One of the few retro games that are instantly recognizable to me because of a Pewdiepie Lets Play of it I watched well over a decade ago. Good times. So due to this, I got really excited to get into PaRappa the Rapper myself now.
Immediately, you will notice how unique this game was for its time and still is to this day. A rhythm game featuring quirky paper-thin 2D characters in three-dimensional worlds and surreal humor presented through rap songs is definitely a mix I love everything about.
The game released on December 6, 1996 for the PlayStation. Apparently Sony wanted to produce as many games as they could before the PlayStation came out, and they built two teams for this. One focusing on popular genres, and one focusing on whatever. I think there is no better game to showcase "whatever" than PaRappa the Rapper.
Sure, it is a rhythm based game if you want to give it a straightforward designation. But from its story to its to characters to its lyrics to its presentation, it quickly becomes apparent why this game is considered a cult classic.
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| Title Screen |
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
The story itself is a let down. PaRappa wants to impress a girl called Sunny while she is more attracted to the rich and arrogant Joe Chin, so PaRappa learns how to fight to defend her from bullies, how to drive to take her places, how to bake to bake her a cake etc. The way the story unfolds is whatever and kind of a letdown.
This category also includes the quality of the writing though, which is where PaRappa the Rapper scores most of its points. No, it's not a lyrical masterpiece, but for what it tries to achieve, a lot of the lines as well as the delivery are pretty funny. It all starts with the "Hatatatatatata, Kick Punch It's all in the mind" by the hilariously designed Chop Chop Master Onion, gets ridiculous when Prince Fleaswallow says "I've been working here ever since my mama was a baby" and ends when Cheap Cheap has a mic drop moment by calling her style "rich, dope, phat".
There is another female driving instructor character here called Mooselini, which is an obvious pun but I'm not sure why it's there. On this note, some jokes might not land for you in this game, so that's gonna make or break your enjoyment here for sure.
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| PaRappa has fallen for the flower girl |
GAMEPLAY | 8/20
I want to give more points here, but the main issue with PaRappa the Rapper (both in the emulation and the PS4 remaste afaik) is input delay and randomness. Add to this that rhythm based input is the only gameplay element in this game and it becomes a pretty big deal.
After a short story sequence, you move into one of six stages, where PaRappa has to repeat after his instructors. So when Chop Chop Master Onion says "Kick Punch Block", you need to input the same buttons in the same order and speed as he did. Unfortunately, on Normal difficulty, the delay and randomness means you will often go from 0 to 16 and back to 0 points. If you perform too poorly, the instructors will slowly fall to their sides in disgust and you will fail at some point. This makes an otherwise incredibly simple game very very difficult.
I tried to account for a delay by clicking a split second off beat. Whether it's before or after I would press based on the rhythm, it didn't matter. Sometimes I would get points, sometimes I wouldn't. It got worse when the most reliable way for me to get a lot of points was by not pressing Triangle once like the game asks, but rather as many times as I could. It would work more often.
See, the game has a freestyle type feature that isn't explained. The UI has a few dots and stars up top, where the buttons are displayed as well. Something there indicates that if you press the same buttons more often, you will score more points, which can move you into "Cool"-score territory. Reach Cool and you unlock the Freestyle part of the stage, where you can basically do whatever and seemingly 1000x your score. But I never figured out how to do this reliably. Even in YT videos showing how to achieve Cool, the players sometimes lose points as well before climbing up in score.
So suffice to say, something is very wrong here. The solution for me was to bring the difficulty down to Easy. This makes the game very "forgiving" (forgiving is the wrong word when I was doing it right from the start) but it doesn't tell you that after 3 stages, it's Game Over, because you can't go farther than that on Easy. So I went back to Normal, struggled again and let the game be. Looking at the rest of it on YT, it looks like I missed out on PaRappa shitting himself and going on stage. The strangeness is in line with the rest of the stages for sure.
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| Being taught how to fight by Chop Chop Master Onion |
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
The beats are terrific. The lyrics range from WTF to Hilarious. The character designs are funny and creative and their dances add a lot to the vibe of the songs. The only thing wrong with the music is that there is so little of it.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The paper-thin character designs couple with three dimensional worlds and the art style give the game a distinct look that is memorable.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
The game emanates a quirky, upbeat and downright weird vibe at all times, but the story could have taken the game up another level I feel like, at least in terms of its comedy.
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| "U rappin' AWFUL" will be your experience 99% of the time |
CONTENT | 5/10
There are six stages and short story sequences before each. If the game didn't have its input issues, it would take just 30 minutes. That wouldn't be a big deal in my opinion, but as it stands, not only are there just six stages, but they are a chore to go through on Normal because of the gameplay issues.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
The idea of a rhythm based game was very fresh in 1996. To have it be based on the rap genre with these characters to represent different musical themes and professions is brilliant. The freestyle "secret" part of the levels and the slow descend into Game Over being visible on your instructors are also great touches. Unfortunately, I don't know what they were thinking with the input delay. I guess it was added to increase the game's length artificially? I can't think of anything else.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
Very unique, both in presentation and genre.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
The input issues keep me from recommending a replay of this, but if you can get past them, you can try to get each stage into the freestyle section to see something new.
PLAYABILITY | 2/5
I'd call the game nearly unplayable personally. I never felt like I was in control of my score and gameplay I've seen from others suggests the same.
OVERALL | 58/100 ⭐⭐⭐
PaRappa the Rapper is such an odd game. By looking at the game, you immediately understand the love for it. But then you look at its gameplay issues and you wonder how so many people could overlook them and still remember the game fondly. I guess that's how unique this game is.
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