Customer Reviews

Lips

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I'm a big Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero fan. Lips is a pretty good first try. The songs are pretty good but the selection could be a little bigger. Also, some of the songs are really nice to listen to, but they're hard to sing in that a lot of the songs have choppy, quick phrasing. Almost feels like you're rapping to some of the songs instead of doing melody.

I wish they copied the above games more in terms of singing. I'll use karaoke Revolution as an example. As you sing, it's very easy to see the words as well as what pitch you're singing at because they have an easy to see arrow and if you notice that you need to sing higher or lower you can adjust. This is all while still being easy to see the words to the songs.

But on Lips, the words are totally separate from the pitch bar. So if you follow the words, it's hard to see the pitch bar unless you have fabulous peripheral vision. And if you follow the pitch bar, you better know the words beforehand. Plus, you see the glowing light of what pitch you're at but it's not as easy to follow as the arrow you see in Karaoke Revolution or Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

They make up for this fault by taking away all of the game aspect. there's no chance to fail. There's no difficulty level to choose. There's no computer audience to boo. So it feels like a karaoke machine rather than a game. But you don't get that sense of accomplishment the other games give where you feel like you match that pitch bar and feel like a singer.

They should also give you options of how the text and pitch bar scroll like in the other games. The best scrolling is Karaoke Revolution and Rock Band. Pretty each to read the text and pitch bar.

Guitar Hero/Band Hero is bad at scrolling text. But it offers a static mode that is really good too. Lips is like a combination of the two but it's not as good as either mode individually.

I'll be honest, I bought it for the wireless mics, not the game. The mics are really cool. They have glowing lights that change color. And the colors sync up to the music. the setup for the mics is much harder than it should be. trust me, you won't get it the first time or rather, you won't be sure you got it or not until you start the game. there's very little visual indication that it's been properly set up. And it's hard to turn off the controllers too. Because the same action (hold down the button on the bottom of the mic) does 3 different things. You need to do it twice to setup the mic. but you also do it to turn off the mic. so sometimes, you want to turn it off and then you accidentally you put it in pairing mode. when I thought the mic was off, it was on.

in terms of the sound, I liked my mics for Karaoke Revolution more even though they were wired. the sound was just more natural. the sound coming out of these wireless mics seemed a little artificial. almost a tinny quality. and they were not as good at filtering noise.

also, you can use the mics as instruments by shaking them to simulate various instruments like tamborine, etc. but again, there was a lag to when you shook the mic to when it played the sound so if you shake according to the music, it'll sound really off sync with the music.

i love the feature of how you can join a song just by shaking the mic. and the tilt features of the mic are gimmicky but is hilarious in a group situation when both singers raise up the mic in tandem.

Also, there seemed to be a delay between when you sing into the mic and when it comes out the game. but after playing around with the game, I got a downloaded update to the game from MS and it included a cool sync tool. and it's by far the easy calibration tool I've ever used for a music game. You just put up the microphone to the TV speaker while it's running and after a few seconds, it calculates the delay.

There are just so many great music games out there. While you have the guitar standards that are based on rhythm like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and those that make you step to the beat of the music like Dance Dance Revolution, there is just the feeling of games that you have to sing your way to the top. With lackluster games like American Idol and Disney's Sing It!, just appeal to tweens and teeny-boppers wannabes alike, there just doesn't feel like there is a universal appeal to sing-a-long games alike. For those who've played Singstar so much from the PS2 and Playstation 3, the Xbox 360 has taken that notion to a whole new level that makes it more than just meets the eye.

Lips for the Xbox 360 takes in the appeal of what the Singstar! series had for the PS2, and brings in the appeal as a first for Xbox 360 players. While the game might seem like a gimmick, there actually is surprisingly more. You have the usuals like Singstar, from singing along to over 40 tracks that appeal from recent favorites like Duffy's Mercy and the extremely overexposed artist of 2008 Rihanna with Umbrella, to classics like The Jackson 5's ABC, and Everything She Does Is Magic by The Police. You also have the ability to download videos from the Xbox Live marketplace to add on to the fun. While the graphics and sound might feel like it is similar to Singstar!, as well as the concept of the downloadable content, what makes this unique to the gameplay is Lips secret weapon.

What makes the gameplay more unique is that you can plug in your MP3 player or Ipod, and connect it to the 360, and sing along to your favorite songs off their personal MP3 Players in the game as well. This feature makes the game a whole lot more exciting and addictive to the gameplay for parties everywhere. Sadly, there is one big disadvantage to the MP3 playback. The only music downloads that are compatable, are ones that are MP3 DRM-Free capable. Which is the only problem, is that if you download music off of sites that use other music files in Windows Media Audio or WMA, they will not be playable on the game. That is sadly, the only major flaw in the game. Also, I was hoping that with the price of the Singstar! games for PS2 and Playstation 3, I really thought it would also be a bit less expensive.

All in all though, Lips for the Xbox 360 brings in the singing along concept well for those who want to have a great time listening to their favorite songs. If you've gotten pretty tired of Singstar!, or if you don't own a Playstation 2, or PS3, than this would be a fantastic buy for music lovers and 360 gamers all around the world. I really hope they make this concept for more music games like this soon. At around $65, you really get a great game, that doesn't feel like it is a gimmick.

Graphics: B

Sound: B

Control: B

Extras: B+

Fun & Enjoyment: B- for solo play; A- for multiplayer

Overall: B

If you like to sing, Rock Band 2 is better. When you sing on Rock Band2, it shows you how close you are to hitting the right pitch. With Lips, it only lights up if you hit the right pitch, so it's not as much help in learning to sing the song perfectly on pitch.

You can do 'battles' with another singer, but you can't choose your own avatar when you do. So, you both look like monsters, one skinny with green hair and the other fat with blue hair. It's also confusing to figure out who's who.

I feel this has so much promise, but it's not there yet. And the songs... not that many... we're still figuring the proper format to upload our own music.

I like that it has the original music videos for the songs it offers though.

If you don't have Rock Band 2 you may like to check that one out Rock Band 2

*NOTE: For those of you having connection issues:
YOU MUST UNPLUG ALL USB MICROPHONES BEFORE STARTING LIPS!

One of the better gifts I gave this Christmas was Lips, though I have to admit I was hesitant to buy it after reading a couple mediocre reviews from gamespot and kotaku. Most of the negativity seems to revolve around the music import tool, allowing you to import your own MP3's, WMA's and M4A's from a connected thumb drive, music player (haven't tried the iPod yet, sorry), and even through a wireless connected media center! It sounds like a good idea, but one reviewer pointed out "importing thousands of my own songs was...largely useless. You don't get lyrics..." Not so. Forget proper karaoke for a moment - if you love just singing along with your favorite tunes but lack a legitimate excuse to grab a mic and rock out, Lips offers exactly that. Matching the music's waveform earns you the same points and fills the mic-gesture-gauge just as though the song were part of the game. It's a blast and we love it! Even if you decide not to import your own music, there's plenty to purchase online with full lyrics and music videos. Unfortunately, with only 40 tracks on disc, you'll find that if you DON'T add to the library at all, you'll quickly tire of repeating yourself.

Besides the library, the game itself offers a lot over its sing-along competition. The interface alone is super-slick, displaying album art for each song during music selection, and overall the whole experience is tailored for group play. Players can sing simultaneously in versus mode, or take turns with phrases and harmonies in duet mode. There's even a few party game modes (vocal fighters, Kiss, and Time Bomb) which can be activated by selecting them as the songs background video. Spectators can even use the standard controllers to make a verity of percussive sounds (ie "noise makers"), and the motion-sensitive mics can be used to activate a star/point bonus when the gesture gauge fills (much like star power in RockBand / Guitar Hero). And to answer your question, yes, Harmonix has promised a patch which will make the wireless mics compatible with RockBand in the near future. Woo!

My only complaint is an incompatibility that isn't documented in the instructions:
YOU MUST UNPLUG ALL USB MICROPHONES BEFORE STARTING LIPS.

I'll explain. First, don't listen to what other people have said -- the process of syncing both mics is just as easy as syncing a normal wireless controller. We ran into no problems here what so ever. The problem was that, though everything was working fine in single player mode, as soon as I tried to join in with the 2nd microphone, BOTH mics stopped working. Then, when starting over, the first mic, which was working fine before, started having timing and static issues. Additionally, the lights on the 2nd mic never light up, making me think it was either broken or not synced properly. No matter which order I connected everything, connecting a 2nd mic broke the connection with the first. Almost ready to take it all back, I ran across this thread on Gamespot, revealing the following observation:

"It turns out that all my issues stem from the fact I have a USB microphone connected to my Xbox 360. Somehow microphone registration gets all screwy because of that. In my case, I have my Rock Band microphone plugged into the Xbox 360 at all times. The fix is to unplug the USB microphone when you're playing Lips. Apparently this will fix both the 2nd microphone lighting issues as well as the static noise, video and audio out of sync issues, as well as the freezing issues."

My problem EXACTLY. I hope someone out there finds this useful. Happy new year!

I enjoyed playing Karaoke Revolution on the original Xbox. But I decided not to continue with that game on the 360 because the ratings indicated partial nudity and sexual themes. Lips seemed to have more appropriate content based on the ratings. And for the most part, it is a very clean game. Some of the music videos are racy. But there are options to select other backgrounds than the video. The words are much easier to read than previous karaoke games. What really takes the game to the next level is the motion sensors in the mic. The game indicates to perform certain motions at certain times to get bonus "stars". That is really cool. I also very much appreciate that I can go to the Lips store in the game and purchase additional songs. There are over 400 to choose from and Lips releases 3 or 4 new songs every Friday. The songs are only $2 each, which I feel is a great price. There are 3 additional song set discs that add 40 songs each to the game: Number One Hits, Party Classics and I Love the 80s. (I Love the 80s was only released in the UK, but it still works in US consoles.) However, the down side is that the songs on the discs are not transferable to the hard drive so I cannot sing the songs on a disc unless the disc is in the console. Only the songs downloaded from the store remain when discs are switched. Buying this version with the two mics is a great deal. Bottom line, if you like to sing along with your favorite songs, this is a great choice.
***Update: The Lips server seems to be experiencing intermittent outages again. Morning of October 1 the server was down, but just tested again in the afternoon and it was working.

Ok, so I'll just start off by saying, I was having a hard time choosing whether or not to give this game four stars or five stars. It has it's pro's, but it also has it's con's, so four stars seemed appropriate, however, I finally landed on five stars to help get the review back up from some reviews which I deem the game doesn't deserve, simply because the reviewer didn't read about the product before buying it. List the pro's and con's for me below, and hopefully it'll help you make your decision.

Pro's

1) Endless music library. For me, this is one of the better Pro's as I love the fact that I can use almost my entire music collection on this game. I say almost because it's restricted to songs in MP3 DRM-Free format, though that's what most of my songs are, so no big problem.

2) Interface. I simply love the interface. It looks nice and it's very easy to use. You have the ability to change the theme and color to those of your choice which means everyone can choose a favorite color. It's also very easy to browse through songs, and search for more off a removable device, xbox live download center, hard drive, etc.

3) Music videos in the background. While, the other backgrounds are fun to use once in a while, I personally enjoy the fact that most of the songs all come with music videos. It makes it more fun for others to watch while you sing.

4) Other backgrounds. The other backgrounds you can choose from are great to. Some animated ones that seem to change depending on the type of song you're playing, i.e. rock, pop, country, etc, and a few interactive ones. One of them is called "Time Bomb" and while you sing you will fill a glass of water up, and you tilt the mic to pour the water onto a fuse to try and stop the bomb from going off. Pretty fun, and makes the game more than just singing.

5) Mics are awesome. I just simply love the mics that come with the game. Both of mine have been working flawlessly and are really fun. Light up while you're singing and have accelerometers inside them so you can shake to the beat of the song. Quite fun really. The only problem I really have with them is turning them off. Think I've found it out now, but sometimes it'll start blinking again a few minutes later, so I'll have to turn it off again, though I might've just not turned it off right the first time...still working on that.

6) Good 40 songs to start with. The 40 songs it comes with are actually pretty fun, and you're bound to know a few of them. I knew more than 20 of them myself, and the rest were fun and pretty easy to learn with the lyrics being on the screen. Might just take a few tries.

7) Fun. All around it's a pretty fun game...only done it with three people at the most so far, but it seems like it'd be great for a party. I'm planning on taking it to a party on New Year's Eve so we'll see if it goes over well or not...might decide to edit my post and let you guys know.


Okay, plenty more pro's but can't really name them all, some are smaller and would just get really lengthy naming them...nor for the cons.


Con's

1) Not good for Xbox Live. Well...the Xbox Live experience just isn't there. The only thing you can do with other players is challenge them to sing a song with you, though I haven't tried yet as none of my online friends have the game. There's also no leaderboard or anything like that, so no way to compare your score's to others' or to find someone that you might be able to challenge. I mean, I'd love to try the challenge but since none of my friends have it, and there's no way to find other users who have it, I just have to wait. One of my friends might end up getting it, but not sure.

2) No score's saved. Actually, there's not too much saved at all. I think it saves your top 5 songs sung, (might've been 10) but other than that it doesn't really save much. This was kind of disappointing because unless you keep a notepad/pen close, you'll never be able to tell if you beat your previous high score.

3) Not really a good voice reducer. Well, I was kind of hoping that for the songs that came with the game you'd be able to completely drown out the voice of the original artist, but it doesn't really drain it out that well. I mean, you can really still hear the original artist very easily. Seems even worse when you use a song from your own library. It's not that big of a deal, but definitely a bit of a disappointment.

4) Only show a max of 5,360 songs when looking for songs to add. This might not be a big deal for everyone, but I have over 10,000 songs on my iPod, and when I connect it, it only loads about half my songs, and will leave the rest out of the list, and there is no way to "load next 5,360 songs" or something like that, which kind of sucks. I've run into the problem of not being able to find my songs quite a few times so far because it ran out of room to add songs...a bit disappointing but I can see the reason they'd do it.


I have some more cons, but I'm going to put them in the section below, because they are not going to be cons that everyone will actually run into, and aren't that big.


Other (These are not pros or cons, just some notes)

1) Songs added from external device won't load. Well, after I added a few songs from my iPod, (not many...maybe 10) I played them all, and they all worked fine for then, but after I turned off my 360 and turned it back on, I had to plug in my iPod, and, believe it or not, that error from above must've had an effect because it wouldn't load some of my songs from the external device and I wasn't able to play them. I waited about 5-10 minutes for one song to work, it was sitting on "Plug in the external device this song is located on", so I'm assuming it was searching or something. After it finally finished I clicked play and it started up, but as soon as it started it ended. Didn't play any music at all, just went to the custom video and right back out. Not sure what happened but I'm assuming that Lips might've loaded a different 5,360 songs from it that time, meaning that my other song might not have loaded.

2) Album art doesn't always load. While I was playing earlier today I noticed that some of the album art for songs that came with the game weren't loading, however, this problem was fixed when I restarted my Xbox and I haven't had it since. Could've been a one time glitch.

3) Not many songs on the xbox live download center yet, but this game isn't too old so hopefully more will come out soon. I'm really hoping they don't forget this game and will try to release AT LEAST one new one per week...that's not asking too much.

4) Rate songs that you add and maybe see them added to the xbox live download center. I thought this feature was neat. Once I finished my first song from my library and I went to rate it, it told me that when I rate my songs it'll keep the information, and when multiple users rate a song high, or play it alot (something like that) they will work on getting lyrics and other content for the song (music videos?) up on the xbox live download center. Seemed like a neat idea, and a good way to give the consumers what songs THEY want.

5) It's not as easy to hum your personal collection as some say it is. You can try and "hum" your way through a song, but it's really not as easy as some people would have you think. I've personally tried it and I've found I get many more points when I sing the actual words to the song, plus, what's the point of humming? Even if you can do it, doesn't mean you have to do it. If people have more fun humming the song than singing the actual words, that's their business, I really don't see how it'd be considered a flaw...after all, it's not really a competitive game, it's meant to be used so you can have fun...and if you are in versus mode and someone is doing it just say stop, or don't play with that person again...not that hard.

6) My iPod (80GB Classic) doesn't seem to be the greatest item to pair with this game. While it works, it doesn't add all the songs, and it takes a little while to browse through as the game pauses after every 3-4 letters if you're using LB/RB to skip through the letters to get somewhere faster. It also seems risky as the song might not be the same one loaded next time. I'd say if you have a 32GB iPod Touch or lower you'd be fine. I actually got around this by just adding any music I want to a 2GB flash drive. Much faster, and easier to load new songs to it.



Jeez, I really can't think of anything else. This really is a great game, and seems like it'd be perfect for any fun parties. You can just put it in jukebox mode and play your entire library and just let it randomize, play only songs in a certain rank range (such as 1 star, or 5 star's), or make your own playlist and play it. Then, you can just listen to the music, and if anyone feels like it, they can walk up and shake the mic and start singing. All in all, it's definitely worth giving a try if you're into these kind of games. I personally think it's better than Rockband/Guitar Hero, on the vocals side of things, however, it can only be that way as long as they continue to add content. If they don't add anymore content, it might get boring after a while. I mean, it's fine to sing from my personal collection, but I personally prefer playing with the original music video, and lyrics, to help me...not to mention I also like when it shows how you're singing and how well on pitch you are.

Hope this review was helpful to someone!

Bought the mics to give me 2 more wireless mics to play the Beatles:Rockband on xbox 360 and it works just as planned.

The game that it comes with works well and the girls, 8 and 6 enjoyed few of the songs. But there isn't a whole lot of family oriented songs per se. A few motown which are fun to sing and couple country songs.

We played a few of the coop games, one where you had to sing well enough to make the two cartoon characters kiss. There are a few motion based skills which seem to be implemented well.

I have not really tried importing my own songs as I really only wanted to get the game for the wireless mics.

So if you are wanting to get 2 extra wireless mics to work with beatles, this may be the cheaper way to do it.

Thanks!

This game is very fun, the only downfall is the short list of songs it ships with and the downloadable content engine seems to be really glitchy. I was also promised new songs every week for the first 8 weeks because I pre-ordered it through amazon. However, the first track i tried to download via zune said it was "free" and then charged me 240 microsoft points with out warning. It took me about 3 hours of being passed back and forth between microsoft, zune and xbox - all the same company - because none of them wanted to give my points back. I finally got them back, however, i still didn't receive any of the "free" downloads for the promotion. Even though the game itself deserves 5 stars because we had a blast playing it... the support behind it is LOUSY!

This is my first review on here, but I do have to say this is a great party game or even when you have the urge to sing a song on your own quickly.

First off, the game comes with 40 songs. It may not seem like the biggest collection,but every week songs are coming out and there are sales on the download content that came out. Actually, when this game first came out, there were offers for free music each week. I think regular price per song is about 160 points (2 dollars)...which I go to the bowling alley and put in a couple bucks to listen to music I want there...so that's no big deal to me here.

Secondly, you can't expect lyrics to come up for songs you hook in. If you could do that with songs, then karaoke machines would be pointless. It's a bit too high expectation for a game to do that, but the one complaint I have is that when you put your own songs in, if you make any noise, you get points as it registers.

As for the mics, they work well. There are options and the controllers allow you to change your voice volume and the song voice volume so you can hear yourself better. I find it works great unless you sing really low...but then if you sound soft, the sound coming back will be soft.

This game may not be rock band, but if all you don't want to spend 180 bucks and have a bunch of other instruments hanging around, I'd say to try this out. If you have internet on your Xbox 360, check out the add ons for more songs too. Every Friday new songs come out so you won't be disappointed with selection.

So I love to sing and I used to spend a lot of time singing in Rock Band, so I decided to give a try to this game.

I liked the game, it's fun, but could be better.

So the game comes with 40 songs and most of them are nice. It's easy to plug-in your own device to add more music, but this will not bring you the lyrics and the songs have to be MP3 DRM free. The songs to download are still just a few, but this is something they can work on. I've downloaded some for 160 points each and I thought they were quite big (~80Mb each).

There is a lot going on on the screen, so it takes some time to get used to it. Even the pitch that somebody said in his/her review that it doesn't indicate, it's not true. It does indicate, I just think it's not so easy to visualize as in Rock Band, for example.

One thing that I was really disappointed is that there is no real online experience. You cannnot battle with online people through XBOX Live, you can only challenge a friend of yours in one song and you don't sing together. Another thing is that you cannot see your best score for a particular song or not even see how you rank in that song against others (like an XBOX Live leaderboard).

I also thought the game was easy. I've never had some many achievements in a game in such a short time. But for parties, the game is easy to set up and all the musics come unlocked.

Overall, it's a good karaoke game.