PS3/Xbox; �44.99; cert 12; Yoostar Entertainment Group
Yoostar 2 is really clever. "Ohh!" you think, as you set everything up and watch your sub-Hollywood self appear in an actual scene from an actual movie, "That is clever." The PS Eye or Kinect snaps your living room, then snips you out from the background and superimposes you in one of 40-ish film clips, ranging from vintage horror (Frankenstein) to classic comedy (Ferris Bueller) to, um, Norbit ? a film so grotesquely bad that even Eddie Murphy would probably baulk at being beamed back into it.
One of the actors is digitally wiped from the scene and you take over their stance and lines, trying to hit your marks using a SingStar-style bar to maximise those lovely, delicious points. And again, this works remarkably well. Fluff your cue or mumble your dialogue, and the game catches on and punishes you like a disappointed director; stick to the script and give it a bit of expression, and feel yourself ascend to the golden realms of stardom. There's also the option to ad-lib, and find out whether the oh-so-hilarious lines you like to interject while watching movies are really as well-crafted as the products of an LA writers' room.
So, the tech is red-carpet ready. The concept's intriguing. And in practice, it's just not very much fun. Yoostar is a party game that has the unfailing power to suck the joy out of any party where you crack it out of the box. Two handers work well, but in any gathering of people in a normal-sized living room, all the non-performers end up dispatched into the corners so as not to distract the camera. Secretly, Yoostar is a bit jealous ? it would much rather keep you to itself than share you with friends. "How about we just stay in together?" it suggests. "You can be Jean-Luc Picard. Dressed as the Borg ?" Tempting? Well, a little bit.
The key problem is that, as well-balanced as the selection of clips is, there just aren't enough of them and they're just not long enough. Leaning over Boris Karloff and cackling "It's alive!" is delightful, but it only lasts for seconds. What to do next? Repeat the scene, robotically enunciating the phrase ever-more precisely until the console is satisfied? I'm not convinced that counts as enjoyable, or even a game.
Yoostar offers social functions for the sort of deranged narcisist who wants to upload videos of themselves pretend-acting where anyone can see them, but it just doesn't have the same show-off potential as SingStar: you can't lose yourself in the poetry of a two-minute clip of Baby Mama in the same way that you can in, say, a lung-bursting version of Total Eclipse of the Heart. You can also choose to play Challenge mode, smashing through scenes and snorting up trophies, although the lack of replay value in the movie extracts makes Quick Play the better option by far. Altogether, Yoostar is as baffling as Gwyneth Paltrow in a rom-com: smart and charming, sure, but basically uninteresting, and nobody's first choice for a fun night in.
? Game reviewed on PS3
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