PaRappa the Rapper 2

"An unworthy sequel"

When Parappa the Rapper came out on the Playstation, its charm and quirkiness helped to vault music games to an unprecedented new level of popularity and mainstream acceptance. The concept of jamming with a set of wonderfully eccentric characters by tapping the controller buttons in various patterns in time to the beat was so fun that we could forgive the fact that the game only had six stages. I’m less forgiving, however, when a sequel still has only eight stages, and songs that don’t even come close to achieving the coolness of the ones in the first game.

The plot in the original centered around Parappa trying to impress his crush Sunny, who had fallen for a tall blond guy with big muscles. There was nothing terribly ground-breaking about the story, but it was sweet nonetheless. Parappa learns a few life-lessons in the process and grows up in a lot of ways. In Parappa 2, the story is far more trite and revolves around noodles. Yes, the town is slowly being turned into noodles and Parappa must stop this from happening…by rapping!

The story awkwardly unfolds by way of cutscenes that run far too long for a supposed music game, despite the fact that they look nicer due to the improved graphical capabilities of the PS2. (The trademark paper-thin characters are still a feature, but the animations are smoother and colors are more vibrant than the original.) To me, there is a serious problem when a player spends more time watching a game than actually playing it, and I found this to be the case with Parappa 2. The eight songs are quite easy as well, meaning that you can breeze through the entire game in an hour or so.

Controlling Parappa through the song stages has been slightly updated to mimic the UmJammer Lammy style of input rather than that of the original Parappa. Each song features a “soloist,” who sings/raps a line of music which Parappa must then repeat. This is done by pressing the right button on the controller at the right time as a little marker scrolls over the corresponding symbol on the screen. In Parappa 2 (as in UmJammer), the idea is to press the button when the marker is exactly overtop of the symbol, which was not necessarily the case in the original Parappa where you would often have to press the button after the symbol to make things sound correct. In other words, instead of having to use your ear to time things in Parappa 2, you can easily win every stage by simply lining up the symbol with the button visually. Personally, I prefer this UmJammer style of input, however since it does make the game significantly easier I felt that the songs could have been made more complex to compensate. I rarely found myself having to redo a stage, and the odd time that I did get shut down wasn’t so much because I had pressed wrong buttons but that I had tried some improvisations that were too adventurous and didn’t gel with the computer’s finicky idea of “good aesthetics.”

Improvising your own cool rhymes and rhythms was a huge part of the original Parappa, despite the fact that the computer’s judgement of what was good verses what was bad often seemed frustratingly arbitrary. Sadly, the computer acts exactly the same way in Parappa 2, which makes improvisation not all that much fun. Being a musician myself, I’m confident that I have a pretty fair idea of what “works” and what doesn’t. Many of the improvisations that I was really proud of, the computer thought stunk big-time. Conversely, I would produce something that sounded like utter crap and be rewarded with heaps of points. Another consequence of this weird judgement system is that it’s very difficult to achieve and maintain a Cool rating (the highest of four levels of achievement, which unlocks certain extra features in the game such as a sound check.) Because the game can be completed in about 20 minutes, if you choose to skip all the cutscenes, all that’s left to do for fun is replay the stages over and over again trying to improvise things and get Cool ratings. Which, as I’ve said, wasn’t a big enough hook to keep me coming back.

Another disappointment that shot down the replay value was that the songs themselves—the core of any music game—weren’t that good. They were pleasant enough, but pleasant in the same vein as elevator music, which is meant to be a background to other things. This, I think, is due to a few reasons. The first is that the characters who sung the songs this time around weren’t as interesting. Chop Chop Master Onion was probably the best, but he was just recycled from earlier games and he got saddled with an awful song about “Romantic Karate.” What really got to me about the songs, however, was that the lyrics had lost all of their magic. The lyrics in Parappa 1 and UmJammer were weird almost to the point of gibberish, but in a calculated and at times witty way that was hilariously entertaining. Take these lines from the first game: I am a chicken/ from the kitchen/ and I ain’t kiddin’/ Although, nothing is written, then compare them to this incredible pedantic stuff from the second one: Cook those burgers, turn the patty over/ Cut the lettuce, don’t forget the cheese/ Toast the buns, don’t forget the fries/ Bring on the ketchup, sweep the floors. Yay. This is a general trend. Instead of the delightfully eccentric and cleverly rhymed lyrics of Parappa 1, the lyrics in Parappa 2 were dull, one-dimensional and often made no effort to rhyme at all (or did so sloppily, as in rhyming “round” with “around.”)

So as you can tell by now I was quite disillusioned with Parappa 2. Eight stages is better than six, but still not enough when the songs are so easy and uninteresting. I don’t think I would have minded as much if this game had been some sort of append to the first game, but it was released as a separate (and therefore full-priced) title, and it just isn’t worth it for what you get. If you haven’t played them already, I would suggest going vintage and purchasing Parappa 1 or UmJammer Lammy instead of this one, unless you’re a hardcore Parappa fan.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/02, Updated 05/06/03