First Thirty: Lips (Xbox 360)

By Joe Haygood | November 20, 2008

After waiting since the E3 announcement, and trying to find all the info I could on the song import function, Lips finally hit the shelves, and entered my house today.  After thirty minutes with Lips, I am a conflicted vocalist.

The game starts off with the trailer from E3, which you can skip.  From there, you are brought to the main window, which has a slick design to it.  You have a couple of modes available from here.  You can start singing right away, with any of the 40 included tracks.  There is no real career mode here, just singing any of the songs.  Points are pretty easy, and each song gives you medals and awards, that go towards building up your ranking.  Immedialy, I went to the Get Music function, which I thought was broken at first.  It would not detect my computer library at first, but it looks to be a designed lag, while the game checks to see what media types are attached to the 360.

Importing a song was easy enough, but when I went to sing it, I realized there would be no lyrics, so song bar to keep pitch, nothing.  You do get the opportunity to send a request in with the ID3 Tags of the song to Microsoft.  If they get enough, they will apparently add lyrics to a popular song that comes up.

After thirty minutes, I am convinced that this can be a fun game, but only if you are playing with people.  Playing solo, is okay, but this is a party game, meant for lots of people.  It is enjoyable, but after thirty minutes, I would say that it might be a rental or used copy at best.