Arnold-KatayevWhen Sony's E3 2009 press conference opened up with Queen's "One Vision", I knew that it was a nod to their upcoming SingStar Queen game (which has been available overseas for months now). The song itself was actually a fitting choice for Sony and the PlayStation brand, minus the whole "one man" part. Regardless, hearing "One Vision" played at the conference set off a spark in me, and now I find myself really wanting to play SingStar Queen.
If you're not familiar with SingStar, here's quick crash course. Singstar uses a very clean user interface, one that even a five year old can navigate. You can either play a practice session, or play for points and attempt to score the best record. Because, karaoking is an activity that you don't normally do alone, feel free to call over another seven friends and compete in an eight-player activity. If you're wondering how SingStar games work, the game's superb voice recognition system will measure the tone and pitch of your voice, and instantly display your performance on the screen, as the vocal bars scroll along.
The object is to fill the bars on screen with accuracy by singing as accurately as possible. If you go flat, you'll get color below the bar; likewise, if you go sharp, you'll get color above the bar. It's a very intuitive system, and figuring out how it works doesn't take any longer than 10 seconds. Going on what the European version has, SingStar Queen boasts a collection of 25 tracks from a wide assortment of Queen's work, 20 for the PS2 version.
Below is the list of songs currently found in the European version. The asterisk denotes a PS3 exclusive song:
A Kind of Magic*
Another One Bites the Dust
Bicycle Race
Bohemian Rhapsody
Breakthru
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Don't Stop Me Now
Fat Bottom Girls
Hammer to Fall*
I Want It All
I Want to Break Free
Innuendo
Killer Queen*
One Vision
Play the Game
Radio Ga Ga*
Somebody to Love
The Show Must Go On*
These Are the Days of Our Lives
Tie Your Mother Down
Under Pressure
We are the Champions
We Will Rock You
Who Wants to Live Forever
You’re My Best Friend
As you can see, the five songs from the PlayStation 3 version are extremely important, so you're probably much better off with the PS3 game if you're debating on saving $10 between versions. "Killer Queen" and especially Mercury's final hurrah "The Show Must Go On" simply cannot be missed. We've also been told that SingStar Queen will feature trophies, too. And of course, when you're singing along to every song, a music video for that song will roll in the background, so you're getting 25 music videos, as well.
Look for SingStar Queen to arrive August 18th.
