Singstar
DriveClub, LittleBigPlanet 3, and Singstar — what do they have in common? Well, I don’t know about you but for me, they’re all incredibly underwhelming holiday exclusives for the PS4. While LittleBigPlanet 3 fell well short of greatness, it was still a solid game. Singstar for the PS4 (and PS3), on the other hand, just infuriates.
I’ve always been an avid player within the music genre (Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Rocksmith, etc.) and Singstar on the PS3 was up there in terms of heavy usage for social gatherings from when it first came out and still is to this very day. So how could I not be anything but incredibly stoked for Singstar for PS4? Man, I couldn’t have been more wrong because good God, this has been one of the most profoundly stupid and enraging launches I’ve seen.
Sure, it’s a free download (there’s also a disc-based version), it has an updated look, and, well, it works, but that’s pretty much where the good ends. You would think that launching on a new generation wouldn’t be so limp-dick, but it was. They stripped away some favorite party modes (you can read all kinds of bitching about it on Singstar’s Facebook), released it in a buggy/crash-prone state, and — worst of all — they still don’t regularly update that damn library.
How is it that this game is almost two months old and all they have to show for it is a Bastille and Oasis pack? Wow, what an all-encompassing DLC plan you guys got going. It’s a big-ass head-scratcher trying to understand why you would even bother launching a new version if you’re not going to try fostering the community with a regularly updated library (and more modern ones at that, too). Also, if you bought a bunch of songs on the PS3, don’t expect to be able to play all of them. Shit, you can’t even play all the songs you bought on PS3 thanks to this updated version. If you’re thinking not downloading the new version is the solution, you’re wrong — it’s a mandatory update. Until they fix these embarrassing issues, Singstar on the PS4 is going to always elicit a pissed-off state of mind from me.
-Paul Villanueva