I'm surprised that it took me this long to get around to playing Um Jammer Lammy when I played the Parappa duology actually 6 years ago, but here we are! I guess I thought it was a spinoff/side game instead of being a true sequel but nope this is as much of a parappa game as the main two games! The plot is somehow even more batshit than usual even for parappa standards as Lammy uses the power of hearing the word "casino" to immediately attain mastery of things like vacuums, fire hoses, plane throttles, infants, and chainsaws by using them like guitars. The gameplay is actually improved pretty substantially compared to even parappa 2, even though the timing windows still have that trademark parappa jank inconsistency as the game still tries to encourage improvisation while also still having to conform to the right/wrong binaries of game code. Instead of alternating between two rhythm bars between you and the person you are copying, both people share the same rhythm bar and it makes it way easier to read when your turn is up, no boom boom booms or bam bam bams to forewarn when the turn rhythms change like the main games. I'm honestly surprised they didn't keep the same shared rhythm bar structure for parappa 2 honestly. Speaking of parappa, he's here too as an entire bonus campaign once you beat the main game, and the game literally doesn't even bother trying to explain how he got in all the crazy situations that Lammy was in. The voice samples they use for both Lammy's guitar and Parappas rapping are at a way lower bitrate than the actual songs though which can be a bit jarring, but I assume they were compressed to make space for all the cutscenes that are in the game across both campaigns (and are even all fullscreen instead of the letterboxed cutscenes in 1!)

Overall, it's more time in the Parappa universe, and that's never ever a bad thing. I like Lammy, and you should too.