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Kinda like Karaoke Revolution but very hip-hop flavored. Singing games seem to be hip now with Konami’s Karaoke Revolution about to be in its third iteration on the PlayStation 2 and finally jumping over to Xbox. Fans of the hip hop genre though haven’t found much to their tastes in those games and Eidos has stepped up to remedy that.
Get On Da Mic’s main mode is the Career mode which has you moving from the slums to having your own tour. Along the way, you’ll be able to “hook up” your character with some unlockable items and meet Sway from The Wake Up Show and you’ll even meet DJ Green Lantern, [Eminem record label’s] Shady Records’ own DJ. The game also allows you to simply rap your heart out in the Exhibition mode, or practice in the aptly titled Practice mode where you aren’t scored. Lastly, Freestyle mode lets you have your way with the songs and additional beats provided.
Undoubtedly, Get On Da Mic’s best feature is the ample track list. The game includes everything from old-school songs like Sugarhill Gang's Rapper’s Delight, Dr. Dre’s Nuthin’ but a G’Thang, 2 Pac’s Still Ballin, and even Sir Mix A Lot’s Baby Got Back. The game also included contemporary hip-hop in terms of J-Kwon’s Tipsy, Lil Flip’s Game Over and even Kanye West’s Jesus Walks. All in all, the track list is quite satisfying. Unfortunately, these tracks aren’t identical to the actual versions released by the artists. Some include an additional phrase, while others remove lines completely (mostly if they have to do with drugs). The game censors the naughty language with pound sounds, and even dope is censored.
The game requires a microphone (there are two versions of this game, one with the mic and one without) but if you don’t already have one, you should purchase Logitech’s excellent mic, which works excellent with this game. The game also has a simple multiplayer mode where one player raps and the second rates them with the controller.
The actual gameplay in the game isn’t quite up to par. The game only scores you on keeping with the beat, so you don’t really need to rap words to get a good score as long as you can trick the system into believing that your rhythm is accurate. The game lets you see the next two lines of lyrics and the words are
spaced in a manner that would ideally let you know when to say them. This works, particularly once you get used to the system and the game’s lyrics, but is initially confusing. As I mentioned above, the edited tracks will prove to be notorious to fans of the genre who have already memorized many of these tracks and will need to get accustomed to change.
The game’s visuals were clearly not the focus and as such, Get On Da Mic is mediocre. The character models are all very simple with very wild animation that doesn’t fit the theme of the song for the most part. The game’s backgrounds are also pretty simple and don’t evoke any particular emotion.
Since this is an audio-based game, the music holds up well. The track list is very varied and the songs are pretty faithful to the original even if the original artist isn’t used.
Get On Da Mic is a barely-average game. The karaoke aspect isn’t bad until you realize you can trick the system very easily. Nonetheless, the excellent track list helps propel the game a bit to fans of the music. If you don’t like hip hop though, you won’t find anything to hold your attention in Get On Da Mic. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Oct 26, 2004
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