You can't spell crap without 'rap'...
Let’s get one thing straight, when I make a list of my skills singing karaoke is not one of them. I have a voice that makes plants wilt from its sheer awfulness. I’m not one to shy away from new experiences though and rap-karaoke is definitely new ground for me. As we’ll see, not all new things are necessarily good. Get on da Mic could have been good but will leave you feeling very under whelmed.
The Karaoke Revolution series has, by and large, been the best karaoke experience out on the market to date. Those games take current pop smashes and challenge you to match the pitch and style of the vocals. They’re great for party games and I’ve managed to squeak out a few drunken rounds at the disposal of my pride. Get on da Mic has an original concept—take the game play of the Karaoke Revolution titles and give it a rap spin. You’re tasked with singing the same way the original artists did for the hits—at least that’s what the game says.
I’m from a rural area where, putting it the nicest way possible, hip-hop and rap aren’t the most popular. I’m not completely immune from social trends though and out of the forty songs on the soundtrack, I was familiar with and knew (or thought I did) the lyrics to roughly a dozen of the tracks. Though some of the covers for the songs are so badly done that even if you know the song, the timing and beat you’re used to may have changed.
You’ll have four basic single player modes to choose from. The career, practice, and exhibition modes are roughly the same except that in career mode you can earn money to buy random things that have absolutely no bearing on the game. I’m all for unlock able content but if I’m buying my character a car I want to do something other than just stare at it on the screen. In the fourth mode, freestyle, you can do your own raps over the songs.
It doesn’t really matter which mode you choose because each one is as unbearable as the next. To start, most of the covers are bad. For a game that expects you to imitate the original artists it doesn’t seem as if they did it themselves when recording these songs. With the exception of a few singles like Rappers Delight, and Tipsy, the execution of the covers is dismal. One listen to On da Mic’s version of Baby Got Back and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Get on da Mic is all about matching up style-wise and lyrically with the covers of the songs. To help you do this, the game offers up a mediocre lyric-scrolling system. Two bars on the bottom of the screen change the lyrics concurrent with the song and a light beam scrolls across to give you an approximate time to sing the appropriate words. The two lyric-displaying bars alternate the lyrics you must sing. As you sing what’s on the top bar, the bottom bar will have the upcoming lyrics and visa versa. Depending on how well you imitate the style of the artists, the words will flash white, green, yellow, or red. For people unfamiliar with all the songs, playing this game will be an exercise in frustration. Given the fast pace of most of these songs, reading lyrics on one line won’t give you enough time to focus on the other side of the screen to continue the beat. This would cause even more problems if the game could recognize what you were saying but it fails there too.
Another one of the problems facing Get on da Mic is the fact that even if you can sing the song, the game just can’t recognize what you’re saying half the time. Vocally, my lyrics were spot on at times but I was getting consistent mediocre and bad scores. I soon discovered however that that’s because all rap is apparently a series of mumbles and gibberish. To my utter disbelief you’ll get higher scores mumbling into the microphone than if you actually try to sing along with the songs. Mumbling is what you’ll have to do for some words because in order to maintain a Teen rating, Get on da Mic censors the obscene lyrics like n#### and a##. Even more irritating is the games insistence on forcing the player to annunciate each and every grunt in certain songs.
At its core, Get on da Mic is all about the music so graphics don’t really matter. Most of the arenas are low-detailed and the characters look blocky though. The menus are easy to navigate and understand so you won’t get lost. The bevy of options included in the game is a nice touch and will let you adjust the volume of the music, the microphone, sound effects, and the artist’s voice. You can even choose to turn off the scrolling lyrics if you so choose.
The Logitech microphone or headset both work well with Get on da Mic. You can even use the PS2’s EyeToy to substitute your own picture in place of any of the standard backgrounds. Why anyone would want to be seen affiliated with this game though is beyond me.
There are a couple multiplayer modes where you can compete and even judge other players on their performance of the songs. Sadly, the multiplayer features the same problems located in the game’s messy single player.
When all is said and done, Get on da Mic fails at just about everything it sets out to do. Eidos and developer A2M should have delayed this game by several months to work out all the functionality problems. Get on da Mic is just another reminder that you can’t spell “crap,” without “rap.”