I know what you’re thinking. When SingStar Guitar arrived, we were all thinking the same thing. We have Guitar Hero and Rock Band in a billion incarnations, is there really any need for this? How can SingStar Guitar possibly compete with an existing line-up of thousands of songs, full instrument sets and the impending release of what will likely be the all-conquering music game of all-time with 17 fret guitars and MIDI keyboards that is Rock Band 3.

The answer is, SingStar Guitar is aimed at a different market, and it was mildly shocking to discover that the game is really rather fun.

The gameplay is the familiar highway that you would expect, with the chaff stripped out: there is no star power, no multiplier and only three difficulty levels (using 3, 4 and 5 of the buttons respectively). The presentation is very clean and SingStar-like and some may actually prefer it to Rock Band’s highway. Obviously, the emphasis is more on pop music.

Regarding the logistics, SingStar Guitar is basically like any other SingStar disk: you get 30 songs you can sing, but this time you can play them on the guitar as well. Wisely, London Studio have implemented support for all existing Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars so you won’t need to gunk your house up with even more plastic junk peripherals. The SingStore has been enhanced to allow selected songs you already own to be upgraded for guitar playability for a small fee. These upgrades are being released fortnightly along with the regular SingStore song releases. If you already own SingStar, your game will be patched to version 5.0 next time you play, which will allow you to use your guitar, so there is technically no need for the disk. The only difference between SingStar Guitar and other SingStar disks after patching is that the Guitar disk includes 30 guitar-compatible songs out of the box.

Now that’s out of the way, why should you bother to buy this, or upgrade your existing songs? Well firstly SingStar: Guitar allows any combination of one or two players can be assigned to any combination of instruments, ie. One player can both sing and play the guitar at the same time, or two players can sing, or play the guitar, or both. The single player singing and playing guitar simultaneously mode makes for some very tough challenges and is a lot quicker and less hassle to set up than in Guitar Hero or Rock Band which requires you to fudge it by creating two players. Also it’s not possible to have two people singing at the same time except in the latest Guitar Hero and Rock Band releases supporting 3-part harmonies.

Along with that there’s quite a few other bonuses over other games; load times are instant – a significant benefit over the considerable load times of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, you get the music video, which turns out to make quite a difference, every song is scored out of 10,000 meaning your scores are comparable across songs – something you can’t do in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, which may be important to you if you are competitive like me, you can’t fail, there’s no need to change disk during parties; and of course it has the pop music focus of all SingStar games.

Of course, there is no career mode, no character customization, no bass play or drums, no challenges. And right now, there are only the 30 songs on the disk plus another 8 or so released on Wednesday 20^th October on the SingStore which you can actually play – however this will change pretty quickly in the coming months. Your desire to play therefore will have to come from self-motivation to beat your own scores and those of your friends.

Pros:

• Guitar mode is well-implemented and better suited for casual gamers than Rock Band
• Songs are cheap to upgrade on the store at only 33p each (Norway)
• It’s the same SingStar experience we’ve come to know and love

Cons:

• Not many guitar-compatible songs available yet
• No career mode
• Only six new trophies, all of which are very easy to accomplish
• It’s the same SingStar experience we’ve come to know and love

There isn’t much more to say. As usual it’s another solid SingStar disk release, more of the same, but with added plastic. I didn’t think the guitar element would be much good, but in fact it was, and made me inclined to upgrade some of my other songs for guitar play.

You can find the full track list here.

Don’t forget that my web site – www.totalmusicgaming.com – has full support for SingStar Guitar and guitar-compatible SingStore tracks including trophy tracking and score entry for solo guitar, solo guitar and vocals and two guitar modes. We’ll also have day 1 support for Rock Band 3, DJ Hero 2 and Def Jam RapStar.

Score: 7/10