godking's Full Review: Um Jammer Lammy for PlayStation 1
PaRappa the Rapper was the first game I bought for the Playstation. And it was seriously - I mean, DEVIANTLY - weird. The rapping puppy was surely inspired by crack dreams, but despite this the game itself was a fun little piece of work.
Um Jammer Lammy is everything that PaRappa was, only moreso. In every case, if PaRappa was (x), Lammy is (2x).
Lammy is a longer game than its predecessor. I'm not just talking about the fact that there's one or two more stages than there were in PaRappa (although they're certainly welcome), but more about the fact that Lammy offers more replay value than PaRappa ever did, thanks to the two-player option which lets you match riffs or duel axes against one another.
Lammy is a lot harder than PaRappa was, too. The Simon-Says-like control scheme gets the difficulty notched up to eleven (as that fellow from Spinal Tap might say), to the point where button combinations you found at the toughest levels of PaRappa are merely second-stage fodder here. That Lammy has songs of a generally way faster tempo than PaRappa did just reinforces the point - once or twice I was surprised to actually pass a level.
(That same flaw of PaRappa's level scheme is unchanged, however - your advancement to the next level is based solely upon how well your status is at the end. Thrash your way superbly through a song and have a couple of off notes right at the end, and you won't pass; stagger through a song right up to the end, and then nail the last four bars, and you'll pass. It's a stupid quirk that thankfully doesn't affect the two-player game.)
And, finally, Lammy is just way weirder than PaRappa. The latter at least bore some resemblance to the real world. Lammy's adventures go into Wonderland and out the ass end, as she plays babies like guitars and battles her evil fax twin and hallucinates about onions. Bar nothing, these games have been the absolute strangest things to ever emerge from Japan, and that includes Pokemon, Voltron, and El Gran Naniwa, the professional wrestler who comes to the ring dressed up like a giant crab. (I'm not making that up.)
This is a must-buy. As a game, it's above average; as a cultural experience, it's a can't-miss. Ever want to know what an acid trip was like without actually popping a tab? Play a couple hours of Um Jammer Lammy. You'll start to get an idea of what it's like.
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