Um Jammer Lammy

"Seven songs on the CD: fewer than expected. Seven bearable ones: way more than expected."

What does a stupid yet muscular fellow with a sword(or ray-gun) and love interest have to do with a cardboard-cutout lamb who needs to take a crash course in playing the guitar and pass dream-scene obstacles to get to her all-girl band's first gig in fifteen minutes? Not a lot on first sight. But in fact the game with the lamb, UmJammer Lammy(UJL,) winds up adding dimension to the LaserDisc games of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, which required specific move-orders to get through a fifteen-minute sequence of scenes. mistakes UJL exceeds the macho men. After fifteen years you'd hope games on disc(compact now, not laser) could add a few things, though, and they do. UJL, being a musical game, allows for good improvisations and punishes you for button-bashing. It doesn't have the random level orders of Dragon's Lair or alternate difficulty levels of Space Ace, but it manages to monitor how well you're playing and changes the graphics and sound based on that.

UJL's goals are more modest even if the game is more sophisticated. It guides you through seven different scenes, as you help Lammy cope with a radically different song in each one. She'll provide guitar accompaniment for an intimidating know-it-all vegetable guest-singing for her group Milkcan, four bizarre artists I don't want to spoil, and a standard pop diva(if you ignore her genus and species) before the final challenge of the group's first live concert brings the game full circle. You'll hear a line of lyrics as the singer's face will glide over the makeshift musical score(perhaps more suitable for the surreality of sitar music, but effective enough) of PlayStation buttons at the top(shape pads, plus L/R.) Then you have to imitate it; the timing, the right sequence, and so forth. You get a score based on not only how well you conform to it but also what you do with the spaces between; the musical scores have a few spaces, and if you can fill those in with interesting chords your score will skyrocket.

This is what caused me annoyance at first. After enjoying the cardboard figures in the rehearsal(the literal bonehead and veggie heads in the crowd, and big-headed Chop Chop) I mentally berated the game for being a simple test of regurgitating buttons that you're told to push. Then once I got that down, I thought, 'Hey, I've done enough. I'm doing what the stinkin' game tells me, and I'm still getting lousy ratings!'

But of course that is the point. Anyone who's played an instrument knows that just hitting the right notes isn't enough. Even if that is your general attitude in life, you can't pout and slouch and say 'I've done enough' playing any instrument. It takes practice to make the notes sing, and for pop music especially, it's tough to learn the right way to improvise. It eventually hit me that, well, music was about exploring until what you did sounded right. To heck with what should be proper; music has some rules but they should be applied after a creative binge. Once I unlocked this, the game was never in danger of being as laborious as those long-repressed violin lessons and their dull horror it had inadvertently conjured up. I shelved my blame without ditching my secret wish for a sequel starring a disillusioned heavy-metal punk and his band Beercan. Because that attitude doesn't work for the trying-to-be-cheery I'm-in-a-fix-but-I-believe-in-me songs that you must navigate.

UJL is easily one of the most subjective games I've played, but it still manages to be fair. The levels build well, with one nuisance being a lesson in how the game wants you to bash buttons(the start of one song has you pressing the same button many times.) But you start off with two-button sequences, move on to sequences in a circle, then L and R side-buttons come into play together, and finally you get some random sequences. The newest longer button sequences in a level are slightly reorganized, which allows people who just missed it last time to redeem themselves while not having them get into a rut. By the final level the score you need to play rolls onto a second line, but the game is tolerant of a few errors, which the crowd may take that for improvisation anyway.

How UJL evaluates you is quite clever, although I wish there would be an option that allowed experienced players to see an actual percent total. You lose a hundred points for holding or bashing a button that is soon to come up, but you gain points for each good note, which increase as you chain more together. There's also a general evaluation on the side, which goes from Cool to Good to Bad to Awful. You start off at Good and only ascend to Cool through good improvisation, and you always get a warning before you move the next level up or down(it begins to flash.) Messing up when you're on awful stops the song/level before its end, but you must also get a good rating to progress to the next song. Many times I've been stuck on Awful and made a frantic comeback to get to Bad with Good flashing, but it does not always work. Still, it manages to equal the feelings of any computer sports game where I think I've mastered the game but fell asleep(or I haven't played it for a while and took half the game to shake the rust off,) and now I'm fighting against time for any result. Yet there isn't the feeling that I can just plug away at what I know and am at the mercy of the computer's random whim if it decides I should brick an open lay-up. It is not kosher to 'feel' a shot in basketball or hockey, but you can make your own internal beat in UJL, and I found a positive correlation between tapping my feet(a nice change from the usual body English) and my score.

Yet although the game often rewards you when you least expect, it has some clever rules. My first attempt to break the game down, I tried to pause the game and write down each sequence of notes to practice on my own. The game didn't just fuzz the screen over but also asked 'Retry Y/N.' I guess if you pause Lammy gets stage fright! This is a clever surprise and remains true to the spirit of a music concert as it forces the player further towards spontaneity, but I only wish they'd expound on this and show Lammy running off. It would add to her fragility. So what if the scene is corny? I originally berated the game for this, then I took a break and listened to a CD featuring my favorite eighties hits('Say! That's real music even if it's cheesy. But there's a difference between corny and cheesy, see, err...')

I renewed play a few minutes later, chastened yet buoyed with my epiphany.

Now apparently the object of the game for experienced players is to get to Solo Mode, which happens if you sustain Cool rating for a bit. Then the background vanishes, and you can improvise to your heart's desire as Lammy flies around the stage and points pile up. You can even finish a level this way, although it feels like an unfair shortcut and the dialogue if you slip is sharp. I prefer the effects that occur when your rating takes a jolt(the sound gets garbled or the crowd leaves when you do poorly, for instance, or they come back when you do well.)

Yet part of the game's charm is that your character manages to be a star without moving around much. Lammy only moves during the cut-scenes, but there's plenty of action from others in the music video cartoons. And although Lammy herself is slightly whiny, with bell bottoms and clunky shoes that scream alternative rock(this particular '80s synthesizer-and-cheesy-lyric aficionado's bane,) the twists in the videos seem more in place in the '80s(when music videos were MUSIC VIDEOS) than the whiny nineties. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she wants to fit in this crazy world, and I can help her, even if she is sometimes a bit whiny. She is not as powerful or clever a character as the teachers she accompanies, as their brief dialogues are always witty, but she is trying hard.

Another part of the game's charm is the two-dimensional graphics. It says, forget equations and algorithms to make games realistic! They don't belong with music and art! Even the yuckier of vegetables slapped on to paper dolls as heads look cute, all sorts of animals make an appearance, and a vehicle does a funky solo wave. The graphics show creativity with the different guitars Lammy gets to play, but they are functional. Crowds get more enthusiastic as you do well, singers do their jobs better, and you can hear the tunes more clearly when your rating is high. But people can also get zapped by electricity or grow glummer if you slip. You're pulling yourself out of a situation and not just a bad score when this happens.

By the seventh scene I felt I had gotten the hang of the game. It didn't take that long to get through it, but the concert was oddly touching, from Lammy meeting up with her friends to a failed solo('Milkcan isn't just about Lammy!' as you drop back into the real world) to the cheesy self-help message in the song. It's too bad her friends are harsh if she messes up: 'I didn't think you'd do THAT badly.' But looking through the game again I realized how effective the overbearing Chop Chop was as Lammy's first teacher; he spells out her adventure in oblique terms, leaving the player in confusion and giving the impression you can't hang with him, so who are you to write the simple cheerful yet unimpressive songs? He's the closest thing to an enemy you really have in the game(singers get disappointed when you mess up but they are all trying to do important jobs.)

UJL has occasional shortcomings, but my reaction to them is always 'It would be even wonderfuller if they did this.' And you do use a word like that playing this game. It's more intense than similar button-pushing action games(V.I.P.) and allows for more creativity, in an amazing world you'd like to be a part of. If your dreams have to be weird you wouldn't mind being dropped in UJL or a parallel world in them. Of course Lammy herself wants to be a part of that, and consistent with her wide-eyed need to belong and like any artist never being totally sure if something you do will work, you yourself can strive just to get a good rating and try to be cool later. It's a bit easy to get through, but considered as a cartoon and challenge it's rather good, the sort I'd watch a whole season of. Apparently there is only one other episode so far, featuring some fellow called PaRappa and different surreal character cast. But a harder sequel using the directional pad as well would be welcome. This game certainly gave me enough confidence in music-based games that I considered making a fool of myself in a Dance Dance Revolution game at a local arcade soon--although I promised myself I'll get there early to avoid crowds, because I, err, get impatient standing around.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/14/02, Updated 06/14/02