Singstar: Queen (PS3)

Singstar has been around for a while now and, to the uninitiated, is essentially karaoke turned into a game. You sing along to a backing track of a song, trying to hit the notes, and the console measures your accuracy in terms of pitch and timing. If this sounds daunting, don't worry; it's relatively forgiving to the tone deaf, opening things up to those who are prepared to embarrass themselves in front of their friends and any passers by looking ...
...go for it. That said, it's also a great party game with co-operative and competitive modes for up to eight players. The music video plays along on screen along with guideline graphics to aid with your timing and pitch.


With the arrival of the Rock Band series, and the latest instalments of Guitar Hero also branching out into vocals, it's starting to get a bit overshadowed by its rivals. However, it's still the best for purely ... more

Singstar has been around for a while now and, to the uninitiated, is essentially karaoke turned into a game. You sing along to a backing track of a song, trying to hit the notes, and the console measures your accuracy in terms of pitch and timing. If this sounds daunting, don't worry; it's relatively forgiving to the tone deaf, opening things up to those who are prepared to embarrass themselves in front of their friends and any passers by looking through the window, although the perfectionists out there can still go for it. That said, it's also a great party game with co-operative and competitive modes for up to eight players. The music video plays along on screen along with guideline graphics to aid with your timing and pitch.

With the arrival of the Rock Band series, and the latest instalments of Guitar Hero also branching out into vocals, it's starting to get a bit overshadowed by its rivals. However, it's still the best for purely singing along, and with an exclusive Abba edition and now this, the game is fighting back as one for the karaoke specialist, especially those with a penchant for seventies retro.

Queen should need no introduction, being one of the most successful rock and pop bands of the seventies and eighties, fronted by the camp icon Freddie Mercury who died from AIDS related illnesses in 1991. The band continues without him, but everything here is firmly set in the Mercury era with all its excesses. As noted innovators in the area of music video, they're particularly suited to a game like this.

Any review of this wouldn't be complete without a track listing:
* Another One Bites the Dust
* Bicycle Race
* Bohemian Rhapsody
* Breakthru
* Crazy Little Thing Called Love
* Don't Stop Me Now
* Fat Bottom Girls
* I Want it All
* I Want to Break Free
* Innuendo
* One Vision
* Play the Game
* Somebody to Love
* These are the Days of Our Lives
* Tie Your Mother Down
* Under Pressure
* We are the Champions
* We Will Rock You
* Who Wants to Live Forever
* You're My Best Friend
* A Kind of Magic
* Hammer to Fall
* Killer Queen
* Radio Ga Ga
* The Show Must Go On

Excuse my break with alphabetical order, as the last five are exclusive to the PS3 version, and represent yet another reason for people to move on from the PS2.

Although giving pretty good coverage of the Greatest Hits material, as showcased in the musical We Will Rock You, a few early singles such as Keep Yourself Alive and Seven Seas of Rhye are conspicuous by their absence. There are also none of the album tracks that were a regular feature of Queen's live sets, such as Brighton Rock and In The Lap Of The Gods, which is a tad disappointing. Presumably this is down to the lack of promotional videos for them, as there's no live material. That said, Bohemian Rhapsody, with its multi-tracked midsection - completely insane for a solo singer to attempt live - is almost worth the price of admission alone, and it's backed up with plenty of other hits.

In a game like this, the audio quality needs to be top notch and it doesn't disappoint giving the PS3's sound capabilities a thorough workout; the backing tracks sound just as good as on the albums. Graphically, well, some of the videos are looking a bit long in the tooth nowadays and their limitations are just further exposed when up-scaled to HD, but Queen did produce some truly iconic videos over the years such as Radio Gaga and Innuendo which hold up well against anything you'll see today. One thing that I doubt that fans of the band will be worried although but younger players may be aghast at are some of the fashion disasters on display. The overlaid game graphics are relatively simple and don't intrude much onto the videos themselves, which is how it should be.

Longevity will obviously depend on how much of a Queen fan you are. That there's still a huge buzz about the group nearly two decades after the death of Freddie Mercury though, rather suggests to me that, for a lot of people, it's Singstar that they'll tire of first.

Overall, I think this game hits the spot for its target market; if you're a Queen fan who enjoys a bit of karaoke from time to time this is probably a dream come true. Fans of Singstar in general will probably appreciate some extra tracks to add to their repertoire as well. On the other hand, with Brian May and Roger Taylor still touring from time to time, it seems something of a shame that this isn't for Rock Band or Guitar Hero which would allow you to emulate the feats of the still active members of the band and the exclusive nature of this product will mean that you'll have to wait a while for that.

I'm sure Freddie Mercury would have approved. 

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