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Karaoke Revolution Glee: Volume 2
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Graphics & Sound:
Just six months ago, a game came out that made gleeks everywhere happy, Karaoke Revolution Glee. The one thing that we all wanted was more songs. Well, now our wish has been granted with Karaoke Revolution Glee: Volume 2.
If you've seen the previous game, then you know exactly what Volume 2 looks like. The options, layouts, and characters are all the same as before. You do get new video clips, since it's all new songs. All songs and clips are from Glee: Season 1. I'm going to assume that if you're buying the Glee version of Karaoke Revolution, then you've probably seen Glee: Season One at least once through and have your favorite characters and songs already. When you play the songs, you'll get clips of the Glee episode that the song is from. I really love this because it means that I get to relive my favorite Glee moments, but unless you're watching a friend play, you'll notice that you can get a bit distracted from singing with watching the clips. Luckily though, if you know the songs, then you'll be just fine and can watch as much as you want.
There are 20 songs total on Volume 2. Personally, I'd still like more but I do like this song selection even better than the previous game. Some of my personal favorites include classics like "Hello, I Love You" by the Doors, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, and more recent hits like "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. The only song that I got fed up with was "To Sir With Love" just because you have to play it so much. |
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Gameplay:
You'll notice when you start up the game that there are quite a few options to choose from. The first is Scrapbook. Here, you choose a character to play as and try to accomplish all their goals. They are as follows: Rachel (5 songs), Finn (8 songs), Artie (4 songs), Tina (2 songs), Kurt (3 songs), Santana (4 songs), Puck (6 songs), Will (3 songs) and Mercedes (6 songs). Obviously, this totals over 20 songs because several characters sing the same songs. You'll notice that there are still 9 characters to choose from, but Quinn is no longer an option. Instead, you have Santana. I do like that they're giving more characters a shot. I'm hoping this means that we'll get Brittany in the next installment. Another thing about Scrapbook is that you always play on Medium. There is no option to change that. Each song has specific goals for you to accomplish. If you can get them all, you'll get a sticker for your scrapbook. You can then move the stickers around in the scrapbook to make it look however you want.
If you want to just pick a song and play on any level that you want, you should just go to Quick Play. All of the songs are unlocked from the beginning, so you can play anything that you want here. You can also choose what difficulty level you want as well as playing Co-Op on any song or Duets on certain songs. Shooting Star is very much like Quick Play. You still choose your song, difficulty, and style. You'll notice when you're playing that there are stars shooting up the screen. You'll need to use your Wii-mote and shoot the stars before they fall off the screen. This can prove to be quite difficult to sing and shoot! The last place you can sing is Marathon Mix. It is a mix of 18 songs back to back. You can choose to remove some if you don't want them in there though, so really, you can customize it to be your perfect song mix.
The other things that you can choose from the Main Menu are Options and High Scores. Under Options, you can turn notes and lyrics on or off for a truly karaoke experience. You can also customize various game settings. In High Scores, you can see how many times you've played a song on which difficulty and you can see quite a lot of different stats about the songs. |
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Difficulty:
Karaoke Revolution Glee: Volume 2 provides three difficulty levels: Easy, Medium and Hard. You can only choose your difficulty on Quick Play and Shooting Start though. For Scrapbook, you're always playing on Medium. Personally, I think that they've made the stickers a bit harder to accomplish now. I've only had one on the first few play throughs and I definitely had more than that in the last volume. I had a 98% on one song and yet I still didn't manage to hit the point number that was needed for the sticker. It looks like it's going to take several more tries to get them now. That is fine, but as I said before, the song "To Sir With Love" is getting very old to sing since it's in Scrapbook for just about every single character. I'd much prefer to see something like "Gives You Hell" multiple times, but it's only on Rachel's since she was the only one to sing it. When you get bored of Scrapbook though, just go over to Quick Play for a while.
One of the things that I had the biggest problem with in the last version was that the songs were all the "Glee" versions of the songs which made it more difficult if you knew the original well. Maybe it's just the song selection this time, but I didn't find that to be as big of an issue. There are also no mash-ups either, so you don't have to worry about learning how the songs mesh together.
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Game Mechanics:
If you haven't played or seen Karaoke being played, I'm not sure where you've been hiding. Unlike bar karaoke though, in the Karaoke Revolution games, you not only get the words but you're also given a note bar to follow. If you keep the arrow on that line, you'll be doing perfect. You do not have to sing in the same octave as the original song, you just have to stay on the right pitch. For each phrase that you get right, you'll get a little dancer on the notes bar. There is a new feature that keeps track of the total "gleeks" that you've earned dancing with you. I'm not sure yet if it gets you anything additional, but it's fun to watch that counter go up. Just as with the previous version, this one also comes with a white mic instead of the normal black ones. Now I can do duets with the new color scheme.
Just as with the previous version, I wish there were more songs. It would also have been nice to be able to import the previous version's songs into this one at least for Quick Play, so that you could play them all in one place. Of course I'm a Gleek too, so I want as many Glee songs as I can get in one place, especially since there are fewer songs on here than before. Still though, even with fewer songs, I prefer the song selection here. So if you're a fan of Glee and especially if you liked the previous version, you'll enjoy Karaoke Revolution Glee: Volume 2. If you're not a Gleek though, you'll probably be unhappy with the small selection. |
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
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