Battle Rapper
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| Battle Rapper

It's not a myth that many women suffer odd cravings when pregnant. Suddenly, staples like coffee and sausages fill the expectant mothers will revulsion, while they'll think nothing of smothering a piece of cheese in Nutella as an evening snack. Some say it's the body's way of getting the nutrients it needs for the baby, with little thought for the particular sickly combinations they happen to be served up in.

Regardless, if nothing else, it does prove one thing: sometimes the oddest combinations can actually work. AMA's Battle Rapper is like a music lover's own bizarre craving, a rap title served up in a painfully middle-class bouquet.

The game's raps, complete with idioms and colloquialisms aplenty, will have you in stitches for all the wrong reasons, but despite its almost cringe-worthy delivery, Battle Rapper does have a certain quality that encourages warmth and a hearty smile from those who submit to their hunger.

That's essentially because Battle Rapper doesn't take itself very seriously. Play is incredibly simple and actually has very little to do with either rap or hip hop culture, apart from having to plan the odd rhyme.

You're charged with taking on rap-rivals in freestyle battles. Both parties take turns to churn out a few lines at a time - usually dissing the opposition's skills, appearance or various other insignificant qualities - with play essentially falling into two set categories: attack and defence.

When you're at the mic, Battle Rapper is all about picking the right word at the right time. The game supplies an opening sentence, with your only job being to hold down your directional pad in the direction signposted until a 'sweet spot' in the final word, marked by a little green blob.

Timing is everything here, as the earlier you hold down the direction in question and the closer to the sweet spot you get before you lift off again, the more 'momentum points' you pick up.

Every sentence after the first is then about choosing the right word to go at the end, making sure it both rhymes with the closing word in the former sentence and makes sense in the context of the rap.

Battle Rapper offers you a number of possible words to slot in at the end, each coming with its own direction on the directional pad. Once you've picked your word, as before, the idea is to hold down the direction until the rap again reaches the sweet spot in the final word.

There are, of course, right and wrong words to drop into this slot - indeed, the game rates them as such, with 'right', 'good', and 'wrong' gradings given - and failing to pick the top answer will damage your score and your chance of winning the battle itself. This is only half of what's required, however, as when your rival MC steps up, the task is then to psyche him out, so that he picks the wrong words and ultimately loses the support of the crowd.

Doing so simply involves following directional prompts when he's on the mic, tapping each direction (rather than holding) when the game tells you to. Do this well enough, and the MC will lose his bearings and end up spewing out nonsense or, even worse, nothing at all.

But the real attraction of Battle Rapper is the way it's presented. Rather than heading down the cliched path of guns, girls and flashy wheels, the chapters of narrative that sandwich the actual periods of play are played out in a cartoon strip, with the game's heroine - 'War Child' - attempting to climb his way back to the top after it's alleged he had a less-than-street upbringing.

Though the script is full of the same lingo that's scattered throughout the raps themselves (and this writer did sometimes find it rather hard to grasp just what was being said), the story itself is genuinely engaging and the illustrations of a particularly high standard. All in all, it helps give what is a fairly ordinary type of a gameplay a classy and contemporary seal.

That's a factor that helps Battle Rapper transcend a mere hip hop audience to appeal to all; this game, while simplistic and hardly a true representative of rap, is plain old fun, and that's a combination of qualities that's bound to work, whatever your hormonal state.

Battle Rapper

With only a tenuous link to hip hop culture, Battle Rapper holds its own by serving up a good dose of entertainment and near-hilarity in places to save the day
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Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.