Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Konami is rolling out the hits with the third installment of the Karaoke Revolution series coming out just over a year after the original. Karaoke Revolution Vol. 2 held its own with some new songs, new character and new venues, but with minimal gameplay changes. Now, Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3 aims to change it up and make you scream with a friend with the new duet feature. If making a fool of yourself is fun solo, it gets oh so much better when there's a partner.

The core element of Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3 is just like all the others: sing along to 35+ songs and the game will rate your skills. Using a USB microphone, players can sing into their PS2 and it will listen, measuring the pitch of the voice. If the pitch of the voice matches the pitch of the lyrics in the song, then the game rewards this with high scores and cooler graphics. It's such a simple and cool idea that it sounds almost obvious, but that would be belittling the coolness of the experience. Instead of just suffering through a friend's horrendous version of a tune there is now a way to have some proof and get a few laughs in the process.

After playing the game with friends at parties there's always at least one other person who wants to jump in on the fun. Since the game can only deal with one voice at a time this wrecks the whole scoring system. Thankfully, and this is such an honest and true piece of thanks, the game now has the option to plug in a second microphone. Players can now sing together in a few different modes and they've all been done beautifully.

There is the basic Duet mode where two singers can sing a song together for a combined score and this is great for people to pair up and show a group effort. Of course, there will be the bloodthirsty fans out there and so there is the Sing-Off mode where two players sing the whole song and compete for the highest score at the end. These are great, but the best is easily the Knockout mode where there is a status bar that can get swayed to one side or the other during the song. If it goes all the way over, then someone's just been declared inferior.

There are plenty of other new items in the mix as well such as the new venues and characters and extra treats, but it's really the duets that have been smoothly implemented into the game that is reason enough for the price of admission. Most of the songs will have the lyrics broken up for two players, but there are some classic song like "Under Pressure" or "I Got You, Babe" that are made for two people and each person has a role to play.

When it comes to the total song list (and you can see it right here) it's all a matter of taste and developer Harmonix is sticking to their regular mix of the old and the new. There are the tracks that everyone knows like "ABC" and "New York, New York" right up to Hoobastank's "The Reason" or Usher's "Burn." The tracks have been recreated and the studio musicians did an excellent job of making sure you won't notice the difference.

While it would be a beautiful thing to see a Karaoke Revolution game with hundreds of songs it's just not going to happen (studio musicians need to feed families, too). As it stands, the songs that have been included are here mainly for the reason that they're fun songs to sing and after going through the list there were few that just didn't hold up and that was mainly due to the vocal acrobatics that were required.

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