Just as with Singstar Rocks!, don't look for custom-created and personalized avatars and cool costume selections in Singstar Pop. What you get is a very minimalistic user interface with some cute graphics for your ranking, along with music videos playing in the background of each corresponding song. While it's interesting to see the videos, they can become a bit of a distraction if you are trying to watch your pitch and read the words to the song. I did enjoy seeing some of the videos, especially Whitney Houston's blast from the past with "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," from her pre-Bobby Brown days.

Of course, what people care about when considering a karaoke game is the music and Singstar Pop has that down in spades. Clearly, the focus is pop music, but there's a good blend with at least a few songs that will surely please just about everybody. There are oldies like the aforementioned Whitney Houston track, A-Ha's "Take On Me," Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and the ever-popular hit from The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go." Modern hits include Ashlee Simpson's "Invisible" and Rihanna's "SOS," but you can also find indie tracks like The Raconteurs "Steady As She Goes" and "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol. So like I said, a good blend with 30 tracks to choose from.

If you have played Singstar Rocks!, then you pretty much know what to expect, with a minor change. Singstar Pop plays very much like a true karaoke experience, with the inclusion of the pitch bars, however. The words to the song will appear at the bottom of the screen, however they do not scroll as they do in the PS2's other karaoke offering, Karaoke Revolution. Instead, each phrase shows up on the screen and then is quickly replaced by the next phrase once the color has changed, indicating that the words should have been sung. This can lead to problems if you aren't super familiar with the song, because you don't know exactly when to start singing the next phrase. Also, at times, you might be singing the lead vocals, then have to jump in with some backup. So, if you are playing a solo game, it can get a little confusing.

You can choose to Sing Solo, grab a friend and do a Collaborative Duet or fight it out in Battle Mode, or even play Pass the Mic for a party atmosphere. When selecting a song, you can always choose normal or short length and instead of selecting one specific song, you can also choose a Medley, which is 5 snippets of songs mashed together. Medleys are quite a challenege, as they start and stop at random moments within songs. But at least you can select your favorite type of medley, be it Indie, Male, Female, etc.

The change I mentioned earlier is more of a difference, actually. In the Gorillaz song, "Feel Good Inc." you are required to rap along with the verses. There's a Rap Meter and if you do well, it turns towards green. Do poorly and it edges towards orange and then red. The thing is, I'm not sure what they are using to judge you. I'd be playing and the bar would edge towards the high side of green and then as the verse ended, abruptly change to orange. It's hard to know what to improve on when the judging seems a little random, at least on the Rap Meter. But at least that's just a small fraction of the gameplay.

Singstar Pop, at its heart, is not an easy game. The scoring is pretty harsh, but honestly, this is more of a party game than anything else, so it doesn't really matter. The point is to have fun more than to sit at home all alone and try to best your score. Since you'll probably be singing in front of people more often than at home by yourself, it's better to simply learn the songs and hope to sing them better and just to have a good time. If you can't sing the songs well, then at least you'll be having fun.

If you are playing with other folks, of course, the difficulty depends on how good your competition is or, alternatively, how much each of you has already had to drink. :)

For the tweakers out there, you could have hours of fun altering your performances once you have sung a song. In Playback Mode, you can take a performance and make it sound like a baby singing, a robot, or any number of mods and distortions. What I found really embarassing and unexpected (simply because I forgot it records every song you do and it only plays back the song if you request it to) was when I sang a song, then Geck0 grabbed the controller and played it back, to mess around with the distortion features. Well, since I had been talking baby talk to my dog, Beanie, prior to the words starting, all of this was caught "on tape" and was a little silly, especially when Geck0 further babyfied it with a modifier. Just remember, it's always recording...

So your goal in Singstar Pop is to get a really good rank, the ultimate being "Singstar" of course. How well you hit the pitch and time your words will affect your score. The more points, the higher your rank. There's no Career Mode or anything like that to build towards, so it's more of a party game than anything else. In other words, this is a great game to break out if you are having a party and people have been drinking. The more booze, the more likely your frat buddies are to belt out Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi", for obvious reasons.

As far as the single player mode, well, it just doesn't hold one's attention nearly as much. There's no goal other than to get the Singstar rank and even if you get that, there are no unlockables, so there's not much of a point. Again, it seems that the goal of the Singstar series, in general, is to mimic a true bar karaoke experience and it does do that well. If you are the type that really loves playing the Karaoke Revolution series at home or at a party, because of the personalized character creation aspect and the tremendous unlockables, then you may not like Singstar Pop. If, on the other hand, you are an attention hound and want to bring something to a party that will get everyone involved, then Singstar Pop is a great game to pick up.