Xbox Lips Songs Download
Hiko Meckler
While the gameplay has us genuinely excited, we're also intrigued by the game's presentation. The gameplay of Elite Beat Agents was fun, but it was enhanced greatly by the ridiculous comic book storytelling that framed the entire presentation. Lips also has the same potential to generate some good laughs. There are three party games, each with a twist. For example, "Kiss" mode has two singers performing gestures together. When duets are performed well, the on-screen avatars will get closer and closer until they meet in the middle to share a kiss. "Vocal Fighters" is a one-on-one sing-off, where one player tries to get more fans than the other. "Time Bomb" has players working together to stave off a bomb. Who knew singing could come in so handy?
Of course, a music game, no matter how fully-featured it is, will be rather worthless without a decent song line-up. Thankfully, Microsoft has licensed a starting track list with some fun, singable songs -- all from a variety of genres. Each of these songs includes its original music videos, a la SingStar.
Song List
Of course, it's standard fare to expect DLC for a music game, and Lips promises to have a "regular flow" of DLC. Of course, that feature may be a bit moot when one considers the ambitious "Freestyle Mode," which allows players to import their own music into the game. Provided the song doesn't feature any DRM, you should be able to bring in music from any connected MP3 player. Lips can also read songs off Xbox 360's streaming media library.
While you won't be able to download lyrics sheets for the songs, the game will still score you on your performance. Lips will analyze each track and determine which parts of the song feature vocals. It supposedly detects beat and rhythm, too. iNiS is confident in the system it's created for "Freestyle Mode" -- some Achievements are even tied to this mode. Without having tried it for ourselves, we're still skeptical about how well this mode works; especially vocal reduction, which will attempt to remove the original vocalist from the track for a more authentic karaoke experience. Multiple settings for vocal reduction are in place, though, so players can tinker around for the best experience possible.
We love the direction iNiS is going with Lips, as it has the potential to really best Sony's long-running SingStar series. However, there's one crucial feature we believe the game is missing. The online mode is centered around competition: players can send song challenges to their friends and compete in leaderboards. But, there's no way to record music videos with the Vision camera and share them with friends. Browsing through community-generated karaoke videos is certainly one of the most entertaining aspects about the PS3 singing game -- and there's no similar offering within Lips.
Also, the lack of Avatar support seems to be an obvious missed opportunity for the Xbox-exclusive singing game. We should be able to put more than just our music into the game. Seeing our Avatars kiss each other in the "Kiss" party mode would be absolutely adorable. Thankfully, there's always the hope that a future patch will add this much-needed feature.
So, how much is all of this going to cost? The Lips bundle, which includes the two gyroscopic wireless mics, will be available for $69.99. Pre-ordering the game at GameStop or Amazon will also add a Zune Marketplace card, which gives users free access to one Zune download every week for two months (songs chosen by Zune). Obviously, these tracks will be DRM-free so they can work in Lips. Lips will be available on Xbox 360 mid-November.
This guide will let you have all the songs included in the four Lips games available in
Lips Party Classics so that you can run it on an JTAG/RGH Xbox 360 and not need to having
to switch disks to access the songs included on the other disks.
If you have any old save games for Lips on your Xbox 360 you will need to delete them to make
this hack work properly as the game saves a cached list of all songs to the save file.
CAREFUL! If you have any DLC you do not need to delete that. Only the save file.