Let's Sing 2020 Review - The Show Must Go On

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After the news that the SingStar servers are soon to be turned off we can at least rejoice that we still have a singing game in our midst with Ravenscourt & Voxler’s Let’s Sing 2020 which is available now on PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

Do you fancy yourself as the next Pop Idol? or perhaps you just want to take on your friends and family for bragging rights? Either way, I am ready to hit those high notes and upset the neighbours!

Gameplay

As soon as Let’s Sing loads up the whole house will know what’s going on as its melodic pop beat begins to repeatedly play through your speakers.

This year’s iteration brings you a variety of modes; Classic where 1-4 players can pick and sing through all the available hits in the library; Feat. which allows 1-2 players to sing a duet with your partner or AI and discover your compatibility; Mixtape where 1-4 players get to sing 5 extracts from various songs and for added variety you can also create your own mixtape; Juke Box that allows you to simply listen to the songs. The new Let’s Party mode is great fun where 1-8 players compete against each other in 2 teams or solo against an AI and finally, there is the World Contest mode which is a solo affair where you can compete with online opponents to climb the Let’s Sing global rankings.

Ready to play? go grab a microphone or your mobile phone and download the Let’s Sing app, for me it was the latter as I have never managed to get the USB microphones to work in the front ports of my Playstation Pro!

The tracklisting on Let’s Sing 2020 is ok, I wouldn’t say amazing, maybe it is probably because I am 39 years old, play in a rock covers band and my past experiences of singing games such as Sing Star involved songs from the likes of The Killers, Bloc Party and Oasis! Here is the complete listing.

Ava Max – Sweet but Psycho
Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa – One Kiss
Marshmello & Anne-Marie – FRIENDS
Rita Ora – Let You Love Me
Rudimental ft. Jess Glynne, Macklemore & Dan Caplen – These Days
Robin Schulz ft. Erika Sirola – Speechless
Jonas Blue ft. Jack & Jack – Rise
Dean Lewis – Be Alright
Mabel – Don’t Call Me Up
George Ezra – Shotgun
Imagine Dragons – Natural
Lewis Capaldi – Someone You Loved
Lukas Graham – Love Someone
Bruno Mars – That’s What I Like
Selena Gomez x Marshmello – Wolves
Tom Walker – Leave a Light On
Jonas Blue ft. William Singe – Mama
Alice Merton – No Roots
James Arthur – Say You Won’t Let Go
Kungs vs Cookin’ on 3 Burners – This Girl
Sean Paul ft. Dua Lipa – No Lie
Shawn Mendes – Stitches
OneRepublic – Counting Stars
Nelly Furtado – Maneater
Linkin Park – Numb
Robbie Williams – Angels
Spice Girls – Wannabe
Queen – The Show Must Go On
Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name
Ofenbach ft. Nick Waterhouse – Katchi

Selecting which song to sing is easily done and once you have assigned each player a mic and avatar by simply singing into your device then you are good to go.

Having the actual song video playing in the background is a great touch and the quality of the tracks is great. Subtitles are provided along the bottom of the screen to sing-a-long to however I preferred looking at the lyrics that were displayed below the rectangular boxes that you are trying to fill and score points by singing at the correct pitch. The height and the length of each box reflects how long you need to hold each note for and at what pitch, i.e high or low. There are also bonus boxes to fill throughout the track, crucial for getting the upper hand in the scoring!

Battling against my wife in the Classic mode we took on Spice Girls Wannabe (not my choice I may add), and the original music video came up on the screen along with the lyric and score bar overlays. Pitching in the correct key can take a little while to adjust to however very soon I was more or less hitting all of the boxes and watching my score total mount up. With one eye on my wife’s total you can feel the pressure as the points keep nudging each of you ahead for a short while. Of course, there is also the customary nudging each other while you stand infront of the TV and the childish standing in the way so that the lyrics can not be seen!

Singing into our phones via the app I was at times slightly dubious how points were being scored when it sounded quite blatant that lyrics were either being said at the wrong time by ourselves or even in slightly the wrong key, maybe the game was just being kind to us. Needless to say, I won and beat my wife at her favourite song. I’m not proud of it but a win is a win.

By completing game modes on songs, you get to unlock them on the mixtape as well as unlock new avatars. Your personal player profile is updated with your best score in each mode along with your personal progress and your player level along with any records that you hold. Records are obtained by progressing through all of the game modes and winning diamond discs for each of them.

The devs have so far released 7 DLC packs, each containing 5 songs, that can be purchased either separately or you can buy a season pass that gives you access to all of the DLC packs both now and in the future. So far there are a couple of best of 80’s packs along with a 90’s one and the traditional party, legendary and chart hits. Looking at the tracks that the DLC’s bring to you they do not get me overly excited but that is my personal music taste, for example, I wouldn’t class Lilly Allen’s “The Fear” as a Legendary hit song! One word of warning, there does seem to be a bug when going to the Playstation Store via the game as it causes Let’s Sing 2020 to crash therefore any purchases need to be made directly in the Playstation Store. *Update* This has now been fixed.

Graphics

A bright, vibrant and full-on party atmosphere is created withing Let’s Sing 2020. The full-screen music videos look great and give people watching you sing something else to look at other than your backside. The overlays are clean and the lyrics are easy to read and still sing wrong.

Audio

Let’s Sing 2020 features very clear songs, which is a good thing otherwise the game would be a major fail. My main beef with it is the tracklisting, I am not a modern pop person so until a decent best of 90’s or indie rock pack comes out the only songs I have really have are Linkin Park and Bon Jovi. I like a bit of Robbie but come on, Angels? really, did he never do any other song that you can sing to?

Longevity

Let’s Sing 2020 is good fun either on your own or with friends and family. There is a big tracklist to choose from and a good variety of game modes to battle in. The duration you will spend singing your heart out will depend on either how long your party is for or when you are going to get that knock on the door from the neighbour.

Conclusion

Let’s Sing 2020 seems more aimed at people in their early 20’s with a few token classics spuriously thrown in for the older generations. Based on the game’s current track listing I personally probably would not have bought it, however, the DLC packs provide an assortment of tracks that opens the game up to more people that are over the age of 25.

Let’s Sing 2020 plays well and can easily be used to form the basis of a party when people want to get together and also compete to see who the best singer is!

I award Let’s Sing 2020 the Thumb Culture Silver trophy.