Karaoke Revolution

By Jay Williams

There are various disputes about who first invented the name karaoke. One claim is that the karaoke styled machine was invented by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue in Kobe, Japan, way back in 1971.

All I know is that there is a certain art to Karaoke, it's not simply reading the words from a screen as they appear, it's much more than that... 

It's about the performance, the way you move to the music and most importantly, not to take yourself too seriously while having fun.

And, that's exactly what Karaoke Revolution does, it provides a light hearted platform to have fun with. 

Sure, there is an element competitiveness, but a lot of it is based on having fun.

As the trend is with other Karaoke titles, players choose a song from a list and try to sing along in tune. Pitch and timing bars scroll by with the words underneath them, while a triangle shape registers how well you are doing.

Singing in tune to the song gives you points, and depending on how well you do, you'll also gain Star Boosts which fill your Star Boost metre. 

Activating Star Boost gives players a massive multiplier, which equals huge scores, and the good thing about it this time around is that there's no maximum multiplier, so, players can really show off their singing wares.

As well as being able to choose from a large list of songs (as well as being able to sing alone - just for sh*%s and giggles), there is a 'career' mode which gives you certain challenges to complete – make a setlist, get so many points on one song and so on. 

Completing challenges unlock pieces of a giant record, the more challenges you finish, the more pieces of the record you unlock. There are three records in total.

Completing challenges also unlocks a whole host of other goodies for you to use in the creation suite.

The creation suite in Karaoke Revolution allows players to spend some time creating the perfect on screen avatar. Players can customise the in game default characters, or totally design your own from the ground up, with the ability to change things like hairstyles, age, shoes, tops and colors. 

If that's not enough, you can even design your own stage and background.

While Karaoke Revolution may have some cool features, it's not one of the most well polished singing games currently on the market. 

It's presentation and menus are - to put it bluntly - pretty damn boring, and could use some decent animation to jazz the party up. The song selection screen looks chunky and ugly. There are album covers off to the side, but these take a second to load and by that time you have moved onto another song. 

On screen avatars could use some re-jigging too, perhaps even something as simple as voice acting lessons, as half the time their mouths move like robots and don't seem to match the words of the song.

Karaoke Revolution could have been - and should have been - much better than it is, especially considering the long list of similar titles which have come before it. 

However, there is a redeeming factor - 75 tracks to choose from, plus downloadable songs.

While still quite a bit of fun, Karaoke Revolution is hardly the Revolution karaoke has been looking for.

Game: Karaoke Revolution
System: Playstation 3
Developer: Blitz Games
Publisher: Konami

Rating: 67%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)