Konami and Harmonix are back on the scene with another new game in the Karaoke Revolution series. The third volume is hitting stores only four short months after the last installment was released. While that might seem like overkill to outsiders, another pack of songs to sing is a welcome addition for fans of the popular series. But Volume 3 isn't just a simple song pack, however. By adding a sorely needed feature--namely, the ability to sing duets--Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 is most definitely a worthy addition to the rapidly expanding franchise.
Duets are the big addition to the third Karaoke Revolution game.
If you've avoided the series up until now, all you really need to know is that Karaoke Revolution is a game where you sing songs and are subsequently judged on how well you sing them. A PlayStation 2-compatible headset or microphone (or two, if you intend to sing duets) is required, and, yes, you're really singing. You're judged based on how well you can hit notes at the proper times, and you're given an easy-to-understand onscreen guide to let you easily determine if you're singing sharp, flat, or right on key. It all works quite well, though the judging system forces you to both sing the songs and hold the notes as they're written to score well. However, as you might expect from a karaoke game, the songs presented aren't always 100 percent accurate to the original, source material.
The game lets you sing songs in a variety of different modes. If you just want to sing, without having some rigid machine tell you if you've got soul or not, there's a scoreless karaoke mode available. There's also a quick play mode that lets you dive right in. Here, you select an onscreen character and background; you select a song; and then you get to it. Showtime is the game's career mode, which takes you through various songs and backgrounds. Along the way, you'll unlock new stuff. Medley mode works you through a handful of different songs in rapid succession. The multiplayer modes let you play medley with up to eight different people in round-robin fashion. However, you can also get into simple score challenges or duet mode, which lets you either sing as a team or compete against each other in a score-based competition or knockout mode, where one singer can end the song early if he or she totally outsings the other player.
