Why You Can Trust CNET Disney Sing It review: Disney Sing It
It's great fun for kids and fans of the Disney films featured, with practical tools to help take melody and singing skills from average to awesome!
If you've been anywhere near a games console or games store in recent years, you would have inevitably come across the unstoppable phenomenon of rhythm and music games; each giving you the chance to take the stage and become your own private rock or pop star. Enter Sing It: Disney's answer to the karaoke game phenomenon for the family's budding young Hannah Montana or Zac Efron to take the stage and show off their vocal talents. Using the familiar SingStar/karaoke style gameplay and SingStar microphone peripherals, Sing It widens the musical gamut and gives the younger members of the family an alternative to the Nirvana style tracks on RockBand or Barry Manilow classics on SingStar.
Disney Sing It
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The Disney Sing It series launches with two discs (sold separately): the first titled "Sing It" features 35 tracks from Disney productions High School Musical, Camp Rock and affiliated artists including Hannah Montana, Jesse McCartney and more. The second Sing It: High School Musical 3 Senior Year features 20 tracks in total from each of the three films in the tween-focussed film franchise. While this review was conducted on a PlayStation 3, the title is also available for Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 with custom microphone peripherals available for purchase with the game in a bundled pack for AU$109.95. If you already have microphones, the game alone costs AU$69.95.
Budding popstars are offered a number of gameplay options in the game's title screen, including QuickPlay (for a quick jam session), Single Play (for the budding soloist) and Multiplayer (for a veritable cast production!).
Under the QuickPlay option, players can select solo, versus (competitive multiplayer karaoke battles for up to one to eight players) or duet. Just like the Single Play or Multiplayer options, singers can select their desired song, select their difficulty (easy, medium or hard) and try out the songlist without committing their scores to the game scoreboard. This is great for players just starting out or for those not too fussed about competing to achieve a Grammy award-winning performance. In review, this was the quickest and easiest way to warm up the vocal chords with a quick rendition of High School Musical's Breaking Free and Miley Cyrus' See you Again resulting in a three-star "Awesome" rating. A pop-star in the making? We continued the challenge…
The Single Player option, as the name suggests, offers the platform for soloists to show their vocal skills. In addition to the standard "Solo" option, players can improve their vocal talents through the Sing It Pro option, hosted by High School Musical star Alyssa Merlin and taking players through vocal exercises in pitch, accuracy, breathing, harmony and standard warm-up exercises. Sing It Pro is a useful tool that provides a platform to develop real skills in singing and musical performance, acknowledging players as skills develop and exercises are achieved while still challenging everyone from beginners to karaoke enthusiasts and choir-pros (including yours truly). While the exercises are a little more challenging for those unfamiliar with the Disney or High School Musical tracks, these real-world vocal exercises and challenges really improve vocal performance, confidence and musical understanding after a few training sessions.
For the brave and more confident performers, Single Player also includes "You're on your own" — blind karaoke gameplay with no vocal line or pitch indicator for players to guide performance. For the kids that know every dance move in the High School Musical finale or every word and hand gesture of a Miley Cyrus performance, this is a cool and challenging way for the budding pro to prove their skills as the game tracks and rates singing performance, scoring at the conclusion of the song.
Gig Mode, which features in both Single and Multiplayer options gives players the ability to create concerts of up to five songs to perform solo or with friends. Performance is scored at the end of the set, which keeps the focus on the performance, but offers little indicative feedback along the way of the quality of your tunes until the set is complete (in turn giving you little chance to improve your rendition of Breaking Free if your performance is hardly The Start of Something New).
Multiplayer options beyond Gig Mode include Duet (harmony and two-part vocals), Versus (for a competitive vocal battle) or the unique Team Play option where players can form teams to sing duets or compete in Versus tournaments. Up to eight players can join the party mode with team and player performance tracked, with wins and high scores culminating to reward the team's Most Valuable Player.
Both Disney Sing It and Sing It: High School Musical 3 feature a customisable game interface through the Personalise function, which changes the menu wallpaper, menu colouring and design and menu soundtrack from a series of pre-allocated themes. While gimmicky at first, the feature does refresh the game, giving it a revamped look and feel after multiple plays. For those playing the game on the PlayStation 2 or 3, gameplay also features EyeToy functionality, meaning players can become the star of the show with streaming video of their singing performances featured on-screen as songs are performed.
Included songs on Sing It and Sing It: High School Musical 3 offer everything from pop, musical-theatre style cast numbers and rock-edged anthems. While a majority of these are already on the iPods and stereos of the game's core tween/teen target audience, in reviewing a few of the tracks on Sing It, a few seemed a little racy for the younger end of the game's audience; Aly & AJ's Like Whoa being a clear example (Do you really want your 12-year-old singing "My inhibitions are beginning to let go, This situation I can't help but lose control"? Hmmm … maybe not). With this in mind, it's a good idea for parents to get involved in the game, assisting in song selection and choosing the Sing It title most age-appropriate for the junior popstar of the house. For songs both the younger and older kids will enjoy, the High School Musical soundtrack is the clear winner of the two Sing It titles with a great mix of cast performances, solos and duets about high school love and life to get amongst and perform.
Currently, no facility exists to download additional tracks or content for the game (unlike the SingStar, RockBand or Guitar Hero franchises) with the likelihood of the title to become a static franchise, releasing film- or talent-focussed content in separate editions of the game rather than extending the game through downloadable content.
Vocal tracking in the game is generally super-sensitive, which can be tough (and discouraging) if you're a high-score focussed game player. In review, the speed of vocals and tracking mechanism meant that while we frequently hit the notes, the finicky pitch tracker and fast rhythm on the vocal track often resulted in score multipliers being broken frequently, resulting in a confident but hardly show-stopping performance score. If you're achieving star performances on "Expert" in RockBand or "Hit Artist" in SingStar, don't necessarily expect these scores to translate to Sing It. This was challenging for sensitive folk like us, but will perhaps be less so for your 12-year-old sister or child who'll be belting out these tunes.
Overall, Sing It is a strong performer and a fantastic music game for the younger members of the family to earn their performance stripes with the sugary, shiny characters of these recent Disney hits. Challenging and rewarding solo, teamwork efforts and training tools also help improve vocal performance, ensuring that the game stands strong as a fun and encouraging addition for younger players to the music game genre.