U-Sing Girls Night (Wii) Review
For years the PlayStation had the main advantage over the other consoles in terms of karaoke games. With Sony’s signature franchise, SingStar, not only did they have a killer engine to compete with, but also a wealth of music available through their own music label. Unfortunately for the other consoles, it didn’t look as if any of their karaoke interpretations, whenever they put them out, would ever compete. Microsoft released Lips, and surprisingly, it was pretty good. Now, about two to three years on from the Wii’s release, MindScape took on the rather challenging task to create something equivalent, and came up with U-Sing. It was okay, but didn’t have everything that the other titles had on other consoles. Now, U-Sing Girls Night, despite the rather unsuitable “theme” for myself, remedies all the problems I had with the original and more.
The main concept of the U-Sing games is to sing along to tracks with the provided microphones (which are identical to the Guitar Hero ones, FYI) and try to match not only tones but of course the lyrics of the songs while a music video plays in the background. There are multiple modes available to play through, some of which are more suited for solo play and others more suited for party play. U-Sing allows players to also participate in several multiplayer modes: Duo, Versus and Battle. Duo allows players to sing together, and the scores of both players are added at the end of the round. Versus lets players sing the same song against each other, and each player’s score is calculated individually, while Battle puts one player in the role of an “Attacker” who must disrupt the actual singer’s performance by holding a certain note through the song to create penalties for the singing player. Such penalties include trembling the screen, lowering the volume of the song, and the removal or reversal of lyrics on the screen. Both players swap roles throughout the song to ensure fairness too.
Besides that, U-Sing also features a Jukebox mode which can just play the video clips – perfect for a party or social gathering, and if anyone wishes to, they can jump in and start singing just by pressing the A Button on the Wii Remote. All of these modes in U-Sing, particularly the Battle mode, are pretty impressive and add a bit of variety to the mix to accompany whatever your state of mind may be at the time of playing, whether it be co-operating or competing. Battle mode in particular was quite enjoyable, providing the console with a karaoke experience that I’ve never really had before.
The game’s presentation is put together quite well, with the menu screens pulsating and moving to the game’s music too. Menus are pretty easy to navigate and wherever possible the developers have used pictures to provide clear indications of what modes you’re playing or what songs you’re choosing. Naturally, due to the standard definition nature and technical limitations of the Wii, the music videos can sometimes come off as a little bit compressed looking on larger television sets but 90% of this game’s target audience, or Wii users in general, will not notice the reduction in quality.
Most karaoke games have similar gameplay in that they all require the player to sing a song’s lyrics while still trying to match the tone and pitch of the artist’s voice in order to gain points. U-Sing Girls Night is no different though the different gameplay modes, as described above, do mix things up a little. Each lyric on the screen corresponds to a gauge overlayed on the video clip, and if players match the pitch and word, the gauge will fill up and points are earned. It’s quite a simple system and it works exceptionally well too. Every now and then, songs with much harder to reach notes, or harder to hold notes; pop up as “golden notes”. Successful singing of a golden note gives you bonus points for the notes sung in the next couple of lines, giving most players who reach these notes a great edge. For those who might not even be able to reach the golden notes, or sing at all, the game provides three difficulty levels for each song, as well as the option to choose a shorter version – perfect for those who might not be as confident or not as keen on performing for extended amounts of time.
U-Sing Girls Night also has a rather comprehensive scoring system and leaderboard system built in, where players’ scores are calculated and they are assigned a rank from Atrocious to Legend. Records can be saved on the Wii console to give a bit of a competitive depth to the game between family members and even friends. Upon completion of a song, players can also opt to replay their video clip but with their own voices instead. This is a nice feature that almost always induced laughing fits throughout my group of friends but it’s a bit of a shame that we can’t save these replays, though it’s most probably due to, once again, the Wii’s technical limitations.
In terms of the overall experience, it all works exceptionally well with great similarities to SingStar and Lips, with myself being quite surprised that such a competent and worthwhile karaoke game can also exist on the Wii – I was mislead to believe that there may have been a reason why there was such an absence of said games for so long. MindScape appears to have nailed the gameplay and the little nuances that make it not only a great karaoke game but a great party game too. One thing that I might highlight is that the current microphone technology for the Wii is a little bit disappointing, and I would love to see a developer release a new title with wireless microphones of some sort, simply because the Logitech USB ones that all Wii titles use are quite cheap feeling and have way too much wiring for this reviewers liking.
U-Sing Girls Night features thirty songs with full video clips and manages to feature quite a nice range too, from classics such as Blondie and Tina Turner, to more recent pop stylings such as Amy Winehouse, La Roux, and the incredibly talented Lady GaGa. U-Sing Girls Night also is a first on the Wii in that it allows players to download additional tracks onto their console in exchange for Wii Points. It’s a bit scarce at the moment, but we hope to see the store grow just as other platforms did when they first launched. Most of the songs are also available on other U-Sing discs too, so we’re not sure if MindScape has some kind of plan in the future to allow players to transfer songs or at least swap discs quickly, as the feature is not in Girl’s Night. Still, it’s nice to see a store for the Wii, and hopefully Universal Music’s repertoire of artists and music will be enough to sustain U-Sing’s steadily growing fanbase.
Overall, I am quite impressed with U-Sing Girl’s Night. It’s a very competent karaoke title that adds a few nice features to the mix to create something a little bit more unique. It’s also probably the best karaoke title available for the Nintendo Wii and hopefully, with a bit more time, we’ll see the developer build upon the music library to ensure that everyone can enjoy it. I can safely recommend U-Sing to anyone who likes karaoke – you will not be disappointed. And guys, it won’t hurt you to belt out a few tunes too, though we won’t tell anyone you did, you might even enjoy it like I did. Promise.
Graphics 8.0
More of a presentation mark, everything about U-Sing Girls Night is slick. Wherever possible, images are used to depice menu choices and music, though some music videos are quite clearly compressed (though as I said, most people wont notice it)
Gameplay 9.0
Great fun and every bit as good as its competitors, U-Sing offers great gameplay for both single players and groups of players. Battle mode in particular is quite unique too.
Sound 9.0
A bit of a hard section to score, but the musical repertoire this game boasts not only suits it target audience perfectly, its also a great range of both new and old stuff. Extremely well put together.
Tilt 7.0
A little bit lower on the score because of my uncertainty regarding its future, U-Sing Girls Night has all the hooks to create an everlasting experience with downloadable content and multiple game modes, though if downloadable content is always released, this score should be bumped by two notches.
Value 9.0
I had awesome fun playing this game despite most of the music not being quite in my taste. I guess thats the power of karaoke, able to draw anyone in.
