American Idol

We don't want to make a dance game. That's been done. Here's an idea! Let's make a video game about singing! Yes, I'm sure there's a target market for that. Girls who don't like video games who got a gameboy for Christmas.
So these brilliant executives (or one brilliant executive and his hallucinations) pass their idea onto the rest of the game company and it's decided they'll make some sort of large-sums-of-money-involving deal with the producers of American Idol and the rest is fairly obscure history.

So, here's the deal. You create a character. It's kind of like creating a character in Dungeons & Dragons, with the following exceptions:
You don't roll dice for attributes.
You don't pick a race or class.
You don't name your character.
You don't create any sort of personality or backstory.
You don't give your character any skills in any form.

I will name you Kolon, the Half-Orc Barbarian.

So, you pretty much just pick from a basic set of clothing and hair styles, then pick which colour you want them. The most versatile choice to be made is whether your character will be male or female, and what their head looks like.
As you can see, there's some pretty in-depth characterization happening here.

The next step is to get on the stage and sing. That's right. No vocal training is required. You just step up on the stage and start singing. Take that, Robert Goulet.

Microphone; check. Slutiness; check.
Music lessons; Oh . . . damn.

"It's getting you to shut up that's the trick" - Shrek

My other character, Kuulass the Elven Princess, sings with the exact same voice.

If you want an example of how bad it is, here's an mp3 of "Twist and Shout". Not only does the singing lack conviction of any kind (let alone the ugly part you'll definitely notice), but they used the worst instrumentation they possibly could have used.
Those of you Beatles-literate know what it's supposed to sound like. Those who aren't, probably can tell it's bad anyway.

So, when you're finished singing, you come to the judges.

Don't they just look so enthusiastic?

I don't know who this woman's supposed
to be, but she shows up between all of
your performances--having just got out
of the shower--to encourage you.

From left to right, the judges give one of their leprous handful of sound bytes (which get really repetitive after you play more than one round) and you move on to a score screen. The thing about these judges is, they're not only uncreative in their criticism, but they also seem to not have a mind of their own. They never disagree on anything. If you do badly, they all say you were terrible. If you did well, they all pat you on your back. This leads me to believe there may be some high critic warlord hidden in his vault of terror that presses a button to alert the judges which way to vote.

"You really brought this home. Good for you. Great stuff."
"I think the performance speaks for itself. Nine out of Ten."
"Not often do you see singing of that calibre. I think you will go very, very far in this competition."

After the judging, you get a rating. Usually it's 80-something percent because I don't have especially good rhythm. Most musicians who play this will probably get 98 or 99, as it seems geared towards small children with the hand-eye coordination of a badly wounded chihuahua trying to open the door of a burning building. I probably didn't need to add the word "burning" but I'm in a cruel mood. Sorry.

Anyway, it also rates you on "appearance". Does that mean whether or not your character is ugly? That's the game's fault, not yours. Not just because of quality of graphics, but also for giving you the choice of picking an ugly contestant.

You had great timing, some nice style,
and overall you were excellent, but
you're just not what we're looking for
in the "hot" department.

Okay, so the bottom line is this; I don't watch American Idol. I think it's stupid. So I played this game with low expectations. And . . . well, it's probably not too much worse than I thought it would be, but it's pretty bad. Maybe they could have inserted some sort of Alien Abductor subplot where if your singing starts to go down hill, your brain gets sucked out of your head and your lifeless corpse bleeds all over the stage while the audience gasps. Then your brain lives on. They insert it into a killer robot which you . . . no, too cliche. I know! They create an alien-human hybrid clone and replace its infant brain with yours, so in addition to the human ability to open doorknobs and do kung fu, you now have about twelve hundred arms and telepathic powers. So now you touch down on earth and set out to destroy the music industry. Only they have Earth's champion, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. Armed with a CD-launching machine gun, he goes on a killer rampage through a room full of strippers, gunning down governmental oppressors. He's no match for you, so he must track down the now-cyborg Elvis Prestley.

Luckily, your alien abductors are not stupid. They've foreseen this, and you are now equipped with their latest invention, the terrible anti-Elvis repeating laser gun. As you wield it menacingly at your human inferiors, you can already feel the fate of the world sharing your grip. Today Earth. Tomorrow, some red planet in orbit of the star Arcturus, where the evil one-armed aquatic pirate has lived for fourteen thousand years with his lovely wife Trudy.

The coolest part is on level three where (I was wondering how much of this you'd actually read before closing this article, but I think maybe my little off-topic stream-of-consciousness ideas are probably more interesting than the actual game) nothing at all happens until you hit the big red button in front of the teleport that sucks people out into space and, well, I'll just let you see for yourself what happens next.