Disney Sing It - Rockin' out with Hannah Montana on the Wii
Written: Aug 26 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Hannah Montana, fun videos, not real difficult, duet mode
Cons: clunky navigation, no downloadable content, limited song selection
The Bottom Line: Fun Karaoke style game for kids if they like the songs that are included
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| marytara's Full Review: Disney Sing It for Wii |
For the 2008 holiday season, my son received Disney Sing It for the Wii (with microphone) as a gift from his grandmother. He was very happy to receive the game but, once we fired the game up it appealed much more to his little sister (age 4) and it has since become hers.
Why? For one reason alone - the song list.
The song list isn't published anyplace on the packaging, and it should be.
The following songs are on Disney Wii Sing It:
Camp Rock: We Rock, Start the Party, This is Me, Gotta Find you, Play my Music, Hasta La Vista, Here I am
High School Musical 1 & 2: Breaking Free, Get your head in the game, Start of Something New, Bet on it, Fabulous, What time is it, You are the Music in Me
Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds, Nobody's perfect, Rock star, Life's what you Make it
Miley Cyrus: GNO, See you Again, Start all Over
Aly and AJ: Like Whoa, Potential Break-Up song, Chemicals React
Cheetah Girls: The Party has just begun, One World, Dance with me
Everlife: Find yourself in you, Real Wild Child
Jordan Pruitt: Jump to the Rhythm, Outside Looking In
Billy Ray Cyrus: Ready Set, Don't Go
Jesse McCartney: She's no you
Corbin Bleu : Push it to the Limit
Vanessa Hudgens: Say OK
Drew Seeley: Dance with Me
If you see a lot of the songs on the above list are ones you, or your kids, like - then chances are this will be a hit. Otherwise - consider it a miss. Out of the 35 songs, my kids (ages 8 and 4) are familiar with only a dozen of them. There are a few of them, however - that my daughter knows by heart - which is a good thing. Because, given that she cannot read the lyrics as they scroll across the screen the only way she is able to play this is singing along with the lyrics by heart (and making some up too).
Customizing your game:
Before playing you can personalize your experience by picking a background "skin" from the 7 choices. This is purely cosmetic and changes the wallpaper and colors between Camp Rock, Hannah Montana, High school musical etc. The gameplay is exactly the same no matter which skin you select. My daughter keeps hers set on the purple Hannah Montana theme, not surprising.
About Disney Sing It.
Most importantly in order to play this game, you will need to have a logitech microphone as well as the Disney Sing It game (MSRP $49.99). It turns out that the microphone that comes bundled in this package is the exact same microphone that came with our Guitar Hero World Tour band kit with the exception of the logo stamped on it. So, we have 2 microphones for our Wii - and you should too if you want to play this game in multiplayer mode.
As for modes of play - there are a lot of options on Disney Sing It so much that it is a little bit overwhelming.
Quick Play - this is for when you want to get right to singing with less options. Choose solo to sing by yourself, versus to go against a friend or duet for 2 player cooperative play.
Single Player - to practice singing and take some singing lessons pick Sing it Pro where you can hone your skills (complete with a warm up mode) and work on pitch, accuracy, breathing and harmony. In this mode you can learn how to sing songs and be tested on how well you sing portions of songs before moving onto subsequent lessons. For High School Musical fans, the voice coach is HSM's Kelsi. If you sing well enough that you don't need coaching or lyrics then you can try the You're on your own mode -- it is definitely harder than you'd think without any lyrics, music score or pitch marks. The most convenient of the modes and the one we use the most is Gig Mode where you can make playlists (up to 5 songs) that will play consecutively with scoring at the end of the set.
In addition to single player mode there are a lot of options for multiplayer gameplay. As I mentioned previously, you will need to have 2 mics in order for multiplayer to work. Then you can choose to sing together in Duet Mode, compete in Versus mode, or even set up teams for a tournament play (up to 8 players). We have never had more than 2 people playing this at once, so I can't comment on the tournament play.
Playing Disney Sing It
If you have played or done Karaoke before then this game will be pretty straightforward. As you sing the lyrics are up on the screen with pitch bars to guide you. If you sing it well the pitch bars will fill in and you'll score more points. The score is displayed on the screen as you sing and then totaled at the end - it is usually in the tens of thousands range and I am not sure how they calculate it. However, during your song when you do a good job there will be pop-ups that say "Good", "Great", "Excellent" and sometimes it will say come up with a score multiplier (for example X2 for getting 2 excellents in a row). If you forget to sing or bomb it completely it will sometimes pop up "Nice try". When you are given your score you can enter your name and it saves all the top scores for the song and player. In cooperative and competitive mode it will let you know which player "Rocked" it.
Scoring tends to be most picky and sensitive about the timing of the lyrics vs what is actually being said. I get a chuckle when my daughter makes up something or blurs the words completely together (she cannot read so she is just singing what she thinks the words are) and she can still get an Excellent because her timing was spot on. At this point she doesn't play for the score but rather for the fun of pretending to be like Hannah Montana, anyways. She'll ask me "who won" and I always tell her that she did. When she gets big enough to understand and compare scores I am betting she'll have already outgrown Hannah Montana - or at least I hope so!
During the songs, an actual music video plays in the background or performance footage in the case of Hannah Montana. The video is the same whether you are playing on the easy, normal or advanced level. My daughter, age 4 and I (much older than that) usually play on easy or normal and I don't notice a whole lot of difference between the two in terms of the song difficulty. You can also set it so that each player is on a different difficulty setting - one could be on easy and the other on normal, for example. As well - it lets you pick what part you want to sing (lead vocals, male, female, etc). There are a ton of options to choose and select from the in the menus and during song selection. I find the menus fairly straight forward to navigate and my daughter likes the song preview mode which previews the video clip and starts playing the song - since she isn't reading this is the only way she can go through and pick out her songs without needing help from me or her older brother. This game is definitely aimed at a child or pre-teen because you need to be able to read. Most of the kids who I know who like Hannah Montana happen to be a little younger than that though!
A very small but significant game detail to note is that no matter what, player 1 always has green lyrics and pitch marks and player 2 is purple. However, in duet mode the 2 parts can be sung interchangably and you can help each other out. My daughter being the diva that she is - usually demands to play in 2 player mode so that she can have the purple lyrics leaving me or her brother with green. Hey, whatever works.
The important thing is that she is having fun - which she does and she really gets into it. Out of the many many wii games we have, this is absolutely her favorite even though there are not a lot of songs she knows real well. Lately she has started to try the songs that she doesn't know in attempt to learn them and enjoys the videos. Which brings me back to the biggest problem with Wii Sing it and that it is that 35 titles really is not all that much for a game that costs almost $50!
I had hoped there would be additional downloadable content and extra songs available by the Wii channel, but unfortunately there is not for the Wii version (I understand that there is for the Xbox and the Playstation versions). This is definitely a limitation for Wii owners, like us. Other platforms also allow you to hook up a camera to watch yourself rock out and record yourself, also not an option on the Wii version. I think that all of these features would have definitely added to the game but my daughter doesn't know she is missing out on them and enjoys the game all the same.
The biggest limitation for me is the fact there are only 35 songs. Because, love it or lump it you are stuck with the 35 pre-loaded Disney Channel songs of this 2008 release. If you want more titles there are additional SingIt titles available for the Wii such as High School Musical, High School Musical 3, and a new Pop Hits version that will be released in October 2009. We like the Disney SingIt enough that we'll probably add the new Pop Hits one when it comes out for more current song choices.
Who I think will like this game most? Girls ages 4-10 who like the Disney Channel especially fans of Hannah Montana. If your daughter is anything like mine and likes to pretend to be a popstar like Hannah/Miley herself - this will be a winner. My daughter knows all the words and dances all the moves in front of our 50" plasma and during that time she is the only star that matters! Yeah, someone's a diva!
This game will be enjoyed by kids more than adults, as evidenced by my children. However, I do confess to now knowing most of the words myself and can hold my own!
This game is rated E for everyone.
More info can be found at www.disneysingit.com
Recommended:
Yes
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marytara
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