On playback, you only see the music video and not your score or note bars to see where you went wrong but it's still an amazing feature even with some occasional, mostly minor, distortion that might occur. You can even add sound effects like making yourself sound like a robot or a baby on helium,add vibrato or reverb and alter or remove them at ANY time. The game plays very much the same way as Kar. Rev. except that the lyrics don't scroll across the screen from left to right but rather stay in the middle (underneath the video) and a blue bar slowly approaches the lyrics to let you know when to start singing. In Singstar, the scoring method seems a bit more complicated and I'm not a fan of the extra Rap meter that briefly appears during a rap sequence in some songs.
However, I do really like the way your blue pitch notes (or red ones for player 2) stay on the screen for the entire phrase, so it's easier to see where your pitch was, and how far from the desired pitch you were, at a specific point in that phrase. You can even see the gaps where you incorrectly stopped singing. It's all nicely done and adds to the overall experience. Also, if you sing a phrase close enough to perfect you'll see the word "Cool" appear, which is equivalent to Kar. Rev.'s, "Great" rating. You can play without being scored in the "Freestyle" mode (for 1-2 players) and you can even remove the note bars if you don't want the videos to be cluttered with them. However, the lyrics underneath the video can't be removed.
The game will also save your various high scores (even your medly scores-except for Random medly). It will show the difficulty level and whether you sang the short or normal versions of the song, but it doesn't show you the dates you set them on or the cute name ranking you got with your score, such as: Amateur,Wannabe, Hopeful, Lead Singer, Rising Star, Superstar or Singstar. There are three difficulty levels, but even on the easiest level, it's tough to improve your score once you get into the 9,000 point range (perhaps 10,000 is the top score?) because even if you miss just a few notes per phrase it will seriously keep you from improving. It's easier in Kar. Rev to improve scores because they range on average from 10,000 to 50,000 points, with some big swings possible as you improve.
With Singstar however, after just one week of playing, the odds of improving your best score would most likely be very small. Still, I love singing "Chasing Cars", even in mono, so it's still something I'll play every month most likely and if you like singing karaoke and already have played Kar. Revolution, you might as well at least rent this to see if you're okay with the less than cd quality of the songs. Yes, you can play this game by yourself (in "Sing Solo" mode), but because it has no career mode, you'll most likely also end up playing in "Party" mode (for 2-8 players). You'll get the same kind of choices as in the Karaoke Rev. games such as: Battle, Medley, Duet, First to Post (first one to get to specific point total wins), Keep it Up (must keep performance bar above the marker or song ends) etc. Song Pop cheat is here for your benefits and expect the fun for your advantage. Challenge and have fun and see how great it is to see how you develop your singing carrier.
