E3 2009: Hands-on: Def Jam Rapstar - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 13 June 2009 / 2,875 Views
One day during E3 Jacob "Biggie Source" Mazel and I had a mysterious meeting with a secret developer about a secret game. We walked out to the front entrance of the Los Angeles Convention Center's West Hall, and found a guy holding a sign that said... Def Jam Rapstar.
He led us to a car, and another driver took us to an undisclosed location. We arrived in a private lounge full of gaming and PR execs, mostly girls, and a breakdancing crew. This was by far the most unique meeting I had at E3.
The game is a collaboration between 4mm Games (which includes two of the original co-founders of RockStar), Def Jam Interactive, and Terminal Reality. At a first glance, it is simply a rap karaoke game, but with its video creation and sharing tools, online ranking, and social networking features, it is much more.
The gameplay:
The actual gameplay goes back and forth between two styles: one for singing and one for rapping. The singing parts work like other karaoke or band games. You are scored by getting your pitch to hit the right notes, and you sustain the note through the whole note tube things. For the rapping parts, you're not scored by pitch at all, but get points for correct timing and getting the words right. Unlike other karaoke games that only rely on pitch so you can hum or whistle your way through a whole song, Def Jam Rapstar has phonic recognition software that pays attention to your syllables and timing to determine whether you're flubbing your rhymes or spitting hot fire.
The networking:
Aside from the timing and phonic recognition, what really makes this game unique in the karaoke genre and the rhythm genre as a whole is the networking. With either the 360's Live Vision camera or the PlayStation Eye you can film your entire performance. If you take a shot of the background before you begin, you can replace it with a tropical island backdrop, and afterwards you can add other things like digital spotlights. When your song is complete and you have added any effects you want, you can select the best 30 seconds of your performance and upload it directly from your console to the Def Jam Rapstar web site.
Once on the web site, your video will be ranked by the rest of the Def Jam Rapstar community. Videos will be ranked and organized by best rapping, best dancing, flashiest outfits, best backdrops and effects, and more. Then you can see who's got the most style in the various categories in your neighborhood, state, country, or planet.
The feature I found the most interesting was the e-mail notifications. If you get a high score on a song, and somebody else beats you and posts their video online, you will get an e-mail (or text directly to your iPhone) that lets you know you got served, and challenges you to get back in the game and fight back. In this way the game lives on outside of the console, and keeps trying to suck you back in to the competition.
In addition to the songs that come with the game (which will be a brief history of rhymes from the oldschool to today), there will be DLC. These will be new tracks as well as instrumental beats made by professional DJs. With these instrumentals people can have freestyle competitions over the network.
(The game is still a work in progress, so I'm not able to show the screen. I swear the TV was really on and they were actually rapping!)
The battles:
After they played a song to teach us how it works, they challenged us to a battle. For my first song I picked "Hypnotize" by B.I.G., figuring it was a classic and I already knew the chorus and maybe the verses would come back to me. I was wrong. I got served pretty bad as I tried to find my rapping groove.
During the verses I'd see the next line in advance, and then rap along with a bouncing ball that hopped from syllable to syllable. In this way the game was more about learning the rhythm than hitting the right note. Luckily the songs are really catchy and you can start rapping along pretty quick.
It only took me one mistake to get into it, and on my next song I had a 98% score with an INSANE rating. After this our host demanded a rematch. At this point we were really getting into it. I told him to pick any song he wanted to get served to, and then it was on. We finished our battle with Jamie Foxx's "Gold Digger." I didn't know the song at all, but on behalf of VGChartz I owned it.
We were also told how the videos wouldn't just be about rapping, but they'd also be about flaunting your whole crew. Even if you're rapping alone you could have all your friends in the background singing the chorus, hyping you up, and doing choregraphed dance moves. And then to demonstrate how crazy you could get, they brought out the breakers when Jacob took the mic by storm. Then Jacob also beat them at their own game, and by the end of our meeting he had his own female dance crew.
I've been a longtime fan of karaoke and rhythm games, but I've never gotten into battles this fierce. Either my friends have been boring all along, or this game's hip hop motif takes over and makes the battles more intense and fun. No matter who was rapping everybody would jump in on a few lines here and there, like most rap videos. Within our short demo session we were able to have beef, battle, and squash it. It was also the only game at E3 where we actively encouraged to trash talk the producers and PR guys.
When this game comes out, even if you don't play it, I highly recommend checking out the community web site. Especially if you're a talent agent. Kids are gonna be rapping and breaking all over the internet to classic hip hop tracks and freestyling over new original beats.
On our way out, the guys at 4mm Games told us that most game reviewers who came by to see the demo would just watch and take notes without rapping! Who's gonna turn down a hands on demo with an upcoming game? At least at that point on Wednesday, VGChartz was the only game site to not only battle, but to dominate. Now we have internet gaming street cred.
If you're a fan of karaoke games but need more hip hop, or if you're a fan of hip hop but are waiting for an MC game instead of all the new DJ games, stay tuned. Def Jam Rapstar is scheduled for a Winter 2009 release.
A teaser trailer and a small news blog are available at the web site: http://www.defjamrapstar.com/
