This review contains spoilers

Pop Idol on the PS2 is garbage, and still shockingly broken. The Idea is that you have to perform through auditions to until the public vote off 1 of the finalists at a time until there's 1 left, a fun idea, although I don't trust singing games, because they can't actually judge singing and can only judge the tone of your voice, but I understand why they do this, otherwise almost no one would make it past the audition. You Customize your own character, mostly, you can't change the facial features, you can choose your own singing voice, out of 6 options, which is interesting. The Graphics are terrible lifeless, badly designed, and basic, they make the game ugly and require other features to make it playable. The Judges are odd, because Simon Cowell is there as expected, but the other judges don't look like Pete Waterman and the female judge in this game isn't even the same race as the either of the one's from the first season of the show, which is what this must have been based on. The Gameplay goes like this, since this is before they used microphones for singing games, (since I couldn't find a single game released before this that used one) they have you press buttons at the right time to keep you're pitch perfect, which doesn't even have anything to do with the tone of voice, I only don't find it a big problem because I don't know what the possible alternatives were, but that doesn't change the fact that the notes don't appear on screen in tune with anything, so don't assume they do or you'll lose, or maybe not since during my playthrough I only hit a third of the notes to see if this was actually true, and it is, 2 judges can hate you, but the last judge liked me and said I got through with 2/3 NO's THIS ONLY BREAKS THE GAME, AND REMOVES ANY CHANCE OF ANY HALF STARS THE GAME COULD HAVE. You also get the chance to change your costume after each round, which is good, but annoying thanks to the fact the fact that the atmosphere has no effort outside of the theme that plays a lot. The Music is not good, when it appears, it sounds like a kind of tune that anyone could create, and all the dramatic moments when you find out if you're through or not is completely silent. Sounds are only noticeable when moving the mouse to other options, which sounds more louder than needed. The Song choices are alright, but repetitive on repeat playthroughs, and after a small celebrational cheer from the audience when you finish, the game just ends, and it's back to the main menu, this is called being "not satisfying". Pop Idol the game is an example of what happens if you try to make a singing game before Microphone connections were a thing on the consoles... done even worse.

Reviewed on Oct 10, 2022


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