Heavenly Harmony

Details: Category: Computer; By ccgr; 26.Sep; Hits: 8366

System Requirements 1.2GHz CPU 512MB RAM 250MB HDD Windows Vista/XP/2000 8X CD-ROM 32MB DX9 Video DX 9 Sound Speakers Microphone included! Heavenly Harmony is a Christian karaoke/American Idol style game. You can sing along to twenty-five Christian songs and you will see how accurate you are in real-time as it displays the notes you are singing versus the notes it’s expecting. The lyrics appear on an authentic musical score so you’ll get to see what’s coming. This game includes a name brand microphone that retails for about $10.

What songs are there?

There are a wide variety of songs you can choose from. There are a couple of pop-style songs as well as classic hymns. Most of the song list is Christian Contemporary. The songs I recognized were Amazing Grace, Blessed Assurance, Shout to the Lord, and I Can Only Imagine. There’s a good mix of songs sung by men and women. This game will have expansion packs and I look forward to expanding my musical library. Since the songs are in MP3 form, you can probably listen/sing to them to practice.

Unlockables

When you begin your singing career you only have one venue (your garage) and one outfit. As you sing better you’ll be able to unlock new venues and a wide variety of clothes and accessories. There are eight venues total and there are some pretty outdoor locales like singing in the mountains and on a pier.

What if I can’t sing?

As you sing a song there is a meter that has three different levels you fit into. You can be a shower singer, in the choir, or on tour. After each song you get to see if you qualified for a CD to be made and how popular it is. I’m typically a choir rated singer and my CD’s go out to family and friends. If you’re like me skill wise there are some mini games you can play to help improve your singing accuracy. There’s a pitch detection tool called Range Finder which you can use to see what your vocal range is. Tune-A-Tuna is a mini game where you have to catch tuna into a basket. You move the basket left and right by singing one of two notes. Early on in that game, you can press example keys to get the right pitch until you learn it. Pitch-N-Pass is a racing game where you have to sing a note to get your car to move. In that mini-game you don’t get example keys. Lastly there is Do-Re-Mi where you have to hit each note consistently and it will display your accuracy at the end.

Graphics

The graphics are decent; some of the venues lack detail, but to be honest, I spend more time looking at the musical score than the venue displayed. There are a few graphical options, notably anti-aliasing, but there are no resolution options. You can change the look and style of your singing console. The character representing you, either male or female, can be customized.

Sound

This game is all about music and the mp3 files sound good. If you can’t sing I can’t dock the game for that!

Stability

When I first launched this game the character models looked horrible. I e-mailed Cloud 9 Game’s tech support. They were very responsive and bought a similar video card to mine and fixed the problem the next day!

Interface

The games interface takes a little getting used to. When you go into the options it’s not obvious when an option is selected or not. There are black notes and black notes with blue in the middle. I thought the notes with blue were the enabled options but it’s the solid black notes that are enabled. When accessorizing your character I didn’t realize right away that if you click on some of the buttons multiple times you could get some different color shirts and skirts. Also, even when you select a character on your profile, it doesn’t remember your previous settings, so if you are a girl (or a guy) it does not remember what setting you chose last, so it takes a few extra clicks to get started.

Appropriateness

This game is all about singing Christian music, so I can’t fault it for anything here.

Final Thoughts

I have not played secular singing games so I can’t fairly compare it to them. With that said, Heavenly Harmony is very fun even if I’m just a casual singer. Cloud 9 Games really cares about the quality of their games and I was impressed with their fast turn around on fixing the game bugs. This game is pretty well polished with the exception of the interface confusion. I bought a copy of this game for Christmas for my karaoke loving mom. I can’t wait to see how she does. I also look forward to the coming expansion packs. They’ll be releasing a Christmas song one soon.