I love to have a sing. Most Friday nights I’m belting out some Twitch Sings on my stream (at least until the end of the year) and if you’re ever on a road trip with me, you better be prepared for me to sing all the parts in Bohemian Rhapsody. So when I saw the latest Let’s Sing game was going to feature Queen, I got on my bicycle and raced off down the street before I realised I could just download the game. Happy that I could blame the red face on embarrassment rather than how out of breath I was, I loaded it up on the Xbox. Let’s Sing presents Queen by Voxler SAS and publisher Ravenscourt is a special installment of the critically acclaimed Let’s Sing series, dedicated to the world’s biggest rock band in the year of their 50th anniversary.
The game is compatible with most USB microphones but if you don’t have one of those you can also download the Let’s Sing app that turns your phone into a microphone for the game. I’ve been playing Rock Band for years so I have a collection of USB mics and I used one of them to play Let’s Sing presents Queen. There are six modes to choose from, each with their own flare, but the one I spent the most time in was Classic. This is where you can belt out some of Queen’s biggest hits and I wanted them all. I tried to pick some easy songs to sing as a warm up but I quickly realised, trying to pick an easy Freddie Mercury song is a bit like trying to pick an easy Dark Souls game. Every song puts you under pressure if you try to sing like Freddie. Let’s Sing presents Queen does exactly what it says on the box: we will be singing Queen songs and we will rock you while playing it.
There’s some good multiplayer options in the game, which I unfortunately didn’t get to try out myself, but the show must go on! Classic has an option to play with your mates and Feat allows for some good old fashioned duets. Even if you don’t have somebody to love to sing with, you can play a duet with the game itself. There’s an online battle of sorts in the Let’s Sing World Contest mode. You don’t see or hear them but you can see how they’re doing on the note board. There’s a leader board as well so you can tell who is singing We Are The Champions for real.
One mode that didn’t make much sense to me was is Mixtape. When I first went into it I thought I would be able to make up my own playlists and sing my favourite Queen songs, and while you can select your own songs for some mix tapes you only get to sing a few seconds of each song before the next one starts. It’s sort of giving you a taste for each song, but why would you bother with only a slice of each song when you can listen to the preview in the other modes? Coming from a Rock Band background, it was very refreshing to see the video clips for the songs playing in the background and I love that you could use your one vision to just relax and watch them all in Jukebox mode.
For me, Classic mode is where Let’s Sing presents Queen is the most fun. I really enjoy trying to match it vocally with that prince of the universe Freddie. Playing the game is a kind of magic that makes me want to shout “don’t stop me now” when I get that inevitable knock at my door from the neighbours (apologies for that). You won’t have to tie anybody down for Let’s Sing presents Queen, because it’s bloody Queen! There are 13 references to Queen songs in this review, some obvious and some not so. Can you find them all?
This review utilised an Xbox key provided by Koch Media. Let’s Sing presents Queen is available now on Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
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