Graffiti isn't often something taken at face value by the general public, with the art form more likely to be seen as trashy or immature rather than an actual expression of creativity. This phenomena is what makes Getting Up's existence a little baffling. A high-budget, fully featured adventure game focusing around a street artist's rise from obscurity wasn't exactly tapping into any existing markets that video games often find themselves falling into. Either way, there's been almost nothing like GU, before or since, but uniqueness does not always equal quality.

The first thing any player's going to notice about the game is the sheer beauty of Getting Up. While the game is still visibly a 6th generation title, the console is pushed to it's absolute limits with remarkably detailed environments and impressive animation work. Every wall is plastered with others' street art, lighting effects such as cop car lightbars look exquisite, and the game truly 'enjoys' urban decay in a way that few games do. While most other titles would have levels set in abandoned buildings and grimy subway stations to simply avoid having to put too much personal detail on one level, Getting Up revels in the little things, finding beauty in the ugliness of long-forgotten school buildings and back-alley shortcuts. This is all complimented by a solid voice cast and an excellent soundtrack that blends rap with RnB and alternative rock seamlessly.

Unfortunately, Getting Up is a game too, and it's not a very well-playing one at that. The gameplay is split into three parts; parkour, stealth, and combat. Of all 3 aspects, parkour is the least offensive, being passable if stiff. Stealth feels incredibly underbaked, with vague indications of your undetected status and a stealth attack that seems to roll a die to determine if you actually commit your intended one-hit kill takedown or instead just standing up to commit a regular attack. It cannot be overstated how bad of an idea a two-button prompt for context-sensitive stealth kill is. Combat too, is stiff and underbaked, but also frustrating to boot. Enemies will often instantly interrupt attacks, knock you to the ground and continue to get in free hits while your character refuses to get up, and take a noticeably long to incapacitate. Add in a camera that often refuses to cooperate alongside inconsistent checkpointing, and I would honestly not blame anyone for turning on cheats.

It really is a shame that Getting Up has so many flaws, because nearly every aspect sans gameplay is both stylish and high quality. It's a further disappointment that the cultural time capsule of this game has passed, because a game like this is begging for a second-pass remake from a more competent developer.

Besides being a front-runner for 'most unnecessarily-wordy title', this game also might be up there under 'most impressive celebrity cast for its budget', but regardless, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is a quintessential mid-2000s sixth-generation video game. It just has such a style and sensibility that feels like a time capsule of 2000s cool, from the fashion to the dialogue and the admittedly great soundtrack, featuring everything from Kasabian's 'Club Foot' to Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman'.

However, being a mid-2000s sixth-gen video game, it's also a relic of its time in less favourable ways: camera issues abound, half-baked mechanics that never really feel fulfilling and pacing issues with its campaign. It's not a bad game, however; far from it, it just has a lot of jank despite the charm of its premise and art direction.

Combat in particular is pretty lacklustre from start to finish, though the foundation they set up is decent enough as a combo-based button masher. However, when tougher enemies show up, it can be all to easy for them to trap you in a combo with not much of a window to escape it.

As said, the camera can also get stuck on geometry that can mess up combat at times, but more crucially, it can make platforming (especially in tight corridors) more of a slog than it needs to be.

The story and dialogue are... okay. Very much a product of their time in a lot of ways, with a corny 'tough-guy' protagonist, admittedly voiced pretty well by the great Talib Kweli, with a tone that's unsure at times if it wants to be serious and grandstanding or light and fun.

Honestly, the platforming and graffiti parts are really the best part of the game, which is good since that's what the majority of Getting Up is. However, there's not all that much variety mixed in and that can really start to become apparent with the game's pacing issues as the story drags on longer than it maybe should.

Still, its undeniably a fascinating and pretty fun romp from 2006 that stands as a testament to why the sixth-gen of games and consoles are still so cherished.

6/10

I really loved this game, this is one of the best and most underrated games of PS2 and the story, music, gameplay and all around it is amazing, but i also hated how long it was, it became a little repetitive and at the end of the game i started hating it because of the terrible cameras, the fights at first were enjoyable but almost at the ending they were too hard and complicated, you could be sneaky but it was hard too, the silent executions were hard to make and buggy sometimes, maybe it was the PC version, but once they see you you are over, and you dont have any way to refresh the checkpoint so you have to kill yourself multiple times and loss all your progress.

Definitely, this is a very interesting concept of the game and the game is remembered not only for some of the best tracks that are perfectly built into the game, but also for the concept itself, which is quite original and has not been touched upon anywhere else in other games. Of similar games, I immediately remember one single old Jet Set Radio, but this is a completely different style of storytelling. In terms of mechanics, I would say a beat ’em up made on the knee and the main one: painting graffiti is very simplified, it doesn’t smell of realism, but surprisingly it works.

Однозначно, это очень интересный концепт игры и запомнилась игра не только одними из лучших треков, которые идеально встроены в игру, но и самим концептом, достаточно оригинальным и более нигде не затрагивался в других играх. Из похожих игр сразу вспоминается одна единственная старенькая Jet Set Radio, но это совершенно разный стиль повествования. Из механики я бы назвал сделанный на коленке Beat ’em up и основная: покраска граффити упрощена очень сильно, реалистичностью не пахнет, но на удивление это работает.