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Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol
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Graphics & Sound:
Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol is the latest iteration in a long line of karaoke games from Konami, however it is the first to use the American Idol license and also the first not to be developed by Harmonix, and instead to come to us from Blitz Games (they made the recent Burger King Xbox games, among other things).
Of course, when discussing a karaoke game, the most important aspect is the music. When selecting songs this go round, the developers looked towards American Idol favorites for inspiration. You'll see tunes such as "Build Me Up Buttercup", "Let's Stay Together", "The Real Thing", "Do I Make You Proud" and "Breakaway". I was surprised that Carrie Underwood's smash hit, "Jesus Take The Wheel" wasn't included, but I guess that was considered too religious?
The songs are well translated, since they are not done by the original artists, but they sound very similar to them so it's all good. I was pleased with most of the song selections, however I did find that simply by going with Idol-flavored songs, by nature they were more challenging. The purpose of American Idol is to find America's best singer and these songs are all about showcasing one's voice. Therefore, if you have been a Karaoke Revolution star up to now, you may find that although you are able to hit the correct pitch and get a good score, you might not sound all that good doing it.
As with the last version, you can still map your face using a EyeToy camera to truly create your own personal character. Plus, as always, there are plenty of choices to create your avatar. I was disappointed that there weren't more choices, to be honest. Even having some of the past contestants or winners from American Idol as character choices would have been fun, but they didn't go that route.
Present also in all of their "glory" are Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson, voice likenesses and all, plus a few announcing lines here and there by Ryan Seacrest. The judges are on-hand to give comments, both good and bad, just as they do in the show, although I found I saw a lot more nicey-nice comments from Mr. Iceberg Cowell than I have ever seen on the show. Strangely enough, Paula Abdul doesn't make an appearance in the game as a judge, however she does show up in the unlockable extra videos several times. In her stead is "Laura", a judge who looks a whole lot like her and basically makes comments like Paula. The American Idol cheerleader is what some folks call her. I call her the American Idol minah bird. Her comments? "Yeah, just what he said."
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Gameplay:
Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol plays a whole lot like the previous versions do, just with an Idol veneer. When I heard this game announced, I was somewhat excited about it. After all, I am a casual American Idol fan (Daughtry should have won) and I was hoping for a lot with the whole concept and what I thought they could do with the single player experience. I was both disappointed and pleased with the end product.
When you begin a single player game aptly called American Idol, you'll select your character from either pre-made avatars or build your own as described above. You can choose a short, medium or long game and that will determine how many songs you will sing, anywhere between 8 and 18. Then you'll audition before the judges, singing a short version of a song. If you make it, you will progress from there, all the way to the finals. As you get to the semi-finals, if you chose to have the other "contestants" turned on, you will see the elimination boards and see which other contestants are eliminated. You don't see the other contestants participate in any way other than the elimination boards. This is more of a formality, since it really has no bearing on anything. As long as you do well, you will progress.
What I did find disconcerting was the sheer length of the judges comments. Normally on any given Idol show, they'll make a simple comment. Maybe they'll give a little more, but they certainly rarely give 3 or 4 comments per person! Especially not Cowell. Yet in this game, you get comment upon comment upon comment every time. Furthermore, sometimes the comments paired together make no sense whatsoever! Laura might say you were stupendous, then Simon will say, "I don't really think so Laura." Then, he'll follow that with "you were amazing" and the like. Or worse yet, one judge's comments may contradict each other as they are strung together. From what I can tell, the game was probably programmed to take the song in sections, such that if you kick ass all the way through, but botch up the end, they will say how great you are, then follow up with "you had a rough ending" or something like that. Once, just as a test, I got "Greats" about 3/4 of the way through a song, then just went totally off key, scoring absolutely nothing for the last quarter. I still made it through with shining colors because my score was something like 38,000.
There are different modes to play such as Quickplay, if you just want to jump in and sing, or you can choose to team up and have a 1 or 2 Mic Party, singing duets or battling against other teams. The toughest mode is KR Challenge where you and another person (or team) duke it out on the mics in a series of ridiculous challenges. Here you'll sing a medley, then you might sing a medley with no words or no pitch tubes or nothing at all but the music! These are very challenging and can cause other players to hate you if you do well. Um, I mean, well... these are tough.
One last thing to mention are the unlockables. Once again, there is a Progress area so you can see what awards there are that you haven't yet unlocked and so on. I am down to only lacking 2 awards for 40 Diamond Records, about 3 songs away, and I am somewhat let down by the unlockables. I really didn't see any new costumes and accessories in the way of unlockables and I was hoping for some new and way-out characters to unlock. There are a few new ones to select at the beginning, but I was just hoping for more. There are, however, a number of Idol videos that you can unlock by beating a particular song, and you can unlock two characters that made a brief appearance last season in the auditions. I thought these were a bit cruel though, actually.
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Difficulty:
You can opt to perform on Easy, Medium or Hard and, basically, all this does is change the length of the tube that you must fill up by hitting the correct note. Easy has a short tube and you can make quite a few mistakes and still earn a Great, while Hard is fairly harsh and unforgiving and you must nail the song perfectly to earn a Great. If you want extra challenge and you can find a gullible person, play KR Challenge.
Each song has a music note next to each denoting how difficult that song is. One note is easy, two notes is medium and three notes is a fairly hard song. The hard songs will either have lots of note changes or will be so chocked full of back to back words that you can barely catch your breath. Simon would be proud of these song selections. As he says, its all about song choice. |
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Game Mechanics:
As with all previous Karaoke Revolution games, the goal is to mimic the song playing by hitting the correct pitch and timing. Nothing has changed with Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol. The major difference is that now, instead of simply having an audience to either applaud you as you do well or walk away or boo as you do poorly, you now have judges to critique your performance.
Randy, Laura and Simon all have their say in turn, and Laura will call you on it if you show up in a silly outfit. She'll say, "I have a hard time taking you seriously in that outfit" or something of the sort. Randy and Simon's mouths look funny at times when they are speaking. The camera angle is such that you are slightly lower than they are and the view is disconcerting. You'll know what I mean when you see it, but at least it won't distract you while you sing because they talk afterwards.
Once again, your goal is to hit those notes correctly. The game really doesn't even care what words you are saying, as long as the timing and pitch are right. Sometimes I change the words to include my dog's name over and over again because he likes to hear his name on TV. Trust me, it won't affect your score a bit. The most important thing to remember is that you can go up and down an octave if you have a hard time hitting the pitch tube correctly.
Overall, I was pleased with Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol, but not blown away by it. I think they could have put more into it such as not having all the songs open at the get-go and allowing contestants to ramp up their difficulty by opening harder songs as they progress. Another thought could be theme "week" just like on the show. Have songs divided by genre or artist and then have players select a song from that grouping. But all this means is that there is plenty of room for the license to grow. And above all, this game does clear the mind of the last American Idol videogame travesty by Codemasters, so we can all be thankful for that. If you love karaoke games, definitely add this one to your collection. |
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
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