The Wii is a bit of an underdog when it comes to karaoke games. Having come late to the game it offers little in the way of originality to the genre. However it just about makes up for that on solid dependability. The We Sing games have been workmanlike additions to to the genre and allow Wii owners out there to belt out a couple of party songs. We Sing Rock! does little to add to the franchise. In fact we’d go as far as to say it it does nothing new whatsoever. It does however provide a bunch of well loved rock songs for you to sing this Christmas once you and your family have digested the turkey and opened all the presents. In this day and age the idea of these songs coming in a boxed disk rather than being individually downloadable for We Sing UK Hits, which is identical in its gameplay and modes, beggars belief but such is the way of things. If you have a Wii and want a new karaoke game for Christmas this is the best one to buy. With eight multiplayer modes, 40 tracks and some fun voice altering technology, you can’t say fairer than that.
However there is a sort of insurmountable issue here that had dogged these kind of games for years. Since you can’t just download your favourite individual track in this case and since the game is themed around the rock genre it becomes almost impossible to bring together a tracklist that will please everyone and in the end pleases no one. Firstly we’d questions some of the inclusions on the principle of them not qualifying as rock songs at all. KT Tunstall? Sheryl Crow? Elvis? More to the point though the tracklisting in general may include classic examples of rock such as Ace of Spades, The Final Countdown and Eye of the Tiger but put them altogether alongside tracks from Alice Cooper, Def Leppard and Whitesnake and it becomes this incredibly uncool jive bunny mix of the usual suspects. What true rock fan says “Yeah, I want to sing the top ten most mainstream rock tracks ever written, in a row.” Nothing about the tracklist makes us want to do a devil sign with our fingers and a tongue waggle. It just makes us want to retreat to our own incredibly obscure iTunes personal playlist in the bath, alone.
All that said we would very much like to see Nana do Ace of Spades so if you need a karaoke game for your Wii this holiday season get this one.
The tracklist is full of classic rock artists and songs – suitably mainstream for a party.
There are a few excellent modern tracks but some weird inclusions such as Elvis and KT Tunstall.
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