With Singstar proving a masterstroke in Sony's aim for gaming global domination, Microsoft are finally ready to strike back and take a slice of the home karaoke market for themselves. Enter Lips, a game packaged with two wireless (at last!) glowing microphones, their cordless nature allowing you to initiate a Guitar Hero-esque star power move to nudge your score ever higher without the danger of garrotting other players. The 40 included tracks are spread across a variety of genres, but the promise of infinitely more selection available for download on Xbox Live means that theres plenty of promise regardless of whether the default line-up suits your tastes.
A nifty gimmick is the ability to plug in your iPod and croon along to your favourites tunes without waiting for new additions to the story. The only downside is the lack of wither lyrics or scoring, which rather defeats the object.
The lack of difficulty settings leaves scoring difficult to judge and, unlike SingStar, you barely need to be within an octave of the actual melody to rack up a respectable score. Also unlike SingStar, there's no way to upload your videos for your friends to ogle, leaving online options sadly lacking.
Ultimately, this is a good try at bringing the SingStar sensation to Xbox but if you also own a PS3 then theres little here to pry your hands off Sonys Mike.