Product Description: Work your way to the top of the charts with Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Bundle. You're on your way from tryouts to the finals, all while trying to earn a compliment from Simon Cowell. Select a character or add your image into the game with EyeToy camera, and then prove you have what it takes in a series of competitions featuring 40 classic and contemporary songs, featuring Fergie, Gladys Knight, Cutting Crew, and Billy Joel. Try to match each song's pitch and phrasing. Points are awarded each time a note is hit and held for the proper duration, with bonus multipliers awarded for stringing together successful combos. Stage presence is also judged, and you can unlock additional clothing and accessories to create a crowd-pleasing outfit. After each performance, judges Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson, and Simon Cowell offer feedback and give you a score. But if you do badly, the digital version of Simon will launch into a tirade full of helpful comments like: "That sort of singing should be illegal." Unlock clips from the show including performances by Clay Aiken. You may sing alone or compete with friends in head-to-head or team games. With this game, you'll feel like you're actually part of the show!
Wait to buy this game! I have several of the Karaoke Revolution games and this one disappoints. You can not really use the game for Karaoke as when you get 3/4 of the way through the song static starts crackling through the speakers. This is a flaw in the game that Konami is aware of but there is no word from them as to when a fix will be out. The only solution to this problem is to turn the mic volume down to zero. Two mics for duet mode are also very hard to get working. You have to go muck with the audio settings on the PS3 (choose Logitech Microphone). I recommend only buying this game when they have these problems fixed. Also I assumed when I bought the game that you could put your face on you character with a PlayStation Eye, but the camera only displays what is sees in the background of the game in certain venues.
UPDATE: I recently bought SingStar for the PS3 and tried the microphones with Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Encore. IT HELPS WITH THE STATIC PROBLEM mentioned above. I have found much less static using the Singstar PS3 mics. The Singstar mics are of good quailty and connect to a USB adapter box (two mics with stereo style jacks plug into the adapter box which uses one USB port). Duet mode works with the two Singstar mics without any mucking around. Not a perfect solution, but better than the included mics.
Best Karaoke Revolution yet! I wanted to try and balance out the negative reviews the PS3 version of this game has been getting. I actually think its the best version of Karaoke Revolution yet. It's like the original PS2 game with improved HD graphics, multiple play modes, online play and leaderboards, and over a hundred downloadable songs(so far). It also works with the PS Eye or the original Eyetoy(for live video to the background screens) and any standard USB microphone. I really think having downloadable songs is the best feature, because you can build up a library of your favorite songs from past versions all on one disc, and not have to drop in and out of a game. If you have any of the old Karaoke Revolution games, you can sell them on Ebay (some of the original games are going for big bucks) and just build up your song collection in this game.
And unlike Singstar, you can use Rockband microphones and this game has a lot more songs that are fun to sing!
Pros: Updated HD graphics Lots of gameplay options, multi player and online matches Online leaderboards 40 songs included, over 100 downloadable songs with more on the way Unlockable HD videos of past Idol performances
Cons: Can't use PS Eye/Eyetoy to import your own face on to a character. The one feature that the PS2 version has that I miss!
Weakest Entry to Date While the game is still fun to play, this is by far the weakest entry in the Karaoke Revolution franchise. As my wife points out, these games are all about the singing, and KRAI: Encore delivers on this point. The tracklist has 40 titles, with a pretty good mix of genres spanning over several decades. The songs are, with a few exceptions, spot-on covers of the originals. And the background graphics are quite good, very realistic, almost like you're there.
However, my wife's opinions notwithstanding, there are a great many flaws in the game:
1. Sub-par character graphics. The graphics and animation are terrible. Konami decided to go away from the "cartoony" characters and make them more human and life-like. The cartoony characters looked better and moved better. The more life-like characters are--let's face it--ugly, and their dancing is horrid. Also, you cannot customize every feature of your character as you could in some previous versions.
2. Let us have a moment of silence for Konami's loss of it's partner in the franchise, Harmonix. The system for monitoring and scoring rhythm and pitch, though in appearance and theory is the same, is not as good or as accurate. I've found the arrow bouncing around the pitch bars more often than ever before, which is really annoying.
3. One word sums up the online store: disappointing. And this was the selling point of the game for my wife, to be able to download new songs. So far the only songs up on the store are songs from previous versions of the game! True, those will go into this version of the game and count towards total score and platinum/diamond records. But if we're singing just to sing, why not just pop in one of the other discs, which are already paid for?! Given time, I hope that Konami will provide NEW songs for download, not just even more songs from previous releases.
4. Yet ANOTHER new microphone that you DON"T need. (We have 4 KR mics.) Wait and buy the game when it doesn't come in a bundle.
Wait for singstar this isn't worth the money... First off the vocals for the songs are not from the real artists. Some songs come close but gives the game a bad feel. Sometimes you hear static when you sing. Maybe its a bad mic and im just unlucky but its not worth the 69 bucks to me. Character customization is limited. Your stuck with pre made models and all you can do is edit their clothing. Other than that, if you like singing the game is fun we have a good time playing it. Id rather wait for Sing Star whenever that one comes out. At least you get real artists singing and there videos to boot.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
