impulse94 says:

I was excited about getting this one as a followup to the original American Idol game, especially because now the trio would be “complete”, with the presence of Paula.

However, the more I played it, the more disappointed I got. It seems like Paula phoned in her comments over the phone. The songs seem like “all the ones we rejected from the first American Idol game”, with long stretches of no singing, too many slow songs, and some of the most depressing songs I’d ever come across (mostly the “newer” ones). I’m sure some people want to sing a song that ends with “I don’t want to be a murderer” over and over, but not me.

There are no new extras to speak of (games and such) and once I scored Platinum on all the tunes I said that was enough. I’ll stick with the original, thanks.
Rating: 2 / 5

Laura L. Larsen says:

I can find myself losing several hours playing this game. It’s a ton of fun.

If you want to just get in and sing, it lets you do that with a quick-play feature. If you want to do a full career game, it lets you do that too, and even gives you options on how many levels of the contest you want to have to get through, how long each song will last, etc., which I appreciate.

I also like all the unlockable content; there are past Idol videos, new songs, awards, new items for your avatar, new avatars, and it’s not all for the same stuff — for example, there are things you can unlock with XX number of platinum songs, but also ones for XX number of gold ones, doing a certain song and getting a platinum rating, and so on. You can view all the different achievements (though they don’t tell you what you get for unlocking them, unless you achieve it).

I have the original, and this one, and I like the song choices on both; there’s not very much (if any) overlap, so I have fun playing them both. There’s no need to play number 1 before playing this one.
Rating: 5 / 5

Dr. Holly says:

Wow, I’m really disappointed with this one. I must say here that I LOVED the first version released. The reason I gave this game 3 stars is as follows:

1) The song selection is poor (in my opinion) Others have already posted the track listing so I won’t do that too, but it just seems as if they’re either really depressing or just rejected songs from the first game release with very few “shining stars.”

2) In the first release, you could tell that the makers of the game worked extremely hard to make the tracks sound identical to the original. In fact, I didn’t know until watching one of the unlocked videos in game that it wasn’t the original artist singing. The difference is that subtle. In this “Encore” version however, it’s the complete opposite. The singers they used were not so great and they somewhat changed the melody so if you’re used to hearing the song a certain way on your CDs or the radio, it will most likely be an adjustment for you to learn the new arrangement for the game.

3) I was looking forward to the follow-up game to have different judges comments and with finally having Paula in the game (the original had a lady named Laura), I thought perhaps this would change up game play and make it different, exciting and fresh from the first. They didn’t do that. Paula’s comments are usually identical to what Laura said in the first release. Randy & Simon’s comments can often be heard in the first game as well. That to me just shows a lack of creative thinking…to not bother making the second game completely different. (Isn’t that what sequels are supposed to be about – a continuation but new?)

4) Not only are a lot of the judges comments the same – a lot of the in game items such as clothing, accessories, body types, etc. are also the same. They only added a few new selections. Plus, the “awards” you get for having certain amounts of platinum records, etc. are also pretty bad.

As you can tell, it was just a major overall disappointment. I had so much fun playing the first one that I could hardly wait to receive this one in the mail. Now I’d take the original over this one any day. For anyone who is considering trying out this game series for the first time – I highly encourage you to try the original instead. I suppose everyone has different tastes in music and some may prefer this song list over the other game’s list but I sure didn’t and others haven’t as well. I really hope this review helps someone!

Rating: 3 / 5