Just Sing: Holiday Edition

Storyline: There is no storyline in Just Sing; since it is simply a singing game, it does not hurt the overall gameplay.  

Gameplay: There is nothing complex about the gameplay.  There are only two songs that are featured in the game, Silent Night and Jingle Bells.  I thought that after passing those two songs additional Christmas songs would be unlocked, but that never happened.  I was disappointed that it did not feature any other songs such as White Christmas, Noel, Drummer boy and other Christmas favorites. All it required was to sing into the DS handheld and the game would detect the correct pitch.  As I sang along to Jingle Bells, I felt the pitch matched well with my tone of voice.  However, when I began to sing Silent Night frustration set in as the song required my voice pitch to be as low as a male’s voice and that was way too hard. I tried to lower and raise the sensitivity of the microphone, but my attempts failed in making the gameplay less infuriating.

Audio: The in-game music was decent.  I would have preferred an orchestra arrangement over a keyboard or an organ.  It seemed quite annoying and lowered my overall enjoyment of listening and singing along to the two songs.   

Graphics: There was not much for graphics in the game other than the female dressed Santa Claus dancing on stage. There was also a female dancer dressed as Santa Claus dancing in the background.  It was distracting and unnecessary at times and would have preferred holiday oriented screenshots of the songs rather than some scantily clad dancer on stage, prancing around like a blonde stripper. I thought her dancing that flowed nicely.  There were a few instances of pixilated edges such as distorted faces, small arms and disproportionate body structures.

Replayability: Potentially, if the game had a lot more Christmas songs to sing along to, I would be going back to sing some more, but since there are only two songs featured, it gets old fast.  After a few attempts at Silent Night, I ended up putting down the game and had no intention of revisiting it.  

Pros:

• Fun to sing along to the Christmas songs

Cons:

• Lack of variety for songs
• Annoying audio for the tunes
• Unnecessary dancer prancing around on the stage
• Terrible graphics

Associate Editor: Alyssa Bogie

 5/10 – Okay
(Value: Skip it no matter the price)