Gameplay is where things start to fall apart. Whereas the "Karaoke Revolution" game measures both timing and pitch, "Get On Da Mike" only cares that you get the rhythm correct--in theory. Ideally, you'll rap the lyrics in time with the gray bar on the screen as it passes over the words. The only problem is, the lyrics are often not synched up with the position of the bar onscreen, so it's hard to tell exactly when to hit the beat. On top of that, there are two lines of text at any time. When you're reading the second line, you don't get to see the next until you finish it, which makes songs where you don't know all the words quite difficult. This is one case where the designers should have taken a cue from Konami's series and stuck with one line of moving text across the bottom of the screen.

Problems with the design won't stop you from doing well, however, as whatever mechanism is used to detect the beats is incredibly forgiving. I was able to make it through several songs I had never heard before with outrageously high scores and even "Rock Da Mic" (a special mode you can achieve after hitting many words on cue in a row) a few times. There are three difficulty settings, but "Hard" didn't really act any differently than "Easy," other than to occasionally decide I had missed words at random. For rappers looking to improve or rookies looking to learn, this is the biggest failing of the game. It's hard to correct yourself or get any better when the game won't tell you what you're doing wrong.

That being said, "Get On Da Mic" serves as a limited karaoke machine quite well. If you're just looking to mess around with friends or are too shy to try your hand at hip hop karaoke in public, this game could be for you. For anyone who's not a die-hard hip hop fan though, you'd do better with an old-fashioned karaoke machine, which provides just as much functionality and many more songs.

Two final nice touches are worth mentioning. The game comes pre-packaged with a microphone, which works far better than the sub-par headset that comes with "Karaoke Revolution." Trying to rap on a headset is just wrong, anyway. Lastly, if you have an EyeToy camera, you can also hook it up with the PS2 version of the game and watch yourself as you rap away on the television. It doesn't affect the game at all, but at least you can see yourself busting rhymes (or, in my case, looking like a damn fool.)