When Japanese developer iNiS was confirmed to be attached to the Xbox 360 singing game, Lips, it might have felt like an odd project for the team. Responsible for rhythm classics like Gitaroo Man and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, Lips looked simply like a SingStar clone, a fraction of the experience available in Rock Band.
“Rest assured there are things you haven’t seen yet”, we were told at yesterday’s Lips hands-on session. “There’s a lot of iNiS in there”.
What does that mean exactly? Lips might not feature oddball heroes like a talking robot dog and male cheerleaders saving the lives of the less fortunate, but it has the iNiS polish. Little things, like jump-in coop play — just shake the second mic to join an in-progress game — and a perfectly honed interface, may not be the sexiest of features, but it sets a solid foundation for Lips as a more than worthy competitor to SingStar.
