Music games are becoming more and more commonplace these days and it was only a matter of time before we had Hannah Montana and company at the frontlines. Disney Sing It is your basic karaoke game featuring all of your favorite shows from the network including High School Musical, The Cheetah Girls and the aforementioned daughter of one Achy Breaky country star. While the song list is impressive and the videos cool for fans of the shows, the core mechanics lack a lot of what makes games like Singstar and Karaoke Revolution so popular.
There are 35 songs packed onto this disc and all of them stripped from popular Disney shows. If you know the songs then none of what I am about to say will bother you, but going in having no clue who half of these artists were was a wake-up call. The premise for Sing It is similar to just about any music game that features vocals. The lyrics string across the screen with pitch notes for you to match. The difference here is that some of the lines move so fast and the game doesn’t give you any warning, nor does it keep any consistency with timing. Some measures fly by at one pace while shorter notes blast across the screen so quickly you don’t even have time to read them.
For the target audience of the game this is likely not an issue. Anyone picking up a game with Miley Cyrus on the front probably already knows these tunes by heart, and on that plateau the game works. However, if you ever wind up at a party and this game goes into the system, you had better know the songs or you will look ridiculous. The game assumes you do know the songs immediately when you are thrown into what is called “You’re on your own” mode. This removes all pitch scales from the screen thus forcing you to sing the song by heart. You cannot fail a song while playing Sing It so the worst that can happen is you look like a fool while blaring out some poppy Disney tunes in front of your significant other (of which I did).
All of the videos are ripped straight from the shows and on Xbox 360 and PS3 they look great in HD. The Wii version sports some lightly lower resolutions, which is to be expected. In fact the entire experience feels more like an interactive video as opposed to a game, and frankly that could be the best route the team could have gone considering anyone looking into picking this up is likely under the age of fifteen and generally not interested in learning the intricacies of pitch and tone. If you have a Live Vision camera or PlayStation Eye plugged in while playing the game will post your mug onscreen for complete humility. An upload feature with YouTube possibilities might have forced me to recommend this to the party crowd for the amusement of the world alone.
You wouldn’t know it based on the package but Sing It does support duets and multi-player even though it only comes bundled with one microphone. It is also surprising that the game is only compatible with Logitech mics so headsets will not cut it. In our review test we used the Rock Band and Guitar Hero microphones with no issues and singing a duet is as easy as selecting the song, which part each player sings and of course the difficulty. There is also a practice mode that you can sift through with one of the cast of High School Musical who teaches you things like pitch, harmony and hitting high and low notes. Overall it is a good experience for kids, which is really who this is aimed at.
From not being a fan of any of these shows I can say that this game is not going to appeal to anyone outside of the core audience. The songs are catchy and even I found myself humming them days after playing, but it will not replace any of the more mainstream karaoke titles. If you are a fan of Disney or any of these artists then this is easily recommendable, or of course if you are a parent looking for a great gift idea for your biggest Hannah Montana fan I cannot think of a better way for them to interact with the songs than Sing It. It obviously aims for a specific demographic and will not deviate outside of it. As long as you know that going in you will have a good time with Disney Sing It.
