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Rap music isn't often thought of as family-oriented fare. Though you'll never find a happier, more colorful hip-hop game than Parappa The Rapper, the seminal PlayStation title that's finally made its way to the PSP. Urban rhymes have never been friendlier; too bad there's simply way too little of them to go around.
Music games are all the rage these days, but plenty of us forget that they've been around for a long time. Parappa wasn't the first of its kind when it first appeared back in 1997, but the formula it used hadn't been seen before (or since, for that matter). Starring a puppy dog of sorts and his cohort of friends made up of flowers, rodents, and other critters, Parappa is on a musical quest to charm the girl of his dreams. To do this, he has to rap in time with a karate instructor onion, driving school hippo, Rastafarian frog, and cooking show chicken. Quirky, thy name is Parappa The Rapper.
Parappa The Rapper is infectious, fun, and great for kids.
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While the deceptively simple quasi-2D graphics are colorful and bright, the real star of the game is the brilliant music that Parappa must master to complete each level. The beats are solid and the lyrics often hilarious, so you won't be able to stop yourself from nodding your head in time with the tunes. They'll permeate your thoughts long after you put down your PSP. My personal favorite is the reggae frog selling his wares at the flea market, whose voice is on par with the best Jamaican ska singers I've heard on Sirius Satellite.
It may look simple, but it’s by no means easy to time button mashes to the beats as they flash by. Parappa looks cute and all, but he'll spare no quarter in making you work to complete levels well enough to warrant moving on. The final two stages are particularly brutal. As poor old Parappa suffers from a bout of near-explosive diarrhea, he's forced to rap-battle all the characters he's previously met just to get into the bathroom (did I mention the game is a little quirky?). The last level, an all-star beat-box in a last-ditch effort to win over his ladyfriend, is virtually impossible to nail without many repeated attempts.
Perhaps the difficulty is there for a reason. In spite of the ability to download some rather mediocre remixes of the music for many levels, the biggest problem with Parappa The Rapper is the length. If you wanted to, chances are you could go from beginning to end in about an hour (at least if you're not a ham-fisted thirtysomething who won't be named in this review). Even if you add in the nostalgia factor of a beloved title returning to form, it's tough to justify spending $30 for the game. Sure, there are some extras that can give it some additional legs, such as a game sharing feature and some local multiplayer to compete for high scores, but none of these merit the full-price cost.
Parappa The Rapper is infectious, fun, and great for kids. The music is undeniably awesome, and the visuals are unique. Though ultimately it's something resembling a collector's item or a rental, depending upon whether you just want to have it for nostalgia's sake or want to experience it again more than a decade after the original. Even so, every gamer should give this disc a spin at least once in their lives.
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