DefJam Rapstar Review

From the Vault — originally published December 29, 2010. Some links, videos or prices may be out of date.

Sing a’ long Karaoke games are no stranger to consoles with games like Singstar and Lips already big success stories, but none of them have interested me like DefJam Rapstar.
I’ve always been a fan of Hip-Hop, even if it has waned quite a lot over the last 10 years, due to there being a lot of artists that I’m just not feeling, and the artists I used to really enjoy listening to not putting out good material these days, that is however my personal opinion.

So before I dropped the money for this game the first thing I had to look for was obviously the tracklist, boasting over 45+ tracks and for the most part they have picked the who’s who of the industry with the likes of 2pac, The Notorious B.I.G, Snoop and Dr Dre representing that old 90’s Hip-Hop and the likes of Drake and Lil Wayne filling in for fans of more recent rap music. Even the likes of Biz Markie and Salt n Pepa make an appearance. So yes it’s a good roster even if there are a few surprising absentees, no Jay-Z on the tracklist gave me a WTF!! moment.

Let’s get down to business then. Def Jam Rapstar comes in 2 variations. The first being a bundle which includes the game and one Microphone, or you can just buy the standalone game if you already own a Mic. The premise being that a music video appears on the screen with the lyrics underneath and you Rap along with it. The game takes into account how precise your lyrics are, your timing and voice pitch. If you give a good performance throughout you awarded points multipliers which are all accumulated at the end to give you a final score and that will determine how many Mics you receive, a 5 Mic performance obviously being the best.

I suggest you play with the Mic settings a little bit and make sure the game is picking up your voice properly, and also if you feel confident with the lyrics in a particular song then there is an option to turn off the vocals on the music video and just have the track playing. I suggest doing this because I did notice that after I gave what I considered a flawless performance of Big Poppa as I didn’t mess up the lyrics I was still only awarded with around 85% lyrical accuracy.

There are 3 game modes included. Career, Party and Freestyle.
In Career Mode there are 5 main stages, and each stage has a selection a songs that you need to perform and gain the required amount of Mics in order to progress to the next stage. There are also different kinds of challenges that can used to unlock additional songs and other collectibles.

Party Mode is just like a quick play feature, so you can jump into any song on the tracklist and do a performance. You can make play lists for yourself and friends to perform and just have fun with it basically without having to be on point all the time.

Freestyle mode is pretty great but a feature that I don’t see me using anytime soon. You basically get a selection of different beats from some of todays hot producers and you can perform your own lyrics over them. I am not a rapper and have no intention of ever becoming a rapper and I couldn’t write a rap to save my life, so even though it’s not a feature I need it’s great for upcoming artists who want to try and get noticed. Which brings me along nicely to the Community feature.

If you own a Playstation Eye then you can hook it up and record 30 second performances, from across all the game modes and then upload them to Def Jam Rapstar Community. This is where you will find hundreds of videos of people showing off their skills. From there you can watch and rate other peoples videos, form rap crews and just put out your own material. It’s only 30 seconds but if you are consistent with the videos you upload then you never know who could be watching.
So it’s definitely a great feature to have, and even if you feel embarrassed about putting yourself out there, then there is a handy video editing feature where you can add all sorts of affects to your video so no one will have to know it’s actually you.

So there is a lot of content here to be had fun with. My biggest criticism is that all the songs are the edited versions. You will find no curse words here. This is bound to put off a lot of potential purchasers and fans of the genre. I understand why the developers have done this, because they want to cater to the widest audience, but they could have still put in the explicit versions. At the beginning of each song they should give you an option of either the explicit or clean versions. It really is annoying because a lot of the songs have whole lines takes taken out of them and it just breaks up the performance. They could have even offered the explicit versions of the songs for free through DLC, a long shot I know but still possible, and it would attract more or what should be their target audience, fans of Hip-Hop. It is a big letdown and I hope they come up with a solution soon. It really could be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

To give the game more longevity you can download more songs through the play station store. The last time I checked there wasn’t that many songs up yet, but I suppose more will be added each week. Hopefully we’ll finally get some Jay-Z. There are also leaderboards for each song so it adds even more replay value to the game for you strive to be the best.

I also hope they add more R’n’B tracks with a Rap verse in there. Tracks like Chris Browns ‘Gimme That’ which features Lil Wayne would be a very welcome addition for me, and I’m sure for a lot of people who might want to play this at a party and have friends who are more inclined to singing than rapping.

Overall I think DefJam Rapstar is worth picking up if you are a fan of the genre. Despite the none existent explicit tracks I still had a lot of fun playing it. If they can add the explicit versions of the songs and continue to add more songs as DLC each week then its definitely worth the price of admission. If the edited tracks are something you will not be able to tolerate then I suggest you leave this game alone. The community could prove priceless for upcoming artists and I’m looking forward to see what can come out of it.