[TheZeeMan]

Def Jam Rapstar

• Official site http://www.defjamrapstar.com
• Developer: Terminal Reality / Def Jam Interactive
• Genre: Music
• Alternative game name: N/A
• Modes: Career, Co-op, Free Play, Gameplay Recording, Multiplayer, Practice, Versus
• Players: 2
• Online Features: Achievements, Content Download, Leaderboards, Xbox LIVE Family Settings
• Kinect Features: Video Recording
• Uses avatars?: No
• Age group: Mature
  

Def Jam Rapstar - The good

• If you are 20-30 and listened to rap growing up, then you'll recognize a lot of these songs, most of them good
• It's very involved with the community website
• You can make your own videos!
• First Karaoke game I have seen with a so-called career mode (but I haven't played Lips yet)
  

Def Jam Rapstar - The not so good

• Well if you don't like rap, you won't like this game
• Not much to graphics, it just plays music videos along with the lyrics...that's about it
• Substitutes the Xbox Live Camera for Kinect, no other Kinect functionality
• This is all rap, even though it can detect between pitch and singing, if they added some of the current stuff like Jay Sean, Akon, Sean Kingston, etc - it could be for everyone but its all rap.
  

Def Jam Rapstar - Story
It has a career mode, however it's not a real career, there are different stages, and you sing/rap to the songs and it earns you microphones. When you earn enough microphones, you then unlock more songs and stages. That's basically it, stuff we seen back in the Guitar Hero 1 and 2 days...

Def Jam Rapstar - Kinect experience
The only kinect functionality is that it records video. It does however use the new resolution so it is crisp and clear. You can make your own videos and edit them. I would of made a video, but seriously, I am not a rapper and can't rap for crap (I'm a singer and dancer) so this is the only thing in the world that embarrases me.

Def Jam Rapstar - Graphics
There's not much to graphics, everything is black and gold, I think that's the international rap stars colors.

Def Jam Rapstar - Gameplay
This game is quite interesting to me. It requires you to just say lyrics when rapping, and to sing when there's singing parts. It auto-adjusts pitch changes depending on your tone for example when singing a girl part. I did TI's Live Your Life and you have to sing all of Rihanna's parts, but I did it in lower octave and it worked fine.

It grades you based on the lyrics although I was testing to see if it actually did word recognition but it doesn't. I hope someone per-fect's this one day...it also grades you on timing and if there's singing, then your pitch. There's also options to turn on echo and reverb during the song. So many singing games need echo on and most do not have it. The reverb is too much, if you could adjust it, it would be so much better.

With the videos it records of you, you can take a 30 second block, and add some visual effects and then upload it to their community. They have a huge community on their website and seems very involved.

Def Jam Rapstar - Multiplayer options
Multiplayer options include duet and battle. I didn't try either, but I'm sure it works fine.

Conclusion
Overall conclusion is that it is an interesting game. However most of the songs on here are from when I grew up like 15 years ago, my kids knew like 1 or 2 songs from the whole game. It is a lot of hardcore rap, nothing that you hear on the radio today.

I don't recommend this for kids as the songs are radio edits and the videos have been modified for TV, however they still reference to *****, drugs, violence, etc...stuff kids don't need more of...

More Def Jam Rapstar on Kinect
[order game here][news][trailer][preview][achievements]