GENRE
	Music
	DEVELOPER
	A2M
	PUBLISHER
	Disney Interactive Studios
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-4
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	No
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
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Fresh off two successful television movies, a pair of smash-hit CDs, a whirlwind national tour and a recently announced jump to the big screen, the High School Musical gang now sets its sights on the video game stage with High School Musical: Sing It! for Wii. Do Troy, Gabriella and the rest of the HSM gang still have what it takes to bop to the top in this karaoke take on the franchise? Read on to find out.

visuals

The game’s visual style is bright -- perhaps too much so. Adopting a cel-shaded look, lights and fireworks will flash around each of the school locales, and each character is dressed in colors made to blind you. The characters vaguely resemble their real life counterparts, but it’s disappointing that more attention wasn’t given to the character models.

Animations in the game are stiff and robotic, as each character attempts to dance along in routines modeled after the same dance sequences of the TV movies. For example, Gabriella, the spunky love interest of basketball phenom Troy, has voluminous, brown hair in the game, but after some particularly flashy dance moves her hair will fly up, exposing a completely bald head underneath. The timing appears to be off between the virtual High School Musical gang’s dance moves and the game’s soundtrack by about a half-step. Crowds are made up of three or four of the same 2D sprites in an attempt to perk things up and cheer on the performers, but don't quite succeed with their lack of variety in appearance and animations.

audio

21 total tracks from the two High School Musical films, some of which need to be unlocked, make the cut in Sing It!. Songs are of CD-quality; although, all the tracks are sung by sound-alike artists and not the actual cast of High School Musical, despite Disney Interactive publishing the title.

Some voice work is included for the purpose of narrating the game’s Story Mode, and it’s well-done and not overacted. As this is a karaoke game, your voice comes through loud and clear through the speakers with little distortion, and developers were nice enough to include a microphone sensitivity option that’s fully adjustable before you belt out every tune.

gameplay

The karaoke mechanics of Sing It!, which comes bundled with a nice Logitech microphone, are clunky. The game rates you by how well you maintain pitch and rhythm, granting you higher grades every few lines, and in turn, points. While there is a floating baton and bouncing ball to help you keep pace and rhythm with every song, they’re imprecise and only provide you with an estimate as to when to begin singing each lyric, causing many late starts and lowered in-game scores. This problem shouldn’t pose too much of a threat to fanatics of High School Musical, who know the songs by heart; but for parents or siblings joining in, it might be worthwhile to study the included lyrics guide.

High School Musical: Sing It! features three modes of play: a quick play mode, which allows you to quickly dive into any unlocked song, while still giving you the ability to select options like stage and character; a story mode, which retells the events of the first High School Musical television movie via voiceovers and a slideshow and lets you sing during key songs during pivotal plot points; and party mode, which allows up to eight players to take the microphone and compete for the highest score.

But that’s it. The game forces you to replay the game and increase your cumulative score by learning to nail every song in order to unlock a few of the game’s audio tracks. Along the way you’ll uncover new attire for Troy’s crew and unlock new singing stages, a few videos featuring interviews with the cast of High School Musical and clips that teach you to dance the same routines as the stars of the game, like Troy’s hip-hop basketball routine Getcha Head in the Game. If you aren’t the kind of gamer or singer interested in grabbing all the unlockable content in Sing It!, and you’ve completed the hour-long story mode, best steer clear of Sing It!.

multiplayer

Party mode allows up to eight players to belt out tunes in a competition to see who can garner the highest score, and it works well enough. In addition, a duet mode is available for play in quick, story and party modes.

overall

Kids who just can’t get enough of High School Musical will eat up Sing It!. But fans of the karaoke genre, and even those same kids who worship the ground Sharpay and Chad dance on, might want to think twice before plunking down their $60 to purchase the game and microphone bundle -- there just isn’t enough content to justify the price of the game, not to mention a few flaws.

6.0/10