Lips
A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Lips. Lips is a karaoke party video game. The game play is pretty simiar to the rythm based music games, but instead of pushing buttons in time with an onscreen display, you have to sing along with the song. Using the included microphones the game detects your pitch and compares it to what it thinks is appropriate for the song.
They put a lot of nice touches on the microphones. There are embedded LEDs that pulse and change colors with the music. Also, there is an embedded accellerometer in the mic, and you can impove your score in the game by moving around. In a party situation, other people who are not singing, can use the controllers to play backup instruments.
I am not a singer, my wife is, but this can be a fun game, especially in a party situation.
I do have some problems with the game. The main problem that I have is that it appears that this game was ported to the Xbox 360, but doesn’t correctly implement some of the main features.
- Achievements - Most games that allow multiple to play on a single Xbox 360 use the Xbox user that is associated with a controller to determine who gets Xbox Achievements. So normally, if I and my wife are logged in, I will get achievements for the accomplisments that I do, and she will get them for hers. But in Lips, only the person who launched the game gets the achievements, even if they were earned by the other player.
- Downloadable Content - Most games that have downloadable content will use that content, if one Xbox account has downloaded it (The DRM that the Xbox 360 uses makes content available to every user on the first Xbox that downloaded it and the user who authorized the download on any Xbox. But not Lips. In Lips only the user who downloaded the content can use it to sing. So if a different user launches Lips, that content is not available.
Continue Reading December 15th, 2008
