Karaoke Revolution Party

I love mornings. That's when I'm most Headstrong. In the afternoon I get a little Crazy. After a Drive into town I like to listen to some Rolling Stones. Covers are alright, but there Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing. If You Could Only See how beautiful the sky is at sunset; I could Fly over the horizon for hours. Ahhh, Mother Nature. Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.

At the end of the day I realized that I had Left My Heart In San Francisco. That happens Time After Time. But I couldn't go back – I had to return to my Endless Love: PlayStation 2.

Hi console. I'm home!

Does singing make us crazy or do we sing because we are crazy? The jury's still out on that one. Only one thing is for certain: when Konami decided to take the best of the top 40 music hits and create a game where the goal is to sing your heart out, they made a monster of a title that has turned me, my family and my friends into karaoke addicts.

Karaoke Revolution Party feeds that addiction. All the classic modes are here along with several new ones: Arcade, Medley, Duets, Duet Medley, Knockout, Sing Off, and a few mini-games. The pitch arrow and phrase markers are still used; the crowd still complains when you suck and will leave the auditorium if you don't get your act together. Sing and Dance, the new mode that sets this revolution apart from its predecessors, is a mode where vocal performance is merged with dance skills. Hand/eye coordination – that's yesterday's news. Karaoke Revolution Party requires coordination from your eyes, your voice, and your feet!

Learning to sing and dance simultaneously is quite difficult. Pick a song you don't know too well and you'll go crazy trying to dance while following the lyrics. The game rates the songs by beats per minute (BPM), just like Konami's dance-only music game, Dance Dance Revolution. The difficulty setting for vocal and dance judging are separate, allowing you to dance with very little depth (essentially one arrow every five to ten seconds), or dance at DDR's pace with dozens of arrows flying across the screen. No jump moves, nothing of that sort. The arrows are scrolled from right to left in a single row. Only one can pass through at a time.

Karaoke Revolution Party isn't any less challenging because of it. The dance moves can't compare to the most extreme DDR stages, but if you could measure the power of voice against the skill of fancy footwork, the two games would be a close match.

Exclusive to the PlayStation 2 version is the EyeToy Cameo feature. It lets players map their faces to a 3D head. Other games have claimed to do the same thing, but this one is by far the best. All you have to do is line your face up with the screen as the game explains, then press the X button to start the recording process. You'll be asked to slowly turn your head to one side during the recording process. That way the game can capture images of more than one part of your face, which is exactly what it does. This is how professional face-mapping used to work, though with much more complex and detailed technology.

Once the recording is done you select two shots, one that's straight on and one from the side, to use for your 3D head. Next the game asks you to mark key areas of the face so that it can map your facial features properly. The instructions for this are very clear. It takes a little patience to get it exactly right, but if you're off the game will be able to tell and ask you to do it over again.

The end result is a realistic-looking image that your friends will instantly recognize. Thanks to modern animation technology, Karaoke Revolution Party can manipulate the image (with polygons that stretch the face) to show emotion. Emotions include yawn, joy, pain, disgust, winking, frown, fear, anger, and rage, plus a couple of variations.

One of the greatest things about this series is that you're never forced to do anything you don't want to do. Don't feel like dancing? Pick another mode. Don't want your vocal performance to be judged? Then choose the standard karaoke mode. By giving players a choice at every turn Konami not only opens the game to players of all ages and skill levels, but it also lets guys like me (who enjoy every mode) customize my experience as I see fit.

Karaoke Revolution Party is a party in a box. Multiplayer games let you take turns, but if you have two microphones you and a friend can experience the wonderfully difficult Duets mode. In Duets mode each player sings a different part of the song – the final score is based on the performance of both players!

hYou won't be able to get enough of this game even if you don't have a dance pad or a second mic (though I highly recommend investing in both). For those of you who purchased the previous game and already have two microphones or two headsets, you may purchase the game alone for about forty bucks. That's a small fee for a game that you'll still be playing, if only casually, 40 weeks from now.

Full Track Listing:

•  (I've Had) The Time of My Life

•  (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman

•  Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

•  Ain't Too Proud To Beg

•  Always

•  American Woman

•  Brick House

•  Call Me

•  Crazy

•  Crazy in Love

•  Do You Really Want to Hurt Me

•  Drive

•  Dust in the Wind

•  Endless Love

•  Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

•  Everybody Wants to Rule the World

•  Everywhere

•  Fame

•  Fly

•  For You I Will

•  Headstrong

•  Greatest Love of All

•  Here I Go Again

•  I Don't Wanna Be

•  I Left My Heart in San Francisco

•  I Love Rock and Roll

•  I Will Always Love You

•  If You Could Only See

•  I'll Be

•  Material Girl

•  Me and Bobby McGee

•  Pain

•  Pieces of Me

•  Play That Funky Music

•  Start Me Up

•  Superstition

•  Sweet Caroline

•  Take On Me

•  Takin' Care of Business

•  That's Amore

•  The Game of Love

•  Time After Time

•  Truth Is

•  Turn The Beat Around

•  Unforgettable

•  Uptown Girl

•  Waiting For A Girl Like You

•  What I Like About You

• §             Who Can It Be Now?

• §             You're My Best Friend

Gameplay: 8.5
A party for your aural, visual and now physical senses, Karaoke Revolution Party more than lives up to its legacy. The phrase marker detects your vocals with unheard of accuracy, which gives the game a way to measure your performance and gives players a goal to reach. It’s impossible to compare this to any title outside its predecessors, but I define gameplay as being anything you can fully interact with – clearly buttons do not have to be involved. It’s that general simplicity, and the fact that everyone loves to sing, that makes Karaoke Revolution Party another mainstream hit.

Graphics: 7.6
For the most part Karaoke Revolution Party’s visuals are equal on all platforms. The PS2 version, however, comes with the added bonus of being able to capture a real person’s face and create a character that is entirely your own. It works great, taking several shots of your face from two angles, then maps them onto a 3D head for some hilarious results.

Sound: 8.1
If you’ve played the first game you know exactly what to expect: decent covers of your favorite songs. One tiny feature that puts this version above the rest is vocal feedback. If you’re using the Logitech headset you can actually hear your voice come through the earpiece! Gamers don’t need it – your vocals are also pumped through the speakers. Real rockstars and pop singers need feedback when they’re on stage, and it’s cool that Konami gave PS2 users that option.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
Not as challenging if you’ve played the previous games. You will, however, have a slight learning curve with each song whether you’re a karaoke master or not.

Concept: 7.5
Karaoke Revolution Party isn’t as innovative as the original, but the series still gets points from me for not losing its luster. This is the fourth game – usually by this point gamers start to lose interest. Not with this title. Not when I can sing, dance, and happily make a fool out of myself all at the same time!

Multiplayer: 9
As the fourth game in the Karaoke Revolution series, some might have feared that this game wouldn’t be able to hold onto its multiplayer edge. Anyone who thought that would have thought wrong. Karaoke Revolution Party delivers more of what we love plus tons of new modes and new excuses to keep playing. It’s a blast to play on your own, but grab a friend or two (or several!) and it’s laugh-out-loud fun for hours.

Overall: 8.6
Want to have hours of fun this holiday season? Want to break out your favorite game console and get the whole family to play? Madden gets the sports fanatics, Mario Kart attracts the speed freaks, but there’s only one video game that everyone will play, even non-gamers: Karaoke Revolution Party. Any version you choose will do, but why not choose the latest and get the newest songs? The cornucopia of 80s hits will make you want to grow a mullet (as if Solid Snake didn’t already make you want to do that!). From rock to pop to the genres in between, Karaoke Revolution Party has got it covered.