So Marc Ecko, fashion designer, entrepreneur and a lot of other things that I do not know. I am not familiar with this man, and I’ve never seen any of his works. But I am familiar with his one time video game directorial debut. Wanting to create a game all about hip hop and graffiti, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Content’s Under Pressure was born. The game was published by Atari, the kings of the bargain bin, and developed by The Collective, responsible for creating a lot of licensed games before merging with Shiny Entertainment to become Double Helix Games, which would later go on to be bought by Amazon and turned into Amazon Games Studio, stuck in a horrible state nowadays. Marc Ecko’s Getting Up did not sell too well and was hit with harsh criticism on release day. And Marc Ecko took it well. So well that he insulted game reviewers and gamers in general, calling them suckers and nerds and then blaming the hardware of the PS2 because you can’t have a graffiti game and picture perfect climbing and combat… Jet Set Radio, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Any of the 3D beat em ups released at the time. Clearly, Marc Ecko was just being a bit salty, but maybe he was right. Maybe the reviewers were being harsh. Some reviewers on the back of the box have described this game as the Tony Hawk of graffiti. Maybe we can find something good here.



Despite the title, this is not a game about a man trying to “get it up” in the bedroom, but is actually about a young graffiti artist named Trane as he goes on a rebellious journey across the city ruled by the corrupt politician Mayor Sung and his attack unit known as the CCK by writing graffiti of anti-political propaganda, and also getting into fights that may or may not end with thugs getting set on fire and being thrown off edges to their deaths. But it was all in self-defense, you know. Along the way, you’ll meet other characters who will say things to each other that I am just far too white to understand. Despite that, I can appreciate a good style when I see one, and this game does have it. I love these big urban settings with the hard graffiti all over the place which can contrast hard with the pure white buildings that the CCK occupy. And climbing up these buildings and subways to do stuff like this is pretty intense. Made more crazy when you do research and find that real graffiti artists do this kind of stuff. Stuff that my vertigo ridden ass could never attempt. I can barely look down the stairs in my own house without feeling the urge to vomit. It’s pretty fun… in concept. While it is satisfying at times to climb up buildings, a problem I’ve noticed is a combination of the controls and the camera. The controls sometimes feel delayed. Trane just won’t go down to the next pipe at times, so you gotta hit down or circle a few times before he finally does it. Adding the stubborn camera that is fine on foot but once you’re climbing up buildings or across pipes, it just refuses to listen to you and you’re left to your own. It makes actually getting a perfect on doing graffitis difficult. You have a usual score of doing the graffiti quickly without getting caught, without adding too many spots onto the graffiti and not dripping paint. But because there are times where the camera angle is aimed at different directions, it’s almost impossible to see what you’re doing, so you could end up getting drips without warning.
But the platforming and graffiti lures you in. At first, it’s pretty off, but not bad. But once you gotta start adding spotlights and enemies, along with traps, it becomes a massive pain. These controls do not allow you for fast movement and precise jumping, so once you start adding enemies to the mix, it’s all over. Try getting a perfect on your graffiti while a spotlight is moving toward you and shooting at you. How can this city be calling Trane a terrorist for his graffiti, yet no one bats an eye at the constant gunfire in the streets. And this isn’t a one time thing. Almost every big building after this with spotlights will have them shooting at you, and they don’t just stop. They keep firing at you until you leave the building completely or you die. And then there’s the insat-kill situations. One room has a bottomless pit that kills you and you gotta get onto moving platforms. If you topple over, Trane will catch the pipe, but a moving device will come and knock him off instantly, just giving you hope only to take it away. Or how you have to jump onto a pipe to avoid a moving train. And the possibility of you missing completely and falling to your death is still there, so you know… that’s fun. And add that with levels that go on for way too long. You will be tasked with tagging signs on a building, then beating up some vandals, then going down to another courtyard to beat up more and tagging their graffiti, then going to a small park and then climbing up buildings to graffiti them. And that’s just before the checkpoint! After that, tag three more signs by climbing across buildings, really high, all while sneaking around cops that are far too tough for you now, then climb up a completely different building to talk to an NPC, all so you can tag a building while a spotlight is moving around it. These levels go on for so long and you’re just left exhausted by the end of it. Doesn’t help that some levels can be done in a few seconds. Levels like tagging the train, or fighting in a graffiti battle across a highway. Those short levels are fun. These long ones… no.
But hey, the game isn’t all about graffiti and bad platforming. No, it’s also about combat. And just like the platforming, it lures you in. At first, it’s got so much that you’d think, “Yeah, this isn’t so bad”. And then it all falls apart. I can pinpoint the exact moment it stopped being fun too. It was around the fight with the character Dip who had his belt buckle as a weapon and he would knock you down and then proceed to start beating you on the floor with no chance of you getting up until you finally got up. You just gotta hope you survive before you die. And it’s a shame, because there’s a lot to the fighting. Combos, stuns, guard breakers, blocks, grabs, able to grab weapons, using the environment to kill your enemies (Trane would never kill). But once the CCK comes in… fuck it. Just fuck it. It’s not even remotely fun anymore. They just swarm you, they can block your attacks, and then immediately follow up with a knock down. And if you’re on the floor, good luck. It can either be one hit on you, or they all hit you with nightsticks, do a Bruce Lee stomp, do a grapple move and then decide to lift you up, before knocking you down again. And that’s assuming they don’t stun lock you and then arrest you, which is an immediate game over. And that’s just the first CCK soldiers. Then you get the ones that can shoot you with guns, which is just a massive pain in the ass. Kill them first, otherwise you will die. Thankfully, at the point they get introduced, the game starts handing out checkpoints like it’s Halloween candy. They knew it was a pain in the ass, but the game was gonna ship that month, so they could only program in checkpoints… At least, that’s my headcanon. Also, there seems to be a problem where if you do a combo and knock them into a wall, since they weren’t knocked down, they’ll just get back on their feet immediately and start kicking your ass immediately. And remember, unless it’s bosses, it’s never one on one. Shit, one of them is a two on one, with you having the partner, and it’s still a massive pain in the ass. The fight with the fat cop lady can stun lock you with fire that still hurts you until you die, and that’s assuming you can survive the pain in the ass of the first fight to get there. The fight with (SPOILERS) Gabe is a pain because you have to throw him near the edge to continue the fight… and then do it again because Trane just pulls him up. And then there’s the fight with the police chief voiced by Adam West. Yes, Adam West is a voice in this game, and look, I love Adam West as much as anyone else, but his voice does not fit that of a serious police chief. I just hear the campy joking voice of Adam West. And despite wanting to hear his voice the most, he was in… like three cutscenes before he’s out of the game forever. Can I… Can I enjoy one thing in this game? Just one.
Oh yeah, and glitches. Glitches a plenty in this game. And no, it’s never just a few bad textures, because of course not. Stuff like Trane falling within cutscenes, enemies able to fucking kill you in cutscenes (Can’t tell you how many times I had that happen to me), the level becomes harder because you can’t use your compass or obective finder to find the objective, an enemy gets stuck in the ground making it impossible to hit him (But don’t worry, he can still kick your ass), and my personal favorite, just moving along a tram got me stuck within the wall and I wasn’t able to escape. I had to sit there for ten minutes because I refused to restart the entire level since I already got the checkpoint and had to wait for the CCK with guns and spotlights to slowly kill me. I believe it was the second to last chapter of the game where I just decided “Fuck it” and put in an infinite health cheat code. And boy am I glad I did it right then and there, because the hardest enemies in the game were abundant. Gun wielding CCK, spotlights aplenty, and new Agent enemies that can dodge your attacks and had a fuck ton of health. I did not care anymore about the game. I just wanted it to end. The constant stream of annoyances, glitches, and how the game felt like it was trying to leave you at a disadvantage every step of the way, not for the sake of a challenge but for the sake of just getting in your way, I decided that the game wasn’t going to play fair, so neither was I. So, I don’t care if I had to cheat. This game sucks and so do I. And I haven’t even told you about the story. It’s average. The cinematography is great, the visuals are spectacular. I love the urban setting a lot, the graffiti is really stylish, and the music, despite me not being a big rap and hip hop enthusiast, is bumping and definitely something I can get behind. The game even has a few real graffiti artists doing voices. You can tell it’s them because they sound super awkward when they voice themselves, like real celebrities that have never voice acted in their lives. There’s a stilted charm to it. It’s a shame. I love everything about this game except the gameplay. If this game was more of a comic book or, I dunno, the fashion that Marc Ecko is known for, I think it would be more admired. But the thing is I hate this game. This is probably the worst game on PS2 Cents. Yes, more so than The Bouncer. The Bouncer was frustrating and terrible, but at least it was an hour long and done. Marc Ecko’s Getting Up is a slow burn. It puts roadblock after roadblock in front of you preventing you from getting to the fun part of the game, and it all ends with a boss fight between some random woman added in at the last minute and an ending with no credits. Because all you had to know was Marc Ecko made this game and it had the RZA in it. Programmers? Who’s that? Testers? … Ha ha ha, who am I kidding? No one tested this game.
Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. Yeah, despite having Getting Up in the title, I have to say, I’m pretty soft. This game was way too stressful. Man, I just wanted a fun game, get away from the stress of reality, like all the shit on the news, bills to pay, rent to pay, child support to pay, and I just wanted a fun graffiti game. But no, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up is just a slow burn of constant stress, glitches, unfair gameplay, and is only a fun game to look at. I’ve heard that Marc Ecko is making a brand new game, Marc Ecko’s Unlimited… yeah, no thanks. I’ll stick to Jet Set Radio. So yeah, award time. It’s Bottom of the Bin, no contest. Am I just a nerd who got wedgies in school like Marc Ecko says? Yes, absolutely, but that changes nothing. Fuck this game.