We Sing Robbie Williams Review

Don't you just love family meet ups? When you get to see family members you haven't seen in a long time; when everyone gathers around whilst the elders tell tales of their mischievous youthful days; when the party food and the booze go around; when all the adults attempt sing along to an acoustic, drunken version of ‘I Will Survive' in unison; when one of the younger generation decides to get out the Wii in all the hype, and decides to get out We Sing - Robbie Williams because they know a few family members who are Robbie Williams fans, and decide to have a go. Those times are great, are they not? They are...until your slightly tipsy mother decides that she is the next Robbie Williams - if he were inebriated, out of tune, and tone deaf.

We Sing - Robbie Williams is a great way to show off your vocal abilities (or for some, prove that they should avoid picking you, if ever they are in need of a singer for whatever reason) and can be a right laugh (or darn right painful), whether you are laughing at or with the solo singer, or laughing in a group on the party play. You can have up to four vocalists, or you can choose a mode which allows you to just pass around the microphone, if you only have one mic.

The multiplayer option does hold numerous modes. Passing the microphone, is one; this is quite difficult because it isn't very clear which player should be singing when. There is a small grey box that says which person is singing when (you have to number yourselves one to four) however it isn't very apparent, and for those that aren't very vigilant it won't become clear who will be next. The score is based on the group effort not the individual person. All the rest of the modes require at least two mics, apart from ‘group battle'. Two groups compete with each other to try and get the higher score; one group can have from one person to three people in, however you altogether can only have three to four people playing. A similar mode to that is ‘versus'. It's similar in that you go head-to-head to get the higher score as an individual, not a group; this, like the rest of the modes, can have up to four people. One mode, ‘We Sing' is one of the calmer games, where you can sing in a duet, trio, or quartet, also with an outcome of a conjoined score at the end. You can sing the song together, all at one time, or you can have lead singers, which take turns for someone to sing; if there is a duet by Robbie and another artist (i.e. Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman) then each player can choose whichever artist they want to be.

The rest of the choices of gameplay are competitive and entertaining: there is one mode where a player has to reach a certain score and whoever gets there first, is the winner; one is where the players battle to get the higher score, however the lyrics and sound will disappear at any time during the song; there is a marathon where the players have to sing through a playlist and the team member with the best average score is the champion; and finally ‘Expert' which is where you all battle to get the higher score, nevertheless there are no pitch lines, nor any lyrics on-screen.

If singing at the correct pitch isn't your style then you can play in the karaoke mode. It does not have any pressures of getting a high score, and you can sing in the tone you wish. You can choose to sing the song with just the instrumentals, like pure karaoke, or you can have Robbie Williams singing in the background. This is ideal for those Robbie fans who want to sing the songs without the burden of scores.

If you feel that your voice wouldn't live up to Robbie's standards, you can have singing lessons. There are thirty lessons, which involve you singing notes from the Solfège scale; these lessons help improve your tone. On screen there is a scale, and when the metronome is aligned with the note, you need to sing the note at the correct pitch. Although it is a good idea it isn't very specific; it stated whether it was right or wrong, but it wasn't clear on how you could correct yourself. Additionally, in some cases I felt that it wasn't very accurate; when someone was blatantly singing a low note, it said that they were singing a high note. This made it quite frustrating, even more so when you got every note correct, bar one and you could not pass the stage.

There is an option to watch the music videos without having to actually sing. This mode is called ‘jukebox' and is a nice feature if you are a fan of the musical legend and would just like to watch the videos. Also you can unlock picture albums of Robbie and live performances of certain songs as awards after completing an achievement. The achievements range from singing all the songs, to getting a score of above a certain number.

Graphics wise, there isn't much to go on as the game focuses on the singing aspect, however, whilst singing, the video, or the live performance of the song plays in the background. The video isn't high definition, however, it is pretty good quality and isn't pixelated. Whilst it is a pleasant feature to the game, for those that are easily distracted it can develop into quite a problem, unless you know all the words and the timing for the song.

Minor details in the game to suit to your style can improve your gameplay experience. Details such as difficulty, whether you want to sing half the song or the full song, or whether you want Robbie singing in the background or just the instrumentals, can be adjusted. You can create playlists of eight songs, and you can create up to three playlists at any one time.

Whilst singing it can be sometimes quite hard to focus on the words and how high or low to sing it. This is because the words are too far away from the pitch lines and can become quite tiresome when flicking your eyes up and down. When we read through the manual, it did mention that the game has anti-cheat technology; this was a perfect thing to jump on. To your surprise or not, this was of course inaccurate and we tried numerous sounds to see if it would help if you didn't know the words. We then decided to try out if someone who generates random noises instead of the actual lyrics in a versus battle. To start off with, the person singing nothing but "la, la, la" were much further ahead score wise, however, when the other person knew the words to the bits, their score started to escalate. It therefore resulted in the other player with the higher score and the "la, la, la"-er below, therefore letting us draw to the conclusion that "la"-ing and humming is as effective as singing.

As most will know, Robbie Williams isn't the easiest of artists to impersonate, and therefore, creates a layer of difficulty in the game. Despite this, as with most games, there is a difficulty option. This makes hitting the correct notes at the correct pitch quite challenging. In some stages it does become quite annoying when it is really low, or even really high and is hard to hit the note (it is increasingly more difficult when you can't sing particularly good anyway), on the other hand though, Robbie is renowned for the pitch complexity in his songs, therefore not everyone will be able to hit every note perfect. In spite of that, it definitely holds the fun factor. When we experimented with the easy and straight to the hardest difficulty the differences became apparent; the easiest option made room for error if you were just slightly off-key, however, in the harder option you have to be much more precise with the note.

All in all, the game is nothing more than okay. If you're looking for a general and casual, fun and enjoyable singing game, then this isn't probably the one for you; nonetheless, if you genuinely enjoy the musical talents of Robbie Williams than you may have found what you are looking for. This is recommended for those Robbie fans that are interested in singing to his all-time hit songs and are interested in the general content.