Karaoke Revolution Glee
Score: 76% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Konami Developer: Hijinx Studios, LLC Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 6 Genre: Rhythm/ Party/ Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: Karaoke Revolution has been around quite a number of years now. Through those years, it has gone through some changes both good and bad. The new Karaoke Revolution Glee is definitely a change from the previous versions. As you've probably guessed, Karaoke Revolution Glee is comprised of music from the popular TV series Glee. There are almost 30 songs, including two of Glee's popular mash-ups, "Don't Stand So Close To Me/Young Girl" and "Hair/Crazy in Love." Other popular Glee songs available are "Bust a Move," "Endless Love," "Papa Don't Preach," and "Sweet Caroline." The one complaint that I have on the music is that they use most of the older music when there are so many more current songs featured on Glee. I really expected to see "Single Lady" given that it was the focus of pretty much an entire episode and played so many times! But I guess it couldn't be licensed. All of the music is sung as it was in the Glee episode and is sung by the Glee cast, not the original artists. The videos in Karaoke Revolution Glee make it the best Karaoke Revolution graphically by far. You don't get to choose a character to play as. Instead, there is a video playing in the background. All the videos are from actual Glee episodes and are quite well chosen. The one problem with it is that you'll find yourself missing lines as you're too busy watching the videos and will get distracted from singing.
Gameplay: You'll find that there are a few different options to play Karaoke Revolution Glee. The first option available is Scrapbook. Here instead of selecting a song to play, you select a Glee cast member. Your options are Rachel, Finn, Artie, Tina, Kurt, Quinn, Puck, Will, and Mercedes. Each of these characters has a set list of songs that they were a part of in Glee. For each song, you'll have to meet certain requirements to get the song award for that character. When you do, you get a new item added to the scrapbook page. When you play that song with a different character, you'll have a whole new set of challenges to complete. The next choice you have to play is Quickplay. Here you just pick a song, choose Solo, Co-Op, or Duet (where available), and select your difficulty. Since all the songs are unlocked from the beginning of the game, you don't have to worry about playing a different mode to unlock songs. You can simply play Quickplay the entire game if you want. Finally, you have the option of Shooting Star. At first glance, you might wonder what the difference in Shooting Star and Quickplay is, because I know that I did. Just like Quickplay you choose your song, style, and difficulty. Once you start to play though, you'll notice these stars flying all across the screen. You can have up to four people pointing the Wii-mote at the stars and pressing (B) to "catch" the shooting stars. Whoever catches the most stars wins that part. Of course, you can try and catch the stars while you're playing but if you do, I recommend that you have a mic stand to hold the mic! Since you can have 2 people singing and up to 4 catching, you can actually have 6 players playing at once in Shooting Star. The last section available is Options. Here you can control the various levels of music. You can also choose to turn off the karaoke lyrics if you really want to. I don't recommend it though, at least not until you've learned everything pretty well. Don't forget that the songs are all as sung on Glee, so the rhythm, pitch and even the words could be slightly different from what you're used to.
Difficulty: In Karaoke Revolution Glee, you can choose from Easy, Medium, or Hard on both Quickplay and Shooting Star. The difficulty levels seem about the same as previous Karaoke Revolution games. You can tell how difficult a particular song is by how many stars it has. The more stars, the more difficult the song. I was curious at first as to why "Bust a Move" was a 4 star difficulty since you don't actually have to match pitch, you just have to say the words. Then I played it though and remembered how difficult it is to actually get all those words in there! I found it odd that you can't choose your difficulty level on Scrapbook. This makes it a lot more difficult to complete some of the challenges for each song, especially the songs that you don't know that well or the mash-ups that have words a bit different from what you're used to. Of course, you're under no obligation to beat every challenge but if you don't, you'll never know what scrapbook pieces you're missing!
Game Mechanics: I must mention that the packaging was the easiest I've ever opened. I didn't even have to find scissors to get the mic out of the packaging. The tape removed like it was supposed to, which I don't think I've even had happen before. I actually opened the mic to use just to have a change from the plain black ones that have come with everything else I've gotten. The mic that comes with Karaoke Revolution Glee is white with a black top. You should know how to play karaoke by now! In Karaoke Revolution Glee, the words scroll across the bottom of the screen. There is also a bar that is the pitch you're supposed to be singing at. You can sing it in any octave as long as it is the correct pitch. There is an arrow on the screen. That is where you're actually singing. You want to make that arrow follow along the pitch bar and you'll be singing correctly. For each phrase you get right in a streak, you'll a new person dancing behind the words. So if you're on a streak of 6, you have 6 people. It tops out at 10 though. You'll also notice in this version that once you get 5 in a row you're at your max multiplier, unless you use the gold sections. Those will max your multiplier up to 10x. The one annoying thing is that when you hit that 5x, you'll know it for sure because the game says "Glee" and flashes it pretty big on the screen, big enough to be distracting. Karaoke Revolution Glee is a decent addition to the Karaoke Revolution family, especially if you're a Gleek. I do wish that there was more music available though. It feels more like an addition pack than a full game. If you're a total Gleek and want to see your Glee cast, you must pick up Karaoke Revolution Glee. Otherwise you're probably not going to want to pay that much for only 29 songs that aren't the versions that you know.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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