Another Singstar hit (Singstar ABBA (PS2))

Member Name: candyfloss89

Product:	Singstar ABBA (PS2)
Date:	01/07/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: songs are catchy, popular and well known, several modes of play to enjoy

Disadvantages: should have included "I have a dream"

I have many of the previous Singstar disks which I enjoy immensley. I play them with friends, flatmates and my family, the games really do seem to have a universal appeal and can be enjoyed by everybody. So when Singstar ABBA was released I was delighted.

Tracklist:
Chiquitita
Dancing Queen
Does Your Mother Know
Fernando
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
Knowing Me, Knowing You
Mamma Mia
Money, Money, Money
One Of Us
Ring Ring
SOS
Summer Night City
Super Trouper
Take A Chance On Me
Thank You For The Music
The Name Of The Game
The Winner Takes It All
Voulez-Vous
Waterloo

MODES OF PLAY
Modes of play include duet, solo and battle. These are pretty self explanitary.

A duet is where two people sing a song together, each person is given a few lines of the song to sing and some they sing in unison.

Solo is where one person sings alone.

A Battle is where two player sing the song together, all the way through in unison. This is why it's different to duet mode. The players are scored seperatley and points are not combined like they are in a duet. Hence it is a battle because the aim is to get a higher score than your oponent.

Keep it Up, Micro-medley and Pass the Mic are party games which are fun if your feeling competitive and want to try something different. Keep it up challenges players to consistently keep their performance above a certain level as they go head to head. Pass the mic is a fun party game where the mic is passed around between players as each player sings a few lines of a song. This is fun if your with a large group of friends.

HOW YOUR SCORED
Your not actually measured on how good a singer you are, it measures how well you can match the singers tone and pitch, how well you can hold a high note etc.

You'll see a performance bar on screen as your points are totalled up. 10,000 is the highest score you can get so you can watch your performance bar and know your doing well if your hitting this level. For example, a good score for a duet would be 4500. If your fellow singer also got around this mark, you will get a combined scored "Singstar" (singstar is a score of 9,000 and over). Conversley, you can be "Tone deaf" or a "wannabe".

You can make this task easy or hard, depending on what difficulty level you chose.

ADVANTAGES
I have many of the Singstar disks and have been playing the game for some years and yet even on easy mode, I don't often get a "Singstar" rating at the end of it. This keeps the game fresh and challenging and means that you wont get bored of it easily as it is constantly challenging you.

ABBA's songs are so famous that they are known universally. This makes ABBA a great choice for a Singstar game because everybody can join in, everybody knows the songs. This is an advantage if you want to play with your parents who don't know some of the more modern songs on recent Singstar additions.

Because of the different modes of play mentioned perviously, you can play for a long time and not get bored.

DISADVANTAGES
The first thing my mother asked me when she played the game with me is ""why didn't they not include 'I have a dream'?". I have to admit, I thought the same! I have a dream reached number 2 in the UK singles chart and is one of their most well known songs. It seems odd not to include such a well known song but to include songs such as "Ring Ring", which only reached 32 in the UK single charts. I'd also have liked to have seen "Lay all your love on me" as I feel that most people will know this Abba hit more than tracks like "Summer Night City".

Some of the ABBA songs are just not fun to sing as duets. Usually in Singstar, lines of a song are split up equally and fairly betweeen players. In Singstar Abba, some of the songs are split up into lead vocals and backing which is pretty unfair on the person who gets the backing. For example, Super Trouper consists of one person singing the lead and the other going "super trouper" over and over again in the background. This is amusing and certainly causes a few laughs but it soon becomes annoying, particulary if its a women trying to do these backings in a really deep voice! It's also really distracting for the lead singer.

It can be confusing at times. For example, often you get "freestyle" which is where the singer is speaking not singing. Even though these spoken lyrics come up on the screen for you to follow, you do not appear to be scored for them if you try to speak them. As I have played the game before, I know this and so don't take any notive when freestyle appears. But new players may find this confusing. In fact my dad asked me several times why he was recieving no points for his freestyling.
Another complaint is that you're not told what mark you need to reach to get a Singstar rating. It's only through playing the game regulary that I know that you need over 9,000 to achieve this level. So even though you can see the points you have been awarded, unless you've played the game regulary and know the scoring system, you don't know whether you're getting a good or bad score.

SUMMARY
A strange song choice and an annoying system of forcing players to be backing singers on what is suposossed to be a duet, Singstar ABBA is highly enjoyable. A must for fans on the Singstar series.

Summary: Good...but odd song choice in places!