Marc Ecko's Getting Up: we fight for freedom one graffiti at a time

Released on Ps2, Xbox and PC, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is a 2006 video game developed by The Collective and published by Atari. It was a good mix of genres, from fighting to platforming, which saw us engaged in a fight against an oppressive government.

The only weapons we had were one spray can and a lot of imagination, put at the service of freedom of expression. The protagonist is a writer, that is, a street artist who launches his messages through graffiti and often desecrating drawings. And no, his name is not Marc Ecko, but Trane. So who is the Marc Ecko of the title? He is a character who really exists: an American artist and fashion designer, founder of Ecko Unlimited, an urban fashion company. The game used that company's own license.

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Grandma, I want to be a writer

The protagonist of Marc Ecko's Getting Up is Trane, an African American boy with a passion for street art. His dream, against the will of the grandmother with whom he lives, is to become the greatest writer in the city of him: New Radius. The context in which we operate is not exactly the rosiest. In the city the Mayor Sung who declared war on graffiti. The oppressive government of New Radius prevents any form of expression, the city has been militarized with the founding of a new police force, the CCK (Civil Conduct Keepers), committed to enforcing laws by any means, including violence.

Trane joins the Still Free Crew, a gang of writers fighting against this Orwellian government. In town, however, there is another very powerful crew whose members call themselves Vandals of New Radius. The two groups will clash, but then make the decision to create an alliance to defeat Mayor Sung and his regime.

Graffiti simulator?

Marc Ecko's Getting Up had quite varied gameplay, in fact, there was a combat system which allowed us to face the CCK agents, several were present platform phase, essential to reach inaccessible places, where to show off our art, and there was no shortage of them stealth sections, in which we had the task of going unnoticed, while our spray can acted with the favor of darkness.

The most important game mechanic, however, was the possibility of draw graffiti almost everywhere. The missions that made up the campaign almost always had the same objective: to go to a place - which was manned, easy to reach or, vice versa, located in an area that was difficult to navigate - and to challenge the government by drawing more or less complex graffiti with a satirical purpose and social revenge.

The most fun component and on which the whole gameplay of Marc Ecko's Getting Up was based was the fact that i graffiti we really had to do it ourselves, since these did not appear by magic simply by shaking the can for a few seconds (as happened in GTA: San Andreas, for example). Obviously, freedom of action still had some stakes: the graffiti were pre-calculated, we could not decide what to draw, and the surface to be smeared showed the silhouette of the final drawing.

Our aim was to fill in the uncolored space using the spray can. Easier said than done. Our tool of criticism of the government had to be used wisely: it was our concern shake the bottle every few seconds to prevent the color from staining too much and not coming out evenly. Also, for larger drawings, it could happen that the spray can run out; it was our job, therefore, to take some bonuses scattered on the surface that refilled the spray.

Graffiti Express

Now, take the game mechanics just described and imagine them while dozens of CCK agents are looking for you or with a timer telling you to finish the drawing before getting caught. Often, completing our work was not a walk in the park. As we have already mentioned, many times we were not sent down a simple dark alley to show our aversion to the oppressive law of New Radius, but in places impractical for anyone else… not for Trane.

The boy had not bad acrobatic skills that allowed him to climb up suspended scaffolding tens of meters above the ground, up Adversting board and on any other prominent place. The funniest (and most difficult) missions? Those on the subway.

No, no, not inside the train, but on top ... and with the moving car. On some missions, our job was to fly aboard a moving train and draw graffiti all along the side of the wagons before it reached its destination. Going up and down the wagons to avoid traffic lights in the tunnel, clinging to a vehicle that exceeds 100 km / h, remember to shake the can, hurry because the train is about to reach the station ... a grind, but one of the funniest mechanics I remember in a PS2 video game (version I played at the time).

We're ghetto kids

The context of the game was stereotypical, with the boys from the ghetto greeting each other with improbable handshakes and pronouncing the interlayer mothefucka every comma, but for the atmosphere of the game it was just fine. The style in general was somewhat reminiscent of other similar productions such as The Warriors, even if the latter was of a much higher level.

We are a long way from the more colorful and cheeky style of Jet Set Radio for Dreamcast. The protagonist of Marc Ecko's Getting Up moves in a degraded urban context, in which the only law to be followed without hesitation is that of the road, while a struggle between order and chaos goes on stage. Order and chaos which, however, often get confused by equipping themselves with thoughts and tools that do not conform to what they should be.

Overall, a pleasant title to play, with a level of challenge not that low and a very respectable underlying meaning.