ABBA is back with a new album after a 40 year hiatus, and what better way to celebrate than being the sophomore offering in the Let’s Sing Presents series of Let’s Sing games. While I’m not the best singer, I certainly love belting out songs to the judgement of a video game and my friends around. Plus, one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had as a game reviewer was singing Crazy Town’s “Butterfly”in my office in the middle of the night to beat a deadline. When I got the chance to review Let’s Sing ABBA, I jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because I fucking love Abba, and I have no shame. I sang Dancing Queen at least a half dozen times to bring you this review.
Let’s Sing ABBA is a rhythm and singing game that features a collection of ABBA’s greatest (and more) spanning ABBA’s discography. If you’re familiar with the Let’s Sing formula, Let’s Sing ABBA doesn’t change a single thing—but it gives you the chance to match vocals with the Swedish supergroup with 31 songs and seven game modes. ABBA is back, and it's waiting to be sung at the top of your lungs in front of your shocked (horrified?) friends. I may or may not be speaking from personal experience.
The game modes in Let’s Sing ABBA follows the previous Let’s Sing games. There’s the Classic mode, which I play most frequently, and features the base karaoke style gameplay that Let’s Sing is known for: you have to sing to the music, getting scored for pitch and timing. There is also duet, legend, party, and mixtape modes, among others. You can also challenge yourself to climb the world leaderboard rankings or just sit and listen to all 31 ABBA songs with the jukebox.
Since I don’t have a mic I can hook up to my Xbox, I used the Let’s Sing app for my Android phone. It’s a decent substitute for a mic in that it lets you play the game. As for its quality as an audio input device, it’s a bit lacking. While I’m not a great singer, I can usually match pitch, even if I have to go an octave lower to get into a comfortable range. But I was always fighting what pitch I wanted to naturally sing at and the one the game wanted to sing at.
While not changing the Let’s Sing formula at all, ABBA does bring a buffet of ABBA songs. There are the classics like “Waterloo,” “Take a Chance on Me,” “Dancing Queen,” “Mamma Mia,” and a bunch more. There are a few (relatively) deep cuts on here. There’s even a song from their new album: “I Still Have Faith in You,” which is a pretty good throwback.
Let’s Sing ABBA delivers the Let’s Sing formula with an ABBA playlist, and it turns out that’s all I really wanted. I’m not the biggest fan of the Let’s Sing style of singing rhythm game and the accompanying app, but it’s still fun to play casually with friends. Despite its flaws, I’ll be busting out Let’s Sing ABBA at any parties for the foreseeable future.
Let's Sing ABBA will be releasing soon for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
An Xbox key was provided to us for the purposes of this review.