but there is no fun to be had here with poor controls, lack of modes, and i would recommend you skip this game.

SingStar is just a waste of money 3/10