Customer Reviews

Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore BUNDLE

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you've played some of the other Karaoke Revolution games before, the format for this title will be very familiar to you. I have Karaoke Revolution Party for the Gamecube, and this game is very comparable to that title. Interesting American Idol videos showing past contestants' performances can be unlocked by achieving various goals.

My only complaint is that you apparently are able to download more songs on the X Box and Playstation versions, but not the Wii. Given that the Wii can connect to the Internet, I don't understand why this feature was left out.

Most importantly, here is a list of the 40 songs available. Three of them (More Than a Feeling, Over the Rainbow, and What is Love) have to be unlocked by achieving various platinum record amounts. There is a cool menu feature under "Extras" that show all the unlockable items and what is required to get them.

"Black Hole Sun" - Soundgarden
"Black Velvet" - Alannah Myles
"Bohemian Rhapsody" - Queen
"Close My Eyes Forever" - Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford
"Come Sail Away" - Styx
"Copacabana" - Barry Manilow
"Glamorous" - Fergie
"Heart of Glass" - Blondie
"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)" - Fuel
"Holiday" - Madonna
"How to Save a Life" - The Fray
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - Rolling Stones
"I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" - Aerosmith
"(I Just) Died in Your Arms" - Cutting Crew
"In the Air Tonight" - Phil Collins
"Irreplaceable" - Beyoncé
"It Ends Tonight" - All American Rejects
"It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" - Billy Joel
"Knocking on Heaven's Door" - Guns N' Roses
"Lips of an Angel" - Hinder
"Midnight Train to Georgia" - Gladys Knight and the Pips
"More Than a Feeling" - Boston
"My Cherie Amour" - Stevie Wonder
"My Heart Will Go On" - Celine Dion
"Over the Rainbow" - Katherine McPhee
"Put Your Records On"- Corinne Bailey Rae
"Rio" - Duran Duran
"September" - Earth Wind & Fire
"Sister Christian" - Night Ranger
"Sweet Dreams" - Eurythmics
"Tainted Love" - Soft Cell
"These Words" - Natasha Bedingfield
"Time of the Season" - The Zombies
"Tiny Dancer" - Elton John
"Too Little Too Late" - JoJo
"Unfaithful" - Rihanna
"Walking On Sunshine" - Katrina & The Waves
"What is Love?" - Haddaway
"You Can't Hurry Love" - Diana Ross and The Supremes
"You're Beautiful" - James Blunt

I played Karaoke Revolution on the PS2 a lot (I love doing karaoke) and enjoyed it. But, I have a Wii, so I was excited when Karaoke Revolution came out for the Wii.

The simplest way to describe Karaoke Revolution is "Match the pitch and timing of the song to score points." When you choose a player, and choose a song, the song scrolls across the bottom of the screen. Above the song's lyrics, the game shows a simplified music staff with empty note tubes. These tubes indicate a pitch for the phrase.

You fill the note tubes by singing the correct pitch at the correct time into the microphone (you may transpose the song up or down an octave if necessary). After a few phrases, the game shows a mark on the display---and the more notes you hit correctly, the higher you score.

If you enjoy karaoke, this game is a lot of fun. The game even has what it calls "True Duets", where 2 people (2 microphones needed). With True Duets, two people each sing a part.

For a greater challenge, there are 4 difficulty levels. The higher the difficulty level, the more notes you need to get right in a measure, and the more accurately you need to hit each pitch.

To keep things fresh, there are several modes of play, ranging from "Quick play" (just pick a song and go), to various lengths of "American Idol" contests. There are also several ways 2 (or more) players can be involved, such as head-to-head battle, both take part in an American Idol contest or a knock out.

If you wondered "How would I do on American Idol?" this game partially fulfills that fantasy---the 3 famous judges are there and judge you based on how well you do.

So what is the down side with the game?

First of all, there are a very small number of pre-set characters (all the same body type) you can use. You can clothe them slightly differently, but this is totally unlike the PS2 version, where you can choose an exact body type and save the unique character. On the PS2, this allows two people to start with the same face, but customize it differently.

In addition, if you do change how the character is clothed, the picture you see doesn't change. This makes it difficult to find the character you created.

You can unlock more characters, but it doesn't significantly add to the list.

Beyond this, there are no downloadable songs for the Wii version---a feature that was promised but not to date delivered. Even if you love doing karaoke, you'll eventually get sick of doing the same 40 songs over and over again.

Finally, the high score list doesn't keep track of the different difficulty levels separately. This makes the high score useless, because a score of 100000 (Perfect) of Easy will overwrite a score of 90000 on Expert.

If Komani addressed these shortcomings in their next Karaoke Revolution title, I think it would be a best seller for the Wii: add download capability, add much more flexibility to player models, make the high scores separate for each difficulty level.

However, the game is still a lot of fun (if you love karaoke), but it feels cheap and rushed because of where Konami cut corners---player models being the worst offender.

We have had such great fun with this one. It does go easy on the judging but since there are not a lot of recent songs the kids know, I am glad for that. That being said, I wish there were more songs. We have already unlocked the extra songs. I wish there were more of the recent songs also. While for us adults, Bohemian Rhapsody is a fun song to try these songs are difficult for younger children to sing. The song selection seems more geared toward the 35-45 crowd.

I bought this as I was trying to get more out of my Wii than just bowling, and I enjoy singing, but I'm not much of an America Idol fan.

My only complaint was that I won the competion (8-songs) the very first time I played. I thought it might be a little more challenging, but overall I had a good time.

Song selection is great. However, I learned a quick cheat (which is perhaps why I won.) If you have a song you know and like, you can sing it as many times as you want in the competition. There's nothing that prevents you from singing the same song more than once. I sang Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" during the auditions and got a perfect score. So I sang it as my first song in the competition. Got a perfect score again. When it was down to me and one other competitor, I chose this song again, got a perfect score and, hence, won the game.

The bonus items that you can unlock are very entertaining. You'll see some great performances from previous AI competitions. You'll also see some terrible auditions which are good for a laugh.

Definitely a good party game, I'm sure.

I've been a huge fan of Karaoke Revolution for a long time, I have Volume 3 and American Idol for the Playstation 2, and Party for the Gamecube.

My best guess is that this edition of KR was put together by a completely different team, because it is a huge step backward in the franchise. In many ways, the game is much like Volume 3, which is a 3 game step into the past.

The first KR:AI game allowed for tons of character customization, it was easy to make a character that looked just like you. This version is similar to Volume 3 in that there are simply a collection of pre-made characters that you cannot adjust for the most part. You can change their clothing, but hair is the only physical characteristic that is modifiable. Even the system for modifying characters is poor, it's even worse than in Volume 3, a much older game. You can also rename the characters, but you cannot copy them. This means that two people cannot play using the same character model.

The menu system is also really poorly put together, the worst I've ever seen in a KR game. It's very basic and lacks polish of any kind, once again being far inferior to the much older Volume 3.

The song selection is decent, but only has 40 songs. After playing Guitar Hero 3, which has around 80, the amount is disappointing. Even KR:Party had 50 songs, though I should not the previous KR:AI also had 40 to choose from.

All these things could be forgiven if the gameplay was classic Karaoke Revolution, but once again, the developers managed to screw up. The game's tracking of your sung notes is simply not nearly as good as previous titles, sometimes the note tracker simply starts slowly moving down the music staff no matter what you sing.

The solution to this seems to have been to lower the difficulty. I am not a very good singer, but I was getting near perfect scores on songs I had never sung before, on the lowest difficulty, something I could not have done in the first KR:AI. Even on Expert, the highest difficulty, we were getting 90% perfects.

So my advice is, if you are choosing a Karaoke Revolution game for this first time, go with a different edition. However, if you are a rabid fan such as I, it is still probably worth picking up. Even with all the flaws mentioned above, it is still loads of fun.

Hi! I am a bit disappointed with this game b/c there are only 36 songs to sing along to. The list of songs is very good, but you can only sing Copacabana so many times! You can unlock a bunch of video clips from past seasons but there areonly 3 songs to unlock.

I purchased this game as a way for my family to spend interactive time togther while playing the WII. I have to say I am very glad that I did!!!Our little two year old even joins in the fun, singing and holding the mic...he's even getting the dance moves going!!!! Though we are not "singers" ~ with the exception of my hubby ~ we all have a great time together singing and laughing! I highly recommend this GAME!!!ps...DO BUY AN EXTRA MIC FOR DUETS~!!!

[...] The graphics are terrible, even for the wii. The sound quality is not that good on my 5.1 system. They do not use the infrared wiimote capabilities at all. There is no online content or connection. It feels like a very bad and rushed port of a game. Bottom line, wait until someone designs a better kareoke title for the wii. I was hoping for so much more having played previous titles in the franchise. The psII versions are much better IMHO.

On the positive side, it is the very best kareoke title out there for the wii. It only beats boogie by a slim margin. This game is a 50 out of 100.

This game is fun at first, but grows old quickly. If you like to sing, you'll enjoy it. Song selection is scarce. Mostly for your older players. I think they could have done a better selection when deciding what songs to include. The game was fun at first, but once you ran out of songs you knew....well, it became a bit boring.

As far as what you have to do, it's somewhat like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. You must match the pitches and rhythms with what's on screen. You can choose your character and change their appearance. Also, you can pick different venues. You can adjust the difficulty level, as well as the volume of the sample voice, music, and/or your mic volume. If you do well on a song, you unlock other songs and videos. All the videos are video clips from American Idol, not of the original artist. There are a couple of drawbacks. One, there is a delay between what you sing and when you actually hear it. This takes a little getting used to. Second, you have to sing the song just like the artist (could be original or American Idol version), but all the runs and improv licks have to be done the same in order to score your points.