The Iphone Blog

The Tap Tap Revenge games topped the App Store charts for years, bringing a simplified version of Guitar Hero—in a way—to the iPhone before the real thing came along. But the new app Lyric Legend takes the Tap Tap favorite to another level by challenging players to think a bit more critically by tapping along to lyrics instead of beats.

Read the full Lyric Legend review after the jump

The concept of the Lyric Legend is much like that of Tap Tap Revenge: follow along with the music, tap an orb when it begins to glow, win points, rule the universe. But with Lyric Legend, instead of the orbs syncing up with beats and parts in the music, the orbs each contain one word in a lyric of the song, each glowing one after the other to guide you to tap the right words in the right order. Each tap gets a score of accuracy before the orb falls off the screen to make room for the next words in the lyrics, though the orbs are, of course, jumbled on the screen to make you work just a bit harder while furiously tapping all over your screen.

Though the game seems fairly straightforward and somewhat easy, I can assure you—it’s not. Part of the difficulty is in the overdrive your brain goes into, desperately trying to process both the music and the text in front of it then communicate its conclusions to your fingertips. Let’s just say it doesn’t always work out too well. Also, if you’re familiar enough with a particular song, you can almost feel when to tap the orb accurately, if you’re following along with the beat. But this isn’t always the case, as the orb begins to just slightly glow before the word comes up in the lyric, then you have to hit it at just the right moment when the orb is in full-glow mode—which doesn’t always seem to match up with this natural feeling you get of when to tap.

The major downside to the app: Only three free songs are included. Though the rest of the Lyric Legend catalog is fantastic (good variety of very current top 40 hits from bands like OneRepublic, indie favorites like Owl City or Phoenix, classics like No Doubt, etc.), each song costs $0.99, with the exception of a few “bundle” packs (bundle, meaning just two songs). I managed to luck out with the free songs included in the app, as I’m familiar with them, but I would have liked to be able to use my own iTunes library with the app. The popular game Tune Runner allows access to your own music, and it’s a fantastic way to kill time while still enjoying your own tunes.

One added bonus: There’s a multiplayer mode that lets you compete against friends via bluetooth. Watch along the top bar as you play each other remotely to see who’s ahead of who with points, then share your victory with your social networks on Facebook and Twitter.

Recap & Conclusion

Lyric Legend
Price: FREE
Released: Aug. 31, 2010
Our Grade: B+

At the gentle price of FREE, you really can’t complain too much about this challenging, somewhat frustrating, yet highly addictive alternative to the overplayed Tap Tap Revenge games. It’s a refreshing twist that kicks your brain and your patience into overdrive, though once you catch on, you’ll probably be unable to stop—which is also probably what the developers were counting on when they only included three free songs without access to your own music library. Open the game up to users’ own libraries, and this game will be a mega-hit.

Go ahead, download it!

Go to Source

Related posts:

1. Karaoke + rhythm game = Lyric Legend
2. App Review: GetGlue, the Homebody Alternative to FourSquare
3. Computing Legend Alan Kay Explains CES Comments (In Detail)
4. Tapulous Releases Nirvana Revenge, Enter To Win A Promo Code
5. Gesture-based music control and a challenging tower defense game: iPhone apps of the week