Sing It: High School Musical 3

Before I begin, it is only fair I make a confession – I am not an impartial reviewer.

Not only did I see High School Musical 3 in theatres, but I went to the first screening. I booked our tickets online a week early, to get good seats. When the title came up I cheered – and was met with stony silence by a theatre full of ten year olds. Oh, except for the few who laughed at me.

I’m 24, well above the target market for the High School Musical franchise – and yes, it is a franchise. Talking dolls, clothing, lipstick, singing pens…name an item and someone, somewhere, will have slapped Zac Efron’s androgynous face on it.

If your eyebrows are raised with disapproval of my High School Musical affection then I can assure you that this game has nothing to offer you. Despite this, I am aware that even the most anti-HSMers have siblings, cousins, children…all without disposable income. Should you put your hard-earned cash down for this game, or get them a My Little Pony instead?

I suppose I am a child at heart, and so it was with much excitement that I took home Sing It: High School Musical 3: Senior Year (or SI:HSM3:SY – there should be rules against that many colons in a title).

I have to admit I was concerned when I saw that there were only twenty songs. I could tell you without having to count that there are thirty-three songs spread over the three films. I incorrectly assumed that they had just not included the ones that are not suited to karaoke.

This is not the case. I Want it All, for example, is fun to watch – the choreography and costumes are Disney-tastic – but with all of the breathy whispering and banter between the leads, you spend far too much time watching the screen with nothing to do. On the flip-side they have left off songs that could actually work, like Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. Apologies to non-fans who just tried to pronounce that in their heads.

The game shares many similarities with the recent Disney Sing It - the gameplay is exactly the same, the cover art is almost identical, and there are even seven songs that appear in both games. What a fun coincidence, eh? If you do the math on that one, this game offers only thirteen new tunes. It makes fabulous fiscal sense for the Disney head-honchos, but it isn’t very fair. If they were going to include songs that aren’t fun to sing then they should have done the fans a favour and made every song available.

For those who have managed to avoid the movies, they centre around a main couple (Troy and Gabriella) and a bunch of their friends (coupled off into matching pairs, including the vaguely incestuous brother-sister duo). This means that this game is mostly constructed of duets, which you can sing in parts as intended, or head-to-head in Versus mode.

Versus mode in a duet means that both players sing both parts. Switching between high and low every second line can be a fun vocal challenge (and really amusing for other people to listen to). It becomes problematic in the lines that both parts sing simultaneously – as you just have to guess if you’re singing soprano or baritone. Sticking with duet mode has its pitfalls too – most of the duets are uneven, so if you are unfortunate enough to get stuck with ‘the boy part’ you spend most of the song providing ‘oh yeah’s for your partner.

With the problematic gameplay, it’s more fun to just watch the movies with the subtitles on and sing along. Unfortunately Sing It: High School Musical 3: Senior Year is similar to the talking dolls - peppy and nice to look at, but ultimately hollow.

Tracklisting:
High School Musical: Start of Something New
High School Musical: Getcha Head in the Game
High School Musical: Bop to the Top
High School Musical: Stick to the Status Quo
High School Musical: When It Was Me and You
High School Musical: Breaking Free
High School Musical: We’re All In This Together
High School Musical 2: What Time Is It
High School Musical 2: Fabulous
High School Musical 2: You are the Music in Me
High School Musical 2: Gotta Go My Own Way
High School Musical 2: Everyday
High School Musical 2: All For One
High School Musical 3: I Want It All
High School Musical 3: Can I Have This Dance
High School Musical 3: Just Wanna Be With You
High School Musical 3: A Night to Remember
High School Musical 3: The Boys are Back
High School Musical 3: Walk Away
High School Musical 3: High School Musical

Written by Kate Arrowsmith

"For the diehard fans only."

5.0 Mediocre