Youth culture f-WAIT A MINUTE! Didn't I do this game already? I don't know why I'm asking you, because I know that I did it last year, alongside two whiny little assholes who got lost in Dracula's castle. Surprisingly, the latter entry was the better game. Hopefully, that doesn't happen here, since I actually like Jet Grind Radio. OK, so it's not the smoothest game in the world (and that's not the best thing for a game that relies on smoothness), but the concept's sound enough, and it does it all with enough energy to be endearing and some other E word. Ear infection? Yea, this game is totally ear infection.

You think I'd use that as an opportunity to transition into the music, but really, what more can I say about it other than "that song I linked earlier is the best one in the game"? Instead, I'll begin where I always begin: the story. Now remember how last week, I complained about Sonic's mouth opening so wide that it looked like he would wrap around his own face and destroy reality? Well, that can't compare to the Lovecraftian horrors of Professor K, DJ of the radio station Jet Set Radio (Jet Grind Radio absolutely never appears in the story) who constantly looks like some octopus demon who's gonna bite your face off. Unfortunately, he's the narrator, and you're gonna be seeing him a lot. Anyway, most of it is just gang warfare with spray cans instead of guns, and really, that's all you need: some thin justification for the scenario. Who gives two shits about the politics of graffiti gangs or milking a dog? I just want to spray shit in a bright, 2000s environment, and the narrative gives me just that! So I guess the batshit insane finale is just a cherry on top.

There's just one problem at the center of this: everybody's an asshole. How can that be? They're just spraying shit up. What's wrong with that? Well, ignoring that peppy youthful attitude I absolutely hated in Burnout 3's music, the GGs really don't give two craps about anybody else. Hey, Beat (and I guess every other character I never bothered touching): do you really care about those people you nearly ran over while spraying the town? Or did you completely ignore them so you could grind that railway? And tell me: how are you making your voice heard by interrupting traffic? (Then again, given that every motorist is completely fine with running your ass over at full speed, you may be justified.) Here's a tip: when you start spraying people's residential houses, you're no longer sticking it to the man. You're just being a dick. It doesn't help that the people living there probably can't afford to remove the graffiti, since every neighborhood looks like effing garbage. Plus you destroyed the inside of their tiny houses for no real reason. No wonder the police respond to these guys with tanks and guns and flamethrowers and electrocution and wait, who am I supposed to give my sympathies to, again?

Screw it. Let's just get to the actual game parts. They're the....OK, they're not the best part of the game. That honor would probably go to the overall atmosphere I just described. But that doesn't mean the gameplay is bad. I mean, it knows what it's doing. The levels find a perfect balance between open world and contained, giving you just enough space to screw about. And by "screw about", I mean tagging, because that's all your going to do. Finding tags, spraying tags, spraying tags again because you're now on fire. I know that sounds mundane when I say it, but it's actually kinda exciting. There's something oddly cool about both jumping from tag to tag in quick succession and working your way through the larger ones. Maybe it's that you're too caught up in the moment to realize that anything else is going on, or maybe it's just something to do with rotating the analog stick a bit. I don't know. Throw in some cops to chase you around and keep things exciting, and I'm suddenly in love with this game's sense of flow.

Now I just wish the game knew how to maintain that sense of flow. Maybe this is just something that's impossible to fix, but there were too many times I simply ran out of cans while spraying larger tags. Come on, Sega. A lot of the fun in those things comes from building up a sense of rhythm and being in the moment. You're probably not supposed to jettison me from said moment because I didn't have enough spray left over. Then again, simply getting to these moments can be something of a chore. Sometimes, they're hidden away in some obscure area of the city (defeating the whole purpose of graffiti), and other times, they're just way too high up for you to reach, requiring you to jump at it like a cat chasing a particularly interesting laser dot. (There's a graffiti analogy in there, somewhere.) Then you get there and find that the hardest spray is the first. I'm not sure why, but I really had to mash down for it to register as a spray. All the others work just fine, but that first one...man. But even after all that, I'd still recommend the game. I know that I hate everything about the 2000s, but for this, I'm willing to make an exception.

Review Synopsis

• Somehow, Japanese Marc Ecko quickly becomes Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Sprayer.
• There's nothing better than covering the whole town in graffiti.
• Too bad Jet Grind Radio can't keep it going for long periods of time.

Jigglypuff: the original graffiti artist. How more in your face can you be than literally on your face?

Well, that certainly tested the limits of my new cartoonlet titles. I'd say that it tested the limits of my sanity, but have you seen my blog lately? I review games like this and post videos like this alongside them. Clearly, what you consider mind-numbingly insane is what I consider ordinary. Not that I'm dismissing the game or anything. I love assaults on the psyche like this. Why do you think I play them so often? Well, in this case, it's also because of the addicting and challenging gameplay of falling straight down (trust me: I'm not being sarcastic about that), but still! This game is crazy!

How crazy? Well, the game's counter-counter-culture. Or maybe it's just counter-culture. I don't know. Maybe you guys can sort it out. We live in a future where buildings just float in mid-air, because DreamWorks were architectural masterminds. Clearly, this is not an ideal state of affairs. It calls for action! It calls for...jumping off buildings and then landing safely nearby. That's...the lamest form of rebellion, at least when I phrase it like that. That probably explains why all of the game's vocabulary is so messed up. I'd call it random, but it's just all too deliberate. You hug and kiss buildings to gain teeth and the level names are all a convoluted mess and then there's...this. What is this!? WHAT AM I LOOKING AT, AND WHY IS THIS NOT THE MOST SADISTIC THING IN THE GAME? Not that I'm complaining. This shit? This, right here? This is half of why I enjoy the game so much. Somehow, all this twisted terminology lends the game a fun sort of charm. Who knew that looking into the face of insanity could be so fun? Besides everybody reading this, because I'm clearly not right?

So what was that other half? The falling part. Granted, there's more to this game than simply falling (I'll get to that in a bit), but that's the majority of this game: falling and then safely landing at the end. Surprisingly, this is balls hard. Some of it has to do with the controls or a couple of cheap deaths (if you hug a building too hard, the game punishes your love with a violent death), but a lot of it is simply because of the main appeal of the game: it's easy to get caught in the moment. Everything's going by quickly, you're swaying from one building to the next, building up that score, and then SPLAT! You're dead, out of fucking nowhere. All you can do is hope you flipped off some nearby spectators the split second before that death. And that you landed on them. But let's say you make it to the end somehow. You're in the clear, right? Not really. Did you get enough teeth for the next level? You did? OK, that's what most of the game is like, but you do run out of teeth eventually. That's when you go back to previous levels and replay them a billion times over for that next star ranking. You'll be thankful for every minute of it (partially because the longest level in the game lasts approximately 90 seconds at most).

Probably because the game stuffs so many things into such a tiny space. Some of it, like ol' Grandma, serves no purpose other than just being funny. Fortunately, most of the game isn't like that. Instead, you get shit like flipping off those assholes you killed in the middle of the last paragraph, spray paint to tell Jet Grind Radio to suck it, and caffeine if you're a pussy. (I was playing on Mormon Warrior difficulty, so I had to trade in the caffeine for all kinds of crazy sex.) It may sound like a lot (and to be honest, it gets to be when graffiti gets thrown into the mix), but somehow, the game mixes them all well enough to contribute to that sense of flow I love so much. I'm also aware that may sound like me just listing off the game's features one by one, but what I'm really doing is listing off all the reasons to replay the game. Wondering why you got a shit score the first time on a level? It's probably because you couldn't spray shit up your first time through. So that's one thing (of many things) that this game is good at: forcing you back into earlier levels. Wait, I think I was supposed to outline a flaw somewhere in this blog....You know what? Fuck it. This game is awesome. There. I took the controversial statement of sincerely liking "I Don't Know How Many A's I Should Type Here". TEAR ME APART, READERS!

Review Synopsis

• My pig is dead.
• And so am I.
• And I will be again soon.
• I hope the irony central to this blog wasn't lost on any of you.