NOW That’s What I Call Sing 2 is the sequel to, you guessed it, NOW That’s What I Call Sing. NOW Sing 2 features 30 tracks at launch, each with several different modes which you can play and enjoy with your friends. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that my musical talents end at listening to it, and sometimes I’m not particularly good at that either, so… make of that what you will. Onto the review!
NOW Sing 2 is a game primarily aimed at a young, hip audience who know what “lit” means. In fact, if you’re looking to belt out some power ballads from the 90s, you’re out of luck. If you’re looking to sing anything more than a few years old, then you’re pretty much struggling. In amongst your song list you’ll find the likes of Justin Bieber, Jason Derulo, and Meghan Trainor. All household names responsible for clogging up, I mean, dominating the UK Singles Charts in 2016, or so my research tells me.
The game itself is easy to understand. You sing songs. Sing well and you get more points, more points means you rank higher on the global online leaderboard. Having a leaderboard personalised to your friends list gives you the bragging rights over your tone-deaf amateur friends when you finally smash 150,000 on Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance. I have found that two things will help you out immensely in your performance: Musical talent and/or alcohol.
Every single song has four modes: Classic – which is just singing as normal, match the pitch and the timing to earn points; Duet – a 2 player mode in which you sing a verse each, like a normal duet; By Heart – In this mode the lyrics will sporadically disappear, and if you’re anything like me this will leave you spluttering and destroy any modifier you somehow managed to scrape together; Pass the Mic – At the signal, you’ll have to pass the microphone to a friend and they can then begin singing.
There is a companion app for the game which allows you to use your Android/iPhone smartphone as a microphone. This is infinitely useful as it means you can bring your friends around for a good ol’ karaoke session without the overprotective “DJ” or the mysteriously sticky floors. However, I will add that I couldn’t get the companion app working on my Android phone. It detected the Xbox One, but I couldn’t pair it up for some reason.
Each performance will earn you Vox Points, or VP for short, the currency used in Now Sing 2 to unlock different game modes. None of the modes are particularly expensive, so your VP wallet will likely grow and grow over time.
If you ever start running low on VP, you can perform certain songs with a 2x multiplier on to replenish your stores. These change randomly after you complete one. You might also notice a mission icon next to certain songs and modes. These are challenges that you have to complete for a bonus! The mission mechanic is really nice and it challenges you to perform in ways that you might not have tried before.
The game is easy to navigate and is a great entertainment option with friends. It’s a standard karaoke game experience, however compared to its competitors Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it’s lacking a lot in terms of variety. It’s a dedicated karaoke game and that’s fine, but I would’ve preferred a more varied soundtrack to annoy my neighbours with. The game modes provide more depth and replayability for each and every song, however after the initial novelty I feel this game will be reserved for parties and holidays, which is by no means a bad thing.
