Let's face it. Karaoke games are all well and good when you're playing on your lonesome, but it's in the multiplayer that they really shine. Perfect for parties, or just a get together with friends, karaoke games have that pick up and play appeal in droves - and so it's no surprise that the latest game to hit the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii, Everyone Sing, will be coming with a full compliment of multiplayer modes, with six different modes for up to eight friends to get stuck in to.
Regardless of how many friends you've managed to rope in, though, you'll have a decent selection of modes to choose from. For up to four players, there's the Group Mode which lets you form a quartet with your friends and play through the rounds of a competition on your rise to singing stardom. Team Classic pits two teams of people against each other singing a song of their choice to get as many points as they can, with the team with the highest score at the end being crowned the winners.
Hands up if you like karaoke games.
In Last Man Standing each group begins with ten lives. For each line you sing badly, you'll lose a life, and when you're out of lives the team still left standing is declared the winner. Tug of War places each team on either end of a rope, and the better a team sings, the more they pull the rope towards their end of the screen. With each line sung well, the opposing team is moved closer and closer to the centre of the screen, and once they cross that centre line, they've lost.
Two teams can compete on a random selection of song clips in Party Mix mode - played in quick succession, you'll have to stay on your toes to rack up the top score and win. In Pass The Bomb, teams need to chain together 'flawless' ratings for each line they sing to, well, pass the bomb to the opposing team - but the fuse can't hold out forever, and the team left holding it when it explodes loses.
With some 35 songs on the disc, 22 of which have been announced so far, as well as a pocket-friendly budget price of about £25, Everyone Sing should fill that karaoke-shaped void in your game collection when it launches later this month. In the meantime, make sure you keep checking back for when the final few tracks and a concrete release date are announced.
