I picked this game up with some gift cards I got for Christmas and I do enjoy the game.  I think this is one of the first music games that I have played that is family friendly all the way and I will explain why in a minute.

First of all, the interface to the game is very clean and modern looking.  They did a very nice job and its very simple to move among the different menu options.

Second, the game has a good track listing of songs out of the box.  It may be a little light with only 40 songs but they do cover a nice wide range of music types.  You start out with everything from Country music to Pop R&B.  If you want more, you can grab some more songs off the Marketplace as DLC was ready to go from the start and it seems as if this game will have a steady dose of DLC in the future which is always nice.

The game has what is called Challenges which you can compete with your friends for top score in a song.  You basically pick a friend and a song and challenge them.  They have 7 days to try and beat your score.  Each of you gets to sing the song twice and the highest score wins.  

Each song has options of watching the music video, a custom video, or one one of the mini-games while you sing.  The videos look real nice and the mini-games add another twist to the singing.  The mini-games consist of kissing, bomb, and stage battle.  The kissing game requires you and another person to sing good enough so that your online characters will come together and embrace in a kiss.  Its not really for me, but it does put a twist on the game.  The bomb game requires you to sing well enough to keep your glass of water full so you dump it on the wick to keep it from igniting the bomb.  Each of these modes requires you to sing well until you reach a goal which then allows you to shake the mics to initiate the kiss or pouring the water glass.

The last mini-game is a stage battle.  You and your buddy are both onstage and if you sing better than them, you will knock them off the stage.  The one with the most knock-offs wins.  These can be entertaining, but they only work in local co-op.

One of the coolest features of the game is the ability to import songs from your PC, Zune, iPod, or rip them from CD’s and play them in the game.  As I stated earlier, this game is a real family friendly game because I was able to rip some kid songs that my litte ones love and they can sing them in this game.  Songs like Row Row your Boat, Old MacDonald, etc.  They love singing and this games allows them to play it with songs they know.

The biggest draw to this game is the wireless microphones.  Right now they don’t work in any other game but Harmonix is working on a patch to make them work in Rock Band.  AWESOME.  The mics are very nice and I can’t help but like the way they light up in beat with the song.  It really is cool to see first hand.  Once they work in Rock Band, I will probably throw away my other mics.  These are the best.

Now the game is not without its issues.  There are only 40 songs available on the disk which I feel is pretty light compared to other music games coming out with more than twice the amount of songs on the disk.  They really should have had more songs on the disc.  I know they want to make lots of cash with DLC, but this is the sort of thing that could turn people away.

And why would a Microsoft Games Studio game not have online play?  They do offer Challenges with your friends, but there is no online mode like Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour offer.  It would have been nice to be able to sing duets or play the mini-games with some friends.

Importing songs is cool, but you better know the words to the song because no words will be available to you while you sing those songs.  Again I don’t really understand the reasoning here.  With my Xbox being hooked up to the internet, and the game recognizing what the song is, it should be able to pull words from a database and put them on the screen.  I am sure it is not that easy, but I would think they could have done something.

The menu system is nice, but one thing I noticed is when you get a large music library in the game, it can be a real pain to move around and find what you want.  The really need to redo the Sing section of the game to allow for a more streamlined display of your music.

Overall, the game is fun for the entire family and it has a growing library of music.  You will also get songs in this game that I doubt you will see in the more popular music games.  I have yet to see Beyonce in Rock Band and I doubt we will.  So if you like that kind of music, Lips has you covered.

I give this game 3 out of 5 stars.  I am deducting 1 star due to the low amount of songs on the disk.  Otherwise I would have given it a 4.

-Wingman709