Continuing to follow a path already well-trodden by Sony for the last few years, Microsoft's take on SingStar, the iNiS-developed Lips finally reaches UK shores.  Formally unveiled at E3 2008, the game is the latest attempt from the Redmond company - after last year's debut of Scene It! - to tap into the 'me too' of broader gaming for the masses.

So the Xbox 360 finally gets its own karaoke game, but is it any good, and is it more than just a SingStar clone?  TVG got on stage to find out...

Purse Your Lips

Packaged with two wireless controllers (which feature both lights and accelerometers), Lips immediately sets itself apart from its established PlayStation rival, and means that drunk participants won't be tripping over any wires on the floor.  Not that we're saying getting inebriated is the way to Lips' soul.  In fact, we were quite sober during our play test.

That's the truth.  Honestly.

Featuring forty songs from across a wide and varied selection of decades and genres, Lips catalogue attempts to appeal across all ages.  From Duffy to Dido, Kaiser Chiefs to Nirvana, and even The Jacksons, the game offers the sort of eclectic mix of music usually found in a 'music of the century' compilation, and as such feels like a particularly disparate jukebox.  The interface doesn't help matters either, with the grid system looking rather malnourished; we look forward to the masses of downloadable content Lips will need if it's to stand any chance of replicating the success of its rival.  In fact it's already underway, as UK gamers can get a few pieces of downloadable content from launch day, including a free download of A-ha's 1980s hit, Take On Me.

The actual singing itself follows pretty familiar territory, with lines of pitch running alongside the lyrics on screen, and (with a bit of luck) a score that rapidly builds up along the way.  Solo artists can be joined by a singing partner at any time with just a shake of the second mic, with Lips featuring both 'versus' and 'co-op' options.  Thanks to the accelerometers, there's also a little of the 'Guitar Hero' in the Lips scoring system too, with gamers pulling various poses to activate a special star collecting mini-game, which can make all the difference by the time the scores are totted up.

So far, so SingStar...wireless mics (and star collecting) aside.

Paying It Lip Service.

However, Lips can - and does - stand on its own feet in other areas.  The addition of mini-games for instance, throws in an extra nuance of gameplay missing from its rivals.

Whether it's the water-pouring antics of the Time Bomb, where gamers fill their cups with water in order to extinguish the fuse of a bomb, or the more romantic goings on of Kiss, where singing the right notes ends in a loving embrace, Lips just has that extra edge.  Together with the star collecting, the addition of the three mini-games (the third is a beat-em-up) makes more of a game from the caterwauling.  Beyond additional songs, perhaps the addition of further mini-games is another area for downloadable content to explore in the coming months...

Whilst Microsoft slowly builds up the online catalogue of songs and music videos, Lips includes functionality to give gamers the option to sing along to hundreds of their own songs.  Something of a precedent for karaoke video games, the ability to stream across music from PCs, the Xbox 360 hard drive, or personal music players (a list of compatible mp3 players is apparently available on the Lips website, but you'll have to dig for it), is all rather neat.  It's worth noting however, that the feature is open to DRM-free music only and that - sadly - there's no way of getting the lyrics on screen.  Hopefully there'll be a solution available in the future, though we're not looking forward to hand typing the lyrics into the game via the Xbox 360 chatpad or, even worse, the controller.