Review: Yoostar 2: In The Movies (PS3)

By Wayne Webb

When first hearing of this game I thought it was a brilliant idea. A pity the execution was left wanting. Essentially it’s Singstar or Karaoke for the acting set. Choose a scene from a famous movie, step into camera, perform the scene and then watch the playback with you in it.

The choice of movies is good with films like The Godfather, Terminator, The Blues Brothers etc, as well as more modern fare such as 300, The Hangover and Kick Ass. But most people my age won’t really shed their inhibitions and really give it a good go – throw themselves into the role, unless alcohol is involved. I played it sober, and no other adults in my house wanted to play. So I roped in my tween-aged niece and nephew – who loved the idea, but found that they knew little of the material.

It works well with kids, but has the movie library that appeals to a 70’s child like me. So far not a recipe for success – just a series of embarrassed fumbles of lines that are not known, and me wishing that I had a drink or two under my belt to make it more interesting.

Then you throw into the mix the camera and ‘cut-out’ technology that make the scenes look worse that 1980’s colour separation overlay from Doctor Who, which come to think of it, may have been a better source of material. Cheesy scenes and dialogue would be much better than classic lines from Arnold or Marlon Brando. The background you play this against is paramount and needs to be one colour, and then trying to frame yourself into different sizes and angles means you’ll need a room the size of a small classroom to manoeuvre in to make it look effective.

The scoring works like Singstar in that you get points for timing and following the script correction, although there’s an ad-lib mode, but once again – you need to lose inhibitions. And with the patchy cut out system you often appear inside a large ragged frame of darkness pasted into the scene. This is often a disappointing element as it ruins the playback of your scene, and it needs to be better.

I wanted to enjoy it, but  didn’t.

Pros: It’s a good idea, a good range of scenes, probably a lot of fun when drunk.
Cons: The scenes are not quite right, the scene cut-out is patchy, framing right requires too much room, just not that much fun.

1.5 Shacks out of 5

RRP
$89.95