Review: We Sing Encore

With games like Rockband and Guitar Hero out there, a simple singing game may well seem old fashioned. However, I’ll tell you now, they’re not!

When we were invited to review We Sing Encore some of the lads here backed down. However having had a Singstar New Years party this year I dived straight in, knowing the joys a good sing-a-long can bring. We Sing Encore doesn’t disappoint. Having not played the original I was unsure what to expect but knowing Singstar well and having played Lips several times in the past I know what this games peers look like.

The full box comes with the We Sing Encore game and 2 wired mics – using the rear USB ports on the Wii. The game is available solus if you already have the mics. This worried me slightly as wired mics mixed with jumping and dancing could result in yanking your Wii off the entertainment centre and potential breakage – luckily our game went without a hitch.

The game loaded quickly and it wasn’t long before we were in ‘Verses’ mode doing duets as good as Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones. The song choice is great
with 40 songs (10 of which are region specific to the UK), and a good mix from recent times and a little further back without digging out obscure artists that no-one has ever heard of.

As the words flashed across the screen, it became difficult to tell if your voice was being picked up (mine wasn’t at some points) as there was a shared pitch bar making it hard to track. Once we worked out what was going on and how the game worked I lost my ability to blame the game for my poor scores and continuous defeat. The timings seemed good as was the pitch recognition, yes I was just bad!

I decided to explore the game more and see what the other game modes offered. ‘Group Battle’ allows you (if you have more than the supplied 2 microphones) to go 3 v 1 or 2 v 2 and see which team comes out top. ‘First to X’ awards the first person to achieve a score limit the win, ‘Expert’ lasted all of 30 seconds before I realised I didn’t know any song as well as I thought, as in this mode there are no lyrics or pitch bar.

‘Blank’ was a great mode and allows you to play your own version of ‘Don’t Forget the Lyrics’ as the music and lyrics will stop and you have to carry on singing, as a side it also allows one of the group the ability to complete their fantasy of ‘being Shane Richie’.

There are also ‘Pass the mic’ and marathon modes.

An interesting part was the ‘Training’ which gives you the ‘So Fa La’ to help improve your scores (feelings of being in the Von Trapp family are a side affect). Well worth giving this a go as it certainly helped improve my scores.

The longevity of this game is questionable due to the lack of an online store to purchase more songs. This can be easily solved by the release of expansion discs and it appears Nordic Game realised this with the forth coming release of We Sing: Robbie Williams, reasonably priced at around £25.

When stood against the might of Singstar, We Sing Encore stands proud, an excellent karaoke game giving lots of variation both musically and in game modes.

Best Prices for We Sing Encore - Solus (Wii)

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Best Prices for We Sing Encore - with 2 mics (Wii)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Nintendo Wii, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.