May 2, 2005 - Marc Ecko is the first to admit that before his current project he was an outsider to the videogame industry. After all, the fashion designer and founder of *eckounlt has already conquered the world of urban street wear and become a well known graphic artist -- but none of that is a part of our industry. As an avid gamer, Ecko long had the desire to translate his design sense and knowledge of street culture into a videogame experience. And up until now, we've heard a lot about how this entrepreneur wants to revolutionize the development process with his first title Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, but have only received bits and pieces of information about it. Last week at Atari's Pre E3 showcase, however, we finally saw the product in motion and got a better idea for what it means to get it up.



When talking with Marc, it is clear that he loves games, but he has also been a vocal critic of the industry. This year at DICE Ecko told an audience of developers, "We're missing the boat on the consumer. We're missing the boat on the culture." His lecture was about marketing games to a mass audience, and looking outside the constrained world of videogame development to conceive new ideas. This theme is evident every time Ecko talks about the influences of Getting Up. When the title was first introduced he labeled it as the first truly authentic urban videogame experience. The game taps into the culture of graffiti art, and includes 50 of the world's most well known taggers.

The game's protagonist is a street artist known as Trane, who lives in the fictional city of New Radius and is voiced by rap artist Talib Kweli. It takes place in the near future, and the urban environments are a blend of the high-rises and subways of Manhattan and the architecture of Hong Kong. As we've seen through the concept art, Marc has a highly-stylized vision of the game's setting but what takes place on the streets of New Radius is even more interesting.

At first the title's moniker sounds a little strange, even humorous. But once you've seen the gameplay, it all starts to make sense. Trane's goal is to elevate himself both physically and in terms of status. This is done by getting his art up on every wall, overpass, subway, and car. Covering each of the 11 levels in graffiti, or "bombing" the environments is the goal, but it isn't easy. There are city patrols looking to lock up vandals, rival crews, and a shady government conspiracy that reveals itself later in the game.


As Trane advances he runs into real-life legends and unlocks new artistic skills and materials. There are six main icons that teach players in the most critical aspects of urban art. For example, Futura, an old-school graffiti artist from Brooklyn, helps Trane with the basics. As players rise in stature, they will add each renowned artist to their black book and unlock a huge selection of assets.

The painting itself is done with a variety of mediums including aerosol, rollers, markers, and more specialized types of paints. Trane can approach any surface and enter into a type of painting mini-game that closely resembles finding the sweet spot of a golf swing or pitching a baseball in sports titles. By moving the analog stick in a fluid figure-eight motion, the art will go up looking clean. However, the meter that would usually indicate if the player is flubbing their paint job has been removed, and instead is represented through the art itself. By moving too slowly the art will begin to drip and if done too quickly will get blurry.

Every level has a select number of required tags that are indicated by using Trane's intuition ability. At the press of a button, wavy lines emanate from the main characters and mark the prime areas for graffiti. As we saw in two levels, these areas aren't always immediately accessible. The first environment began with Trane on one side of a busy highway. He had the option to hit the wall behind him with some freeform art, but the required zones were located high above street level on an overpass.

 

here is a link to the pics http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/681/681791/imgs_1.html.. game looks dope im gunna go try to pick it up today