Lips Comments by Tom Bramwell

numero uno

What? I can't perform Supernova's Chewbecca while dressed as Chewbacca?

No sale.

For some strange reason, I want this.

I think I'm turning!

Really interested on how they get the lyrics from ipod done though... If it like really works, i'm sold! :)

Any other tracks apart from "Duffy" confirmed?

Any other tracks apart from "Duffy" confirmed?

Did you purposefully not read the article so you could look stupid?

If you're having trouble figuring it out. Which one the best is (SingStar or Lips), it's the one that gets 'Journey - Don't Stop Believin'' for download first. It's that simple.

Either way, I'll have both... and they'll soon be fighting each other for exclusive songs and albums.

Am I understanding this correctly? you can plug in your ipod and the game will run exactly the same (without video) as it does for the bundled songs?

surely not?

/Dips randomy into ipod
No way will they know the lyrics to Palimpsest by Smog, Pen Gwag Glas by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci or Every Nigger is a Star by Big Youth.

how innovative

If you're having trouble figuring it out. Which one the best is (SingStar or Lips), it's the one that gets 'Journey - Don't Stop Believin'' for download first. It's that simple.

+1

That would be gold.

Exactly which part of the hardcore 360 brigade is this title aimed at?

I'm disliking my Zune more and more, it became very xenophobic, with the previous version I couldn't buy any musics from the store with my credit card, but now... it doesn't even allow me to enter the damn shop: "we're sorry but we don't like that region of the world, thanks for your interrest. Don't come back."

"We happened to have a Zune handy ..."

EG owns a Zune? TEH BIASED!

Just joking, honest.

I'm betting the lyrics for your own tracks won't be displayed karaoke style. My guess is they'll be wacked on screen and scrolled through like a teleprompter. Also, searching the internet for lyrics provides an alarming amount of wrongness, I don't expect this to be any different since they can't QA it all.

"Also, searching the internet for lyrics provides an alarming amount of wrongness, I don't expect this to be any different since they can't QA it all."
You'd be surprised by the quality of Zune's store. It's very good in that identifying thing, and has an obscene amount of info for each artist. Too bad it doesn't dig Europe.

I totally forgot about the existence of the zune store (easy to do). Thats slightly more encouraging.

Suprised the hadnt tried integration with the Zune and the 360 earlier.

Miguel,

My condolances but the zune sucks, unfortunately the ipod is still the best all-round media player IMO.

what the fuck? who is this aimed at exactly? i'd say about 1% of the target audience check this website out

what a bag of wank

johnnybrn, oh no mate, the product itself is very good (even in that esoteric field of "coolness", I get that "oooh, what's that? that's not an iPod, right?" - all the time), the only bad part (and that's 90% of "suckness" I must agree) is the fact that one can't acess the store from an non-US ip. That's "all".

I also have an iPod, and an iTouch..., and Zune's (the whole package) is a whole new level. It's funny, but if the 360 dashboard needs a revamp, iPod store needs one even more, it feels dated compared to Zune's.

The bods on dapreview.net were very positive in the direction of the revised Zune model.

mazk ur a nobber

game sounds interesting

miiiguel,

Ok thats good to know.

Around September last year, I was looking for new media player. And having looked at all the options went for a ipod classic. Small, effeicent and and well designed. What like about the ipod it that it just works, the music synching, the podcast streaming and even cover-flow, no problem.

Whereas other players like the Sansa, Creative and Sony were all too fiddly. Plus the fact that the Zune was not supported in Europe.

@ spammage "Exactly which part of the hardcore 360 brigade is this title aimed at? "

The part that have a life / family / friends that they want to play a game with.

Johny, you did good. While I think Zune is probably (as of today) a better option for Americans, it is certanly not for Europeans. A Zune this side of the Atlantic, without the store access is just a normal mp3 player. At least it was very cheap, and it works like a portable HDD (30gb is nice for a MP3 player).

I guess it's possible that the software would have a degree of phenome recognition, so if it has the lyrics available to it then I could probably take a fair stab at making the two work together.

If that feature really works, and it really does cover a full spectrum of music, then that would be a SingStar killer. If it doesn't... Then this doesn't have any features that make it stand out at all.

Hopefully this will prompt SingStar to get their butts in gear and release better quality material into their store. There were big promises made about this title, and even bigger things are promised for 'later this year' (AKA when they've seen what Lips is doing, perhaps?) but nothing has really changed in the SingStar formula for years. I love playing it with my girlfriend and mates on the weekend, so I'm definitely keeping an eye on these titles.

Thanks for the great article EG. Interesting stuff, and keep asking those difficult questions!

"The mics don't rely on a dongle for their connection to the 360, either, which means you can still have four regular control-pads hooked up"

That makes no sense. If the mics did use a dongle, how would that make any difference to the controllers?

"Exactly which part of the hardcore 360 brigade is this title aimed at?"

I can't tell if that is sarcasm or just density.


"who is this aimed at exactly? i'd say about 1% of the target audience check this website out "

Since when did the readership of EG define the target userbase for social and mainstream games?

iNis do have a good track record for quality music games, Gitaroo Man and Elite Beat Agents are top drawer, so this may be a bit of a dark horse and suspect that Sony will be forced to improve Sing Star on the back of this. The import song stuff is interesting, it'll be interesting to see if lyrics come in from musicals and the like. I sing in amateur theatrical stuff, and this could be a fun way of practicing outside rehearsal.
There's no way it'll be able to find lyrics for some of the stuff on my Ipod tho', Italian prog rock will kill it. Premiata Forneiri Marconi etc.

There are certainly some good features in this game which SingStar could do with, but it'll be interesting to see how well they work.

"The mics don't rely on a dongle for their connection to the 360, either, which means you can still have four regular control-pads hooked up"

"That makes no sense. If the mics did use a dongle, how would that make any difference to the controllers?"

I didn't get that either. Unless I'm mistaken each mic should occupy one of the four available pad slots, meaning that you cannot have four pads and some mics hooked up, right?

Other than that, I like the fact that they are shooting for something more than a Singstar-clone - hope they succeed :)

"meaning that you cannot have four pads and some mics hooked up, right? "

I'm sure I heard in a dev interview about this, that the game supports four controllers too for some kind of rhythm action button mashing, so up to 6 people can take part in a single session.

My point was really that the existance of a dongle seems mostly irrelevant to the whole issue of what controllers can be used. if perhaps the mics had to take a controller slot, the use of a dongle would fix that issue, not the other way round, as the article suggested. Its as if the comment was pasted from an article about a PS2 using a multi-tap.

"I didn't get that either. Unless I'm mistaken each mic should occupy one of the four available pad slots, meaning that you cannot have four pads and some mics hooked up, right? "

The current wireless headsets sync up into the same slot as the controllers. With those you can have four controllers and four wireless headsets. Surely they'll just use the same technology in this too.

I'm waiting for the two most over crowded genres to merge (FPS & Music related party games)......

Comes with a toy guitar'o'phone'shootgun where you have to press buttons in time with the circles and sing into the barrel of the gun.

I'm waiting for the two most over crowded genres to merge (FPS & Music related party games)......

Comes with a toy guitar'o'phone'shootgun where you have to press buttons in time with the circles and sing into the barrel of the gun.

"Comes with a toy guitar'o'phone'shootgun where you have to press buttons in time with the circles and sing into the barrel of the gun."

So that's what Kurt Cobain was doing when ... oh.

"/Dips randomy into ipod
No way will they know the lyrics to Palimpsest by Smog, Pen Gwag Glas by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci or Every Nigger is a Star by Big Youth."

Well, speaking of strange bands on my iPod- Jäääär "Tartu, väike puust linn", Dagö "Isaga draakonil", Metsatöll "Oma laulu ei leia ma üles" etc etc. Ie non-English bands. If they actually manage to find some way to get these lyrics, i'm more then sold, i'll worship MS for the rest of my life. But for some reason, i doubt you see anything more then popular English/American songs and perhaps also some popular songs of other major countries.

Roadmap (that I jsut made up)
Lips 2 - duets/battles/rapping etc
Lips 3 - band edition - guitars

hjarg - Ie non-English

Yeah but no-one cares about non-English singing bands mate.

i've found my new post pub game

Quick question - whats the point in buying mics for this? As in, can you not just use your headset? Did I miss that part in the preview?

Yay! I'm no-one!

Shit name, shit interface, no impressive new features and released on the wrong format, too late... Ah well, if the only thing it achieves is getting those Sony bastards to release wireless singstar mics, it will not be completely futile...

asshole

@johnnybrn:

"My condolances but the zune sucks, unfortunately the ipod is still the best all-round media player IMO."

My respectfull disagreement for two basic reasons.

1) 80 Gig Zune. No picking and choosing what I take portable -- my whole damn music library (currently 62Gig) is together. And its $250 -- damn cheap considering the storage space.
2) No Goddamn Apple software trying to infect my computer like electronic herpes.
"Thank you for purchasing an iPod. We will now happily scour your computer and convert every file you own to our propritary format."
No, thanks.
"Okay, then we'll install iTunes for you at least. Is that okay?"
Uhhhh . . . sure.
"Now installing iTunes . . . and scouring your computer to convert every file you own to our format. . . "
NO! I want to keep my files .wav, .wma, and .mp#, thank you very much.
"Can we at least install quicktime?"
. . . . I suppose so.
"Thank you. Installing Quicktime . . . andiTunesandconvertingallofyourfileswetheryoulikeitornot . . . "
NONONO

Hum. I smell some over egging the pudding here. The beauty of Singstar, GH and the like is the Ninty-esque quality of pick up a microphone/guitar, pick song, sing, get a score. Repeat. Any mug can do it, in any state of intoxication.

All this shaking mics, bonus rounds, profiles, leveling up etc. is exactly the sort of complication that Ninty realised puts off "casual gamers", i.e. folks who don't own the console/game. You don't want instructions, or manuals for a game like this. You just want to get straight in and make a tool of yourself as quickly as possible. This overcomplication is very Microsoft.

And as for this vapourware DIY song analysis... yeah, right. I can't make out the lyrics on most songs, which means it's download only, so tags will have to be spot on correct, and your song in the database, so Gorki's is right out. And of course it takes out the revenue of selling multiple $1 DLCs to overexcited drunken women. FUD, I reckon.

I don't think Sony have anything to worry about.

"Yeah but no-one cares about non-English singing bands mate. "

Apart from the fact the the people who don't speak English natively greatly outnumber those that do.

Still, don't see why people like these games. Horses for courses I suppose.

@busboy33

You must have missed the bit where you can simply go to the iTunes encoding options and choose to convert the songs into bog standard MP3's at whetever bitrate you favour.

Wendelius

Wendelius sayeth:
"You must have missed the bit where you can simply go to the iTunes encoding options and choose to convert the songs into bog standard MP3's at whetever bitrate you favour."

I think you've made his point for him. I personally won't buy a DAP that doesn't just play my songs straight-up, without conversion (read: iPod). But then I also won't buy a DAP that can't display non-Latin characters (read: Zune). So both market leaders are out of the running for me.

I'm interested in getting a karaoke game, but...those first three confirmed songs don't inspire much confidence.

@yagisencho:
Wendelius sayeth:
"You must have missed the bit where you can simply go to the iTunes encoding options and choose to convert the songs into bog standard MP3's at whetever bitrate you favour."

I think you've made his point for him. I personally won't buy a DAP that doesn't just play my songs straight-up, without conversion (read: iPod). But then I also won't buy a DAP that can't display non-Latin characters (read: Zune). So both market leaders are out of the running for me.
---

No I haven't. Well, I'm not sure I have. You don't need to convert MP3's. The iPod reads them natively. You just tell iTunes where they are and they are added to your Library. The encoding option comes into play when you want to rip one of your CD's. It can be done in iTune's format or MP3 (or WAV? Not sure about the latter).

Now if you generally encode your songs in more exotic formats (like ogg), then yes, itunes would need to convert them for them to be playable on the iPod.