This review is a new one on the PSP but it’s a game that came out on the PSOne a looong time ago. It’s PaRappa the Rapper and it’s a rhythm game with a great sense of humour and lots of silly songs that get in your head and won’t go away.
You play a dog called PaRappa and must copy other rappers in a simon-says type game, pressing buttons on the PSP in time to the music.
The first character you rap with is Chop Chop Master Onion Head in his dojo, you then go on to have a driving lesson with a Mouse called Moussolini, then take part in a cooking programme with a big chicken.
You follow a timeline at the top of the screen and have to be very precise to hit the buttons bang on with the rhythm. Do it well and you stay in the cool zone, start doing badly and ducks start quacking along to the music and the meter drops to bad or awful. If you’re in these zones at certain stages of the song it’s game over and time to try again.
When I first played this game on the PSOne it took a couple of hours to finish because some of the stages got a bit tricky. However, having finished the game and knowing all the songs, when I tried this on the PSP I finished this game in less than 20 minutes and it wasn’t long before I got to the stage where all the characters are queueing for the toilet and you have to work your way to the front, then you end up on stage for the grand finale.
Although a short game, it does have a couple of extras on the PSP. You can rap through a song with a friend now, and you can even download extra songs from the internet.
It’s a great game but very, very short. It would have been nice to get the collection with the sequel and the guitar version of the game, Um Hammer Lammy in a special edition but maybe that’s one for a future release.
PaRappa The Rapper gets 7 out of 10.
