PaRappa the Rapper

August 7,2007 - Parappa the Rapper has long since been one of the most recognized and beloved characters in the Playstation brand. His games have graced nearly a decade of systems, all of which offered plenty of funkalicious beats and strange situations. But while those games were pleasurable ten years ago, many of the humor and intrigue is lost through the years, and Parappa the Rapper turns out to be just another game that doesn’t age very well.

The story has remained intact since the original, and it is still one of the best aspects of the game. The game follows young Parappa going through a series of events in his life in tune to rap beats. These events can range anywhere from going out on a date with a sunflower to taking his driving test, all of which add their own quirky comic relief. In order to accomplish all of these tasks, Parappa must rap in conjunction with a song in order to earn enough points to finish. There are only six levels throughout the game, and while all have their own original and groovy songs to play, it is over rather quickly. It seems that Parappa goes through his life in a measly three to four hours, rather disappointing by today’s standards.

The game plays out similar to music-pressing games of the same nature. At the top of the screen is a bar in which buttons designated to controls on the PSP are displayed. It is your job to press the buttons in precise order to match the beat of the song. This seems easier than it sounds, because the games asks you to be absolutely perfect when executing the button presses. The songs all start out rather easy, focusing on just the four main buttons in slow, long notes. As you continue through the song you will start pressing shoulder buttons and hitting up to twenty notes at a time during a single stretch. You are judged by how well you match the correct beat, which is played right before your turn. However, this preview goes by so quickly you will barely have time to see the correct beat, let alone hear how the song is supposed to sound.

Pressing the correct buttons is often frustrating since one minor miscalculation results in a penalty. Even if you manage to correctly press every button except for the last one, the game will only recognize your mistake and count it as a miss. If you garner too many misses during the song, you will eventually fail. There are no lives, so you can play through each song as many times as you wish. However, many of the songs amount to nothing more than memorization as you will replay songs so often they will become embedded in your memory.

While pressing the correct buttons is not confusing at all, determining how soon or long to press them is always tough. Most of the notes rely on quick button presses, and if you hit the notes too soon it will often throw off the beat and cause countless improper melodies. The game is also way too harsh with its scoring, usually taking off more points than you would earn with correct beats. During the song, words on the right side of the screen will show you how well you are rapping, and if you dip too low you will end up failing the song. Every time you correctly rap a line the words change rather slightly, sometimes forcing you to get two consecutive raps correctly to move up a spot. That’s not the case with incorrect raps, as one wrong beat and you drop one word almost instantly. This uneven form of judging makes it that much harder to complete a song successfully.

But while the gameplay is touch to manage for being so dated, it is good to note how well the visuals and sound remains intact. Parappa the Rapper is quite an artistic game, with lots of weird looking characters doing plenty of unusual animations. The game also pulls off that well-known paper cut-out look exceptionally well for a handheld game, making characters and locations look just as great as they did back on the original Playstation. The music is also relatively unchanged and most of the songs have a great, catchy beat that you will easily enjoy. Sometimes failing a level isn’t so bad since you can replay the songs all over again.

If you happen to finish a song than you will not have to worry about failing in order to hear it again, as the PSP version has a new feature that allows you to re-play any songs in the game. You can even add different sounds to the songs to create remixes and such, but none of them are distinctly different from the original to warrant two separate run-throughs. Multiplayer amounts to nothing more than four people rapping to the best possible score. You can’t ever see how the other person is doing until the end of the song, so it’s hardly a competition at all.

For a remake, this version of Parappa the Rapper feels a little rough around the edges to suggest for a $30 price tag. Even with the stellar sounds and addictive beats, the gameplay is simply too unbalanced with the scoring and way too precise on the button presses to amount to any fun. For a ten-year-old game it is a worthy remake, but it could have been done better and for a cheaper price.

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