By John Orr January 2007 If I tried out for ''American Idol,'' I wouldn't even make it as far as that red-haired guy from Seattle who thought he could sing better than Freddie Mercury.
Sing standards like Sinatra? Rock out like Ricky Martin? Croon stage tunes like John Raitt? No way. I can sing with soul in some keys, and keep a crowd's interest in a blues bar, but I can't do what Taylor Hicks or Kelly Clarkson or even non-winner Chris Daughtry can do -- did you hear Daughtry nail the national anthem at the NFC playoffs? But I still had a lot of fun with a game from Konami's Karaoke Revolution, ''American Idol,'' for PlayStation 2. The game captures much of the TV show's experience, minus the long lines for auditioners and Paula Abdul. The acidic Simon Cowell and the affable Randy Jackson are represented by rough animations of themselves, and are joined by another animated character, ''Laura.'' They take turns encouraging (Randy and Laura) and eviscerating (Simon) singers just like on the TV show. The game is impressively variable. Simple karaoke with no scoring, scored ''Quickplay,'' or several forms of scored ''Party'' games for two to eight players. Each song track includes a recorded vocalist that players can sing with, or the recorded voice can be lowered or removed. Players choose animated avatars to perform for them in any of a number of locations reminiscent of the show, from audition halls to Hollywood to Las Vegas. There is a wide range of avatars, from rasta to nerd, and it's a lot of fun to customize them … pasty white skin under dreadlocks wearing a shark costume with a cowboy hat is all too easy to achieve. The Konomi animators seem to have given more time to the avatars' cool dance moves than to their faces. The dead eyes of most of the avatars we saw bring to mind George Romero movies more than Katharine MacPhee or Paris Bennett. What turned out to be enormous fun -- gales of laughter, in fact -- was when we used the PS2's EyeToy camera to import our own faces into the game, where we dressed them using the game's avatar wardrobe. I trimmed about 100 pounds from my body, dressed myself in a yellow and white zoot suit and topped my look with a hat that was just the right cross between fedora and cowbody hat. My wife Maria opted for urban chic to sing ''Crazy Little Thing Called Love.'' My 13-year-old, Yasemin, was a Las Vegas showgirl to perform ''Proud Mary.'' I had to turn my head. My 5-year-old, Riley, wore the shark suit to sing ''She Bangs.'' (Mostly he just dances, copying the avatar's moves, shouting out ''She bangs'' occasionally.) As a fan of live music, not canned, I have generally dismissed karaoke as an abomination, perhaps the creation of evil mad scientists, but found this game of actual musical use, in a way, in addition to its being fun. In the competitions, singers follow a note line that works something like notated music. The higher it appears, the higher the note. Performing live, most pop singers sing each song at least a little different every time -- but in this game, the closer the player stays to the note line, which follows the recorded vocalist -- the more points they earn. I was killed in the game. But found it a good exercise for my vocalis muscle as I tried to follow the moving lines. If I played it enough, it might make me a better singer. Or, maybe, it would just give me a sore throat. My wife won this game by squeezing her voice onto that line and following it accurately -- even though I have heard her sing better away from the game. There are only 40 tunes, which is small potatoes in the karaoke world, but the fun of having Simon Cowell personally attempt to destroy your ego is not to be missed.
|
