3. Explanation of Basic Controls.

This game gets honorable mention for mixing together a variety of styles.
Combat, platform, sneaking, navigation, and a suprisingly unique graffiti
system. All are both challenging and easy to learn fast. The game does most of
the teaching for you, so I will only cover a few basic tips for each aspect
here.

Combat- The game uses a martial arts system that includes punches, kicks,
throws, blocks, and spin dodge maneuvers. You are strongly encouraged to become
familiar with them all. Most of them come from Jeet Kune Do, an excellent
freeform school of martial arts founded by Bruce Lee and practiced by many
great fighters. Special tactics you want to make frequent use of include
combos, sneak attacks, and improvised weapons- which can be thrown or swung.
You also have a skills meter with which you can add more power to your blows.
I'll cover this in greater detail as we get into the walkthru.

Platform- The game encourages you to place your marks in hard-to-reach places,
so you'll be doing a lot of jumping, shimmying, climbing and general
acrobatics. Be on the lookout for places where you can employ these skills in
the urban environment. You will use them to get bonuses and to progress.

Sneaking- You don't want to be seen vandalizing the city, right? Therefore you
will need to use some stealth. Make use of shadows to put your marks up and
take down the enemy. Hold L1 for Sneak Mode. Almost any enemy in the game can
be sneaked around if you're good enough- I tend to prefer combat, but that's
just me. There's no radar, but you can still do nice stuff with sneaking. Read
the walkthru or play the game to find out what.

Navigation- Trane can look around the city in first-person view and spot places
to put his art. Look for orange Xs (main objective graffiti spots), blue Xs
(bonus spots), and white Xs (freeform challenge spots). Trane can also spot
security camera viewcones, enemies, and climbable objects. Hit L2 to enter this
mode. Use it often to find the places you need to hit.

Graffiti- This is easy to do, yet very challenging. Hold R1 to enter graffiti
mode. You can then use a variety of tools- spray paint, etchers, rollers, wheat
paste, posters, and all sorts of other cool stuff. The game creates the shapes
for you, you just have to fill them in with the buttons and left analog stick.
Be sure to watch where you're painting- you want to fill in enough color so you
see a good picture but you also want to avoid drips- those annoying spots that
appear when you put too much paint on a certain area. You get bonuses for size
(Go Big), putting graffiti over rival taggers' graffiti (Go Over), applying it
quickly (Time), applying it without messing up (No Drips), and applying it in
high places (Heaven Spot). Being stealthy when you do it is also a good idea,
as you are very vulnerable when putting your mark up and if enemies see you
they will come after you. Also be aware that you can use your tools in combat
as well as graffiti-making. A paint roller makes a decent club, spray paint
blinds enemies, and there are other great tactics too. I'll cover some of them
in the walkthru. Practice Graffiti a lot and become familiar with all the
methods- every one has different yet similar controls.

The Game Score- This is also known as Rep, and will be built up as you complete
objectives and collect bonuses. You will get a rank on a list that includes
Toy, Tagger, Writer, Bomber, Artist, Legend, and eventually All-City King. I'm
not going to list all the ranks here, as it was too time-consuming, but they do
make the game more worth it. :)