Eurogamer: Lips Hands-On

Eurogamer writes: "When it comes to Lips, Microsoft's first stab at a karaoke game since the long-forgotten Xbox Music Mixer, SingStar isn't so much the elephant in the room as the elephant in 15 million living rooms - or at least the business with 15 million sales - and no one's going to let Microsoft and Lips developer iNiS forget it, least of all us. "What do we think of SingStar?" says iNiS' chief creative officer Keiichi Yano, when we pop the question. "I can't really talk to the other music games, but you know obviously we've looked at it, and we do consider it a competitor, but I really want to do my own thing here, and I think one of the things we're really doing is providing a very deep experience."

After half an hour exploring the Lips package, the claim rings true. The basic mechanics are admittedly familiar - a music video plays in the background as lyrics and pitch lines appear in the foreground so you can sing along, and the game measures the quality of your performance based on pitch and rhythm ("this is pretty standard," Yano deadpans), which means you can get away with humming as long as you fit the tune. But there's more to it at every turn. "If you sing really well, and your pitch is very accurate, you'll score higher," Yano notes. There's also an orange meter along the top of the screen."