Screenshot: Let's Sing 2022
I love rhythm games, though I can’t remember the last time I sang like an idiot in front of my friends like I’ve done for
Let’s Sing 2022. I didn’t consider that the last time I (badly) belted out a tune to video game driven music was at least back in the
Rock Band days--it’s been a minute.
Let’s Sing 2022 is a rhythm game where your voice is the instrument. I didn’t have a hardware microphone, but that wasn’t a problem because of the handy
Let’s Sing mobile app that allows me to use my phone as a mic. What a time to be alive.
Let’s Sing 2022 is primarily a party game—you can certainly play it alone, but I found that it’s most fun in groups of friends. Especially those that won’t judge you when you belt off key—instead, let the game judge you. Because not only are you scored on your ability to sing the words to a specific rhythm, you are also scored on how well you match pitch, and that isn’t as easy as it might seem.
Screenshot: Let's Sing 2022
I love singing by myself in the car, shower, or anywhere else where I won’t be scrutinized for singing off-key or forgetting a string of lyrics. Singing for
Let’s Sing 2022 is a little different. I know I’m not pitch perfect, but according to
Let’s Sing 2022 I was farther off the mark than I originally realized. But, I was also able to sing songs that should have been outside of my vocal range quite easily, while songs that were heavy on bass (my natural range) required me to drop to ridiculously low pitches. Something felt off ,but I could never verify my pitch because, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to calibrate your pitch, only the visual/audio sync. This led to me modulating my vocals uncomfortably for every song—even those songs I knew—to get within the game’s vocal range.
But my problems with pitch may very well have been my own. It’s been a while since I sang in an organized group, and my phone may not have been the most accurate mic—sadly, without a real mic to test against, I can only guess. However,
Let’s Sing 2022 isn’t about being pitch perfect, but about having a sort of scored karaoke experience—one where I joked that the score doesn’t matter, as long as you’re having fun.
Screenshot: Let's Sing 2022
In fact--and probably, obviously--
Let’s Sing 2022 thrives in the party environment, as a sort of scored karaoke where the points don’t matter. However, if you wish to play it alone, it’s completely possible--but I swear, singing into my smart phone in the middle of the night to Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” invoked in me an existential crisis.
”How did I get to this point in my life?” I thought, as I tentatively sang “You’re my butterfly (sugar, baby)” alone in my office in the middle of the night.
Screenshot: Let's Sing 2022
Let’s Sing 2022 has a few modes to vocally rock out to, either solo or with friends. There’s the Classic
Let’s Sing mode, in which you and up to three other people can sing to their favorite available songs. There’s the “Feat.” mode which is a scored duet that has singers switch between parts. Mixtape is a competitive mode that has players sing excerpts from a selection of songs. You can even play against other players online by trying to beat their high score, or you can just listen to the music in Jukebox mode.
I’m not crazy about
Let’s Sing 2022’s UI, unfortunately. If you’ve ever sang karaoke, it looks familiar, but there’s the added rhythm game. Lyrics are broken down into note-like bubbles, each bubble a syllable that has to be hit in rhythm. This makes it hard to actually read the lyrics as you’re going, let alone get the pitch just right. So any song that I wasn’t familiar with was instantly less fun than others I could just belt out with minimum references to the screen. Often I would find myself vocalizing gibberish that was slightly on pitch just to succeed. I certainly wasn’t winning any head-to-head modes.
Screenshot: Let's Sing 2022
The song selection in
Let’s Sing 2022 is also just okay. I appreciate how wide ranging the selection was in terms of decades and even genres—though everything mostly hovered around “pop,” which seems like a safe bet. I was hoping for more music, the amount of DLC music packs already available clued me in to why the track library felt a little slim.
Is
Let’s Sing 2022 a bad game? Certainly not. It does what I advertises on the tin — and even if I don’t think it does it particularly well, it’s still a fun game, especially in groups. It had a heavy karaoke feeling, which I respect, though I wish the UI was easier to parse, especially when it comes to songs that I wasn’t familiar with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tye8EM1ftrk&t=1s
Let’s Sing 2022 is available on
Xbox,
PlayStation and
Nintendo Switch.
A PlayStation key was provided to us for this review