Mark Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure: Tagging at Its Best!
In Mark Ecko’s Getting Up, you play as Trane, a graffiti artist in the city of New Radius. Trane sees graffiti as an art and is aspiring to be the top graffiti artist around, the All City King. Trane learns of some nasty things that the mayor of New Radius has been doing. It is up to Trane to stop the mayor and his corrupt ways in order to save New Radius.
Trane uses his street smarts and graffiti talents to expose the mayor, battle the cops, and avoid rival gangs. The story line of Mark Ecko’s Getting Up was written by Marc Ecko himself. The voice of Trane is played by the well know hip hop artist, Talib Kweli.
Trane makes his mark on the city by leaving various types of “artwork” anywhere he sees fit. The game features the “intuition system” that helps Trane decide where the best location for the graffiti art may be. This could be on a wall, in the alley, on the subway, on top of a skyscraper, and more.
His graffiti can be done with a variety of tools including: stickers, stencils, wheat paste, aerosol, rollers, and markers. Wheat paste? What the heck is wheat paste? Anyways, when Trane does his work, he needs to be quick. If you stay in one spot too long, the paint will drip. It also needs to be big enough. All of these factors decide how much reputation Trane will gain so he makes his way up in the ranks.
Mark Ecko’s Getting Up features 11 city areas and 20 different levels. There are various mini games that feature Trane’s graffiti talents. The graffiti art is just gorgeous to look at. Many of the tags used in the game are authentic ones from over 50 real life graffiti artists including: Obey and Cope 2. The beautiful graffiti art is probably one of the best parts of the game. In fact, it is quite nice to sit back and admire your work!
Some flaws in Mark Ecko’s Getting Up are the bad camera angels and the bad controls. The bad controls make fighting with the enemy AI quite annoying. Combat involves punching and kicking… regular street brawling. But if you really get in a pickle, you can use an aerosol can as a flame thrower!
The graphics of the environments are decent to look at. It is the graffiti that will take your breath away. The sound track is excellent and what you would expect from this type of game.
Mark Ecko’s Getting Up is available on Playstation 2, XBOX, and PC. It has an ESRB rating of M for mature. This is because the game features blood, violence, and strong language. This basically means that none of you “kiddies” can buy it without the aid of mommy and daddy.
