Review: Let’s Sing ABBA – La Question C’est Voulez-Vous

Let’s start with a question: Why are you here? Of all the many games coming out in the second third of 2022, this is perhaps the most reliable, most arid predictable in form and function: a Let’s Sing game with songs by Abba. Sure, you might be curious about the playlist or the different modes in this particular entry of the long-running karaoke series, but when it comes to video games, this particular crowd is about as “familiar” as it comes.

Maybe you’re here for the same reason we said yes to code review: sometimes you just need something reliable and recoverable. Times are turbulent and the unexpected offer of a night out with friends and family in a stress-free, no-stakes environment to bang out some bangers sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Die-hard gamers needn’t worry about avoiding spoilers online or impaling themselves on a difficulty spike with Let’s Sing Abba; it’s as wonderfully low-maintenance and uplifting as you’d expect.

Launch the game and you’ll be greeted with several modes that will be instantly familiar to regulars of the series. ‘Legend’ pits single players against Abba-looking people (not the band, you know, just similar-looking avatars acting as karaoke opponents) in mini-challenges where you sing a snippet of a song and meet certain criteria of three -Star rating and face off against a boss to unlock songs and avatar swag. This is where we spent most of our time and had a good time.

Elsewhere, “Classic” lets you jump into any song with up to four players, “Feat.” lets you duet with a partner (AI “artist” or a second player) to discover your compatibility depending on your pitch and timing, and “Mixtape” is good if you don’t have the time or patience for entire songs – it continuously streams five quick-shot excerpts that you can enjoy without having to devote three minutes to a single song. World Contest features ranked online karaoke offs with leaderboards, and Let’s Party is a local team-based competitive mode for up to eight players (which can also be played solo against AI). So far, so let’s sing. Each mode does exactly what it promises.

Then there’s ‘Jukebox’, which simply slaps the videos of the songs you’ve unlocked onto the screen with the lyrics – perfect background noise for low-key British parties where nobody wants to be standing with a mic but happy with one on one Screen stares drinking in their hands while realizing how few Abba texts they actually know.

Gear-wise, any old USB mic should do the job, but the easiest way to get involved is to download the Let’s Sing Mic app and connect to your console by entering a four-digit code, if You will be prompted to do so after joining the same WiFi network. Once we hit “ZR” to use the calibration tool, everything synced up nicely and we were gone. Any Let’s Sing veteran will know that you don’t need to know the words as the mics only detect pitch. You could hum your way through happily and you’d be fine.

Even lesser-known songs that you’re unfamiliar with don’t pose as much of a problem as you might think. You’ll run into problems if you take on the whole song, but for the mixtape challenges, we managed to berate most of them by doing this weird humming trick where you raise and lower your pitch, to move the point like a pong paddling and completely ignoring the song itself. Only we?

A token progression system is threaded throughout, and each mode has a percentage progress bar that’s easily visible from the main screen. And if you’re not sure where to start, pressing “X” spits out prompts that suggest songs and modes to tackle next – another example of developer Voxler deftly avoiding any fear (in this case, that Netflix-style paralysis when faced with a whole range of reasonable options).

Looking at the playlist, it’s hard to argue with the 31 songs on offer, and anyone who’s ever thrown Abba Gold on their favorite hearing aid will feel right at home. The classics are all here – Mamma Mia, SOS, Waterloo, Knowing Me Knowing You, Fernando, Gimme! Give me! Gimme!, Take A Chance On Me, et al. — along with 2021’s I Still Have Faith In You if you’re a fan of the new material, all accompanied by official videos starring Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny and Bjorn… wait a minute, that’s AABB. hmm

Personal favorites are the heartwarmingly unproblematic Does Your Mother Know and the disco-tastic Voulez-Vous, which we think should have been a Roger Moore-era Bond theme. Notable omissions include Lay All Your Love On Me and I Have A Dream, which we can only assume will eventually be available via DLC. Their absence is a disappointment, especially if you’re not familiar with every single other track here, but the fact remains that you’ll struggle to find a more likable selection of songs from a single artist. A person who doesn’t like Abba is just someone who not yet realized they like Abba.

Even with the few track omissions and a few odd choices (e.g. not having a single Joy-Con support means you’re forced to use both to navigate the menus, which is tedious if you also have one microphone / smartphone), it is difficult to get away from it unsatisfied. The result screens when you finish a song are a little too long and can’t be speeded up by repeatedly pressing the buttons. Screenshots are disabled so you can’t take pictures of the group – all pictures in this review are press shots. Thank You For The Music is pretty bland. That’s about the only complaint we had.

So why are we here again? To unwind, forget our worries for a while and belt out some classics – and Let’s Sing Abba makes that really easy to do. La vraie question c’est voulez-vous. We made.

Conclusion

As a group, Abba sits alongside just a handful of the world’s biggest acts – The Beatles, Queen and maybe just a few others – with the generational, mainstream appeal of supporting a multiplayer music game like this. We’re betting that even non-fans will be drawn to the sheer power of this most familiar and indestructible songbook in pop music, and the variety of modes here, machined over many years of iteration and repetition for the long-running Let’s Sing, offer enough variety, to wow just about everyone who’s ever tapped their foot on one of these tracks, developer Voxler took absolutely no chances here; Let’s Sing Abba is exactly what you think it is. And for that we were grateful.