You're my dawg, man
I picked up a copy of Karaoke Revolution (presents) American Idol this afternoon. It's just self-defense, really, because I know woodwindy is all over it already, and I need to have played it at least once before I see her next.
Full disclosure: I've never watched "American Idol." All the actual footage of it I've seen comes from commercials during football games (but wow, is that a lot of footage). It's part of Americana now, though, so just through osmosis, I know who Randy, Paula, and Simon are (and their reputations), and I know who Kelly and Ruben are, and even who William Hung is. I never wanted to watch it, because I try to avoid watching people make fools of themselves and crush their own dreams, and from the commercials, there seemed to be an awful lot of that.
When I first heard about the co-branding, therefore, I was pretty down on the game. But after I saw the song list, as I said a while back, I was more enthused about it. There's plenty of songs I just don't know, but also a lot that I like. I figured I could just ignore the features I didn't like.
I gotta say, the inclusion of the judging really makes the single-player mode more fun. Instead of just progressing through a bunch of random venues, you simulate the path of a contestant on the show, starting out on some empty soundstage, and moving up to the real show. Because you're the only one playing, you don't have to watch all the horrible people embarrass themselves, and you don't have to hear the judges savage them. Instead, you get to hear them be nasty to you.
That's the first thing that stands out -- the judges are considerably harder to impress than the game engine itself. See, the game scores each song out of 50,000 points. Hit 12,500, and that's a Gold record. 20,000 is Platinum. So everything from 20,000 to 50,000 is gravy. Honestly, unless it's the first time you've ever heard the song, or it's just completely out of your range, or just plain evil (ahem, "Brick House," "Love Shack"), it's not too hard to get Platinum consistently. But the judges are having none of it. You'll need to hit above 30K to impress Randy and Laura (yeah, Laura...I don't know if Laura's a real person or just a pseudo-Paula, but she's just as much of a softie as Paula's supposed to be). If you want to impress Simon, though, you'll need to get into the 40K range.
The comments that the judges make are fabulous, totally in-character, and recorded by the actual folks, as far as I can tell. The very first time I played, I tried a really easy song, and managed a perfect score, so they were all falling over themselves telling me how great I was. I think Randy said "dawg" at least five times. After that, though, I went in for a bit of a challenge, and wow, Simon got mean fast. He kept telling me I was terrible, how I'd let myself down, how I'd totally failed to meet his expectations. My total motivation for the rest of the game was to knock one out of the park and rub Simon's face in it. Which I did once, but I ended up not winning.
See, the other feature that's copied from the show is that you're competing against a bunch of virtual players, who you never see, but you see their names on the elimination screen (and some of the names are Kelly, Ruben, and Bo). Each round, a certain number of people get eliminated, and if one of them is you, the game is over. I assume all the virtual people go on to compete for virtual record contracts; I don't know. So I've played twice now, once by myself and once with elora_c, and both times I lost out to Kelly.
I don't know how well this is going to hold up over time. I suspects Simon's Canned Response #43 (I think that one's "Terrible. Simply awful.") is going to wear over time. But for the moment, you can certainly count me as amused.
Full disclosure: I've never watched "American Idol." All the actual footage of it I've seen comes from commercials during football games (but wow, is that a lot of footage). It's part of Americana now, though, so just through osmosis, I know who Randy, Paula, and Simon are (and their reputations), and I know who Kelly and Ruben are, and even who William Hung is. I never wanted to watch it, because I try to avoid watching people make fools of themselves and crush their own dreams, and from the commercials, there seemed to be an awful lot of that.
When I first heard about the co-branding, therefore, I was pretty down on the game. But after I saw the song list, as I said a while back, I was more enthused about it. There's plenty of songs I just don't know, but also a lot that I like. I figured I could just ignore the features I didn't like.
I gotta say, the inclusion of the judging really makes the single-player mode more fun. Instead of just progressing through a bunch of random venues, you simulate the path of a contestant on the show, starting out on some empty soundstage, and moving up to the real show. Because you're the only one playing, you don't have to watch all the horrible people embarrass themselves, and you don't have to hear the judges savage them. Instead, you get to hear them be nasty to you.
That's the first thing that stands out -- the judges are considerably harder to impress than the game engine itself. See, the game scores each song out of 50,000 points. Hit 12,500, and that's a Gold record. 20,000 is Platinum. So everything from 20,000 to 50,000 is gravy. Honestly, unless it's the first time you've ever heard the song, or it's just completely out of your range, or just plain evil (ahem, "Brick House," "Love Shack"), it's not too hard to get Platinum consistently. But the judges are having none of it. You'll need to hit above 30K to impress Randy and Laura (yeah, Laura...I don't know if Laura's a real person or just a pseudo-Paula, but she's just as much of a softie as Paula's supposed to be). If you want to impress Simon, though, you'll need to get into the 40K range.
The comments that the judges make are fabulous, totally in-character, and recorded by the actual folks, as far as I can tell. The very first time I played, I tried a really easy song, and managed a perfect score, so they were all falling over themselves telling me how great I was. I think Randy said "dawg" at least five times. After that, though, I went in for a bit of a challenge, and wow, Simon got mean fast. He kept telling me I was terrible, how I'd let myself down, how I'd totally failed to meet his expectations. My total motivation for the rest of the game was to knock one out of the park and rub Simon's face in it. Which I did once, but I ended up not winning.
See, the other feature that's copied from the show is that you're competing against a bunch of virtual players, who you never see, but you see their names on the elimination screen (and some of the names are Kelly, Ruben, and Bo). Each round, a certain number of people get eliminated, and if one of them is you, the game is over. I assume all the virtual people go on to compete for virtual record contracts; I don't know. So I've played twice now, once by myself and once with elora_c, and both times I lost out to Kelly.
I don't know how well this is going to hold up over time. I suspects Simon's Canned Response #43 (I think that one's "Terrible. Simply awful.") is going to wear over time. But for the moment, you can certainly count me as amused.