Now That's What I Call Sing 2 (Xbox One) Review

The first experience in here can be a little weird. There is no main menu, since it just requires a sign in, and then it you on the song list, and with no description of what can be done on it. The very first thing that needs to be done is a trip to the options menu to check the response time of the screen. This helps tune up the accuracy of the timing to negate any potential input lag. Response time sorted, it's time to jump into the song list and have a wee browse. The default library is fairly small with only 30 tracks vs rival Guitar Hero Live's unlimited library. However, each track has four modes, and the game keeps things interesting with little challenges sometimes. The library features music from the likes of Meghan Trainor and Justin Bieber, so anyone looking for slightly older music may find themselves disappointed.

Now That's What I Call Sing 2 is best played with a handheld microphone peripheral for maximum immersion into the karaoke atmosphere. The default song mode is point based. The words come from right to left, and when they cross the bar at the left, the player must sing in the right pitch to match the word's height within the UI. The better the player matches the song, the more points they'll earn towards levelling up, which earns vox points to spend on the other modes available. This can be played in single player, with AI singers, or with friends in a competitive nature to see who sings best. Needless to say, playing against someone else makes this much more fun to play.

Levelling-up offers different bonuses on each level as an incentive. The first few unlock the ability to get score multipliers that, in turn, help to earn more points to level-up even more. Each time a song is completed a 2x multiplier along with an added challenge are applied to a random song on the list. These help to keep things interesting, and the multipliers incentivise replaying the songs. There are four modes for each one at the start, which are, #1: Points/Classic mode where player competes for high scores, #2: Duet mode, a realistic mode where two players share singing a song, #3: By Heart mode where the lyrics disappear during the round, and, finally, Pass the Mic which lets two or more players play by… well, passing the microphone.

Of course, it's not necessary to be able to sing to enjoy this. After all, you can be a bearded 20-something-year-old singing along to Trainor, and, while it must look and sound awful, the scores that you'll get won't have to reflect that. However, it is helpful to have a bit of voice range as some songs have very high notes and if they aren't hit it can lose an important multiplier. Because this game is effectively a karaoke machine, it's not got much in the way of variety. Outside of the main mode there is only a jukebox for listening to the songs and watching the videos without any interaction. The song list has a reasonable length, but it suffers from a lack of classic karaoke tracks. It would have been nice to see some golden oldies alongside the current chart toppers.

As a music video game it's important that the visuals and audio are as good as they can be. Luckily, this nails both. It has a simple and clean UI that only suffers from a lack of instructions. The music videos themselves are high-def and brightly coloured, and the game overlay is well placed and slightly see-through. Audio-wise it hits the spot by not having any noticeable noise. On the other hand, the sound effects are fun but the clapping can sometimes get annoying. The one bad point that stood out is that, very occasionally, the game would hit a snag, and the song would blip for a second. This only happened once or twice, but if it had been even a half second longer it may have affected overall progress - however, it was the only bug that happened during the whole review process.