Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

Ever wished you had the talent/balls/disdain for public property to be a graffiti artist? If so, then 'Getting Up' could be right up your alley. Hugely stylised, the game oozes hip-hop/graffiti culture with a pretty kickass soundtrack (Talib-Kweli, Rakim, RZA…).The game starts its story with a slick movie, introducing you to Trane and his plight in the city of New radius. You control him as he struggles to gain respect via his 'street art', this however is where the game's cool goes arse over tits. The gameplay is crap, half the game being graffing – which involves rudimentary (very base) drawing of graffs (you get to shake the can too…) with points for placement etc, but you can just throw up the same art again and again. The second part involves fighting off rival gangs/the police – but here again, there has been no thoughtput in; button bashing suffices easily. This all hampers the cool, and even the game's interesting story and talented vocal work (Talib Kweli again, Brittany 'hottie' Murphy and even bat-bitch Adam West) cannot make up for the dull, and frankly dire, gameplay. [Josh Wilson]