On a cost basis, at least, Lips ought to be ahead of SingStar, since they're both 40 quid and Lips has more songs and nicer microphones. But when you consider what else SingStar has over Lips, it's harder to make the argument. Thanks to DLC in particular, music games often defy what's-in-the-box reviewing; in the same way that World of Warcraft improves with Blizzard's ongoing support, music games become more attractive as their creators offer a broader range of downloadable music, and it's only fair to reward it once the potential has been realised. It has for SingStar, but it won't be for a while with Lips.
But the saddest thing about Lips is that it suffers in comparison to SingStar's gameplay. We've long moaned about legacy issues with SingStar - that it can't cope with vibrato, punishes you for tailing off at the right time, and has a bit of lag in audio playback - but despite Lips' fancy mics and superficial improvements, it's too easy, too isolated from other players, and too buggy. The irony is that SingStar has glitches as well, now and then, and casual gamers seem to put up with this, whereas Microsoft - architect of the Red Rings - has little goodwill left to cash in on that front. Casual or not, though, you should only buy this if you can't get SingStar.
5/10