Celeb Big Brother 2010

www.channel4.com/bigbrother/housemates/

Sisqo! Vinnie Jones! Stephen Baldwin!

Iraq hostage Peter Moore

I herd the TV saying:


Now I was in a small lever of show for a moment as I thought it was this guy:



But it wasnt.... no news here.

LIPS No1 Hits.

Lips is made by the people that did Elite Beat Agents. I have read reviews of this game in the past and found them to be unfavourable most of which offered a 5/10 review. Typically people have said it wasn’t as good as the PS2s Sing Star. At least that is what I remember reading. I have played Sing Star, but it was only at a party and I have forgotten the whole thing....

Now... it should be said right away that I cannot sing. I am very flat, I have no rang or control over my voice. Most of my friends can average 1,500,000 points a song the top Xbox Live players seem to get over 10,000,000. I am lucky to get 400,000. I am that bloody bad at the game! BUT I have still enjoyed myself playing with friends due to the good range of songs and a somewhat clever game play devices which make it includes for everyone... I’ll get to that in a sec.

How the game plays:
The words come up on the screen with boxes over them. Singing in the right note will colour in the boxes and spin up your score at the top of the screen. Filling many boxes in a row will give you a combo bonus, but sing out of tune and you won’t colour in the boxes or get any points at all. You can also get x2 or x3 times bonus on long notes if you can vibrate your voice in a Christina Aguilera / Brian Ferry sort of way. I liked this idea and it rewards you for being a good singer, which is the whole point.

The microphones are motions sensitive, so some times you’ll be asked to shack it like a maraca along with incremental parts, strike a pose, play air guitar or spin. This is actually a nice way to break up the game a bit and allows chumps like me who can play Samba De Amigo to claw back some points by paying attention. Also much like in Rock Band, if you’ve built up your Star Meter via successful singing, you can tilt the like over your head and earn Stars points.



There are 40 songs and they ensure all players can enjoy themselves. As I said at the start, I can’t sing, but I can talk in time to music and I can whistle well enough. So I can actually play and enjoy Raps songs like “Can’t Touch This” or low range songs like “Don’t Worry Be Happy”.



You can buy 169 extra tracks at the moment. The game comes with a voucher for 5 free songs but most songs cost around 160ms points which is £1.36. That is very reasonable when you conceder the stupid avatar outfits can cost upwards of 250ms points for a T shirt or a mask. Some of the DLC is really surprising... DLC List

One thing though, all DLC shows up at the bottom of the music select screen, separated by a different colour background. It isn’t intrusive and it can be hidden by pressing X to show only content on the Xbox. But if you had a party and you are connected to XBL, it is possible someone will want to play a song you haven’t bought and spend your points by accident, assuming the songs were in the game.... I did feel this was a bit dirty, to dangle extra content infornt of you like this just to sell you stuff in game... but I guess you’ll just have to ensure you’re on not online with your Xbox if you ever have a party.


Complaints:
Video quality on the music videos are very poor. They look like YouTube Videos. Not a game killers but still disappointing.

There is no training mode at all. I would have liked to try a basic "Doe ray me far so la te da” scale and a basic How The Game Works tutorial. Coming into it cold I had no idea tilting the controller can earn you extra bonus points... despite the small onscreen icon. I read that in the manual much later. Which if you ask me is a massive let down on game supposedly designed for everyone.

You can also song along to your own songs from a USB drive, iPod or The Xbox HDD. There is some scoring involved that will score you when you match the pitch.... but this is very erratic and although a small bit of fun isn’t worth taking seriously.

Good points:
The mic is very well made and has a built in light show changing to about 20 different colours that pulsate with the music. It looks very pretty in the dark. A player can also allocate a colour to their mic in their profile, which the mic will automatically change to when in standby.

There are many different options available to you. You can sing a full song, or a shortened version, you can sing in 2player VS or Duet, taking turns. You also have the option to fade down or turn off the original singers voice leaving only the backing track if you’re doing well. I've not played well enough to get this to work yet. You can also play with the acoustic way the game kicks out your own voice, making echo like you're in a Hall or keeping it Studio Clean.

Overall.
I like this game is has some really good ideas. I really dont see why it scores lower than SingStar.
But it doesn’t feel like a perfect game... that lack of a singing coach option means that for someone like me, this game is a little inaccessible. But there are some WarioWare-ish mini singing games I've yet to try. Maybe they'll help but I dont think so.

Well worth £20 though.

Internet set-top box

Could be a good way for TV to go.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8426104.stm

Brittany Murphy dies at age 32

Brittany Murphy dies at age 32 from cardiac arrest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8423785.stm