|
The Def Jam gang returns in a more mature-themed game. I will admit that I love the AKI wrestling engine. The WWE (then WWF) games that it powered on the Nintendo 64 were incredible. Similarly, I enjoyed much last year’s Def Jam Vendetta as it merged an excellent grappling engine, with EA-budget production values. Def Jam: Fight for NY is more of everything. The game has more moves, more characters and more story.
Def Jam: Fight for NY has a full-featured story mode. In Def Jam: Fight for NY, D-Mobb, the leader of NY your character defeated in the Def Jam Vendetta is being arrested, but your character in this game rescues him as he was being hauled away. The game allows you to create your character after this, and it adds this into the story as police offers telling a sketch artist what the driver who rescued D-Mobb looked like. You’re given a fair amount of options to change the hair, skin tone, body times, eyes, etc for your created character. The game’s plot has your character moving up on the underground fighting scene. Along the way, you’ll meet a number of rappers (there are over 40 including Busta Rhumes, Fat Joe, Ice T, Method Man, Redman, Snoop Dogg and Xzibit) and characters played by rappers. For example, Snoop Dogg, Redman, and Method Man, among others don’t play themselves in the game. While this is a bit weird at first, it does give the developers a bit more freedom in creating the story. This freedom may have been too much as the story doesn’t always make sense, but it is enough to keep you going from fight to fight.
In the story mode, you’re placed at your crib where you can check for messages and view a map of the city. In the map, you’re able to choose fights to participate in. You can also choose to shop at a number of places including a jewelry store ran by Jacob the Jeweler, a clothing store, barbershop, and others. The game rewards you for spending money (earned in the fights) by increasing your charisma the more you spent on your character. You’ll find a number of name brands in the clothing store like P. Diddy’s Sean John brand and Ecko. Aside from accessories, you’re able to go to the gym where you can purchase character abilities like more strength, speed, etc. You can also purchase new moves and learn new fighting styles to increase the variety of your character’s move set.
Aside from the single-player mode, you’ll find a number of additional modes in the game’s battle feature. You’ll find simple versus matches, inferno matches, and cage matches, among many, many others.
The game’s actual fighting has also been incredibly revamped. You can now find five different styles in the game – wrestling, submission-based, martial arts, street fighting and kickboxing – but they are all responsive and fast and built on the excellent AKI engine. The different characters have moves from a few of these styles and it allows for a variety of moves for these fighters. You can combine moves from these different styles to make some killer combos. Aside from the moves you can do, you can also rely on the crowd to help you (or your opponent) out. If you get thrown into the crowd, they’ll hold you for your opponent, beat on you with a weapon or simply throw you back. The crowd is very interactive and adds depth to the fighting engine.
The game’s visuals are pretty good all across. The character models for the fighters are excellent; you’ll easily be able to tell who is who as each fighter has their own unique personality and look which comes across perfectly in the game. The animation in the game is superb so all of the moves look believable even when they are pretty outrageous. The crowd doesn’t get quite the same treatment but it does animate rather well. The numerous arenas and environments are as detailed as the fighters and each comes across with their own unique persona. They feature a bit of interactivity as certain things break off. The game’s lighting is good across all the platforms but the PS2 has the most pronounced lighting. The framerate is the only real problem in the game’s visuals. The Xbox version drops occasionally, but keeps a speedy framerate for the most part. The Gamecube version can sometimes match the Xbox in its framerate but has more frequent drops. The PS2 version has a stable framerate but it is overall lower than either of the other two versions.
The game’s audio component is excellent. You’ll need to like the hip-hop and rap genres of music, of course. You’ll hear the many licensed tracks during the menus and instrumentals of said tracks during the matches. The sound effects seem familiar to someone who spent countless hours with Vendetta, but fulfilling nonetheless. The dialogue in the story mode is excellent voiced and written, as is the dialogue before and after matches. The Xbox, as always, supports in-game Dolby Digital, which is a notch above the Pro Logic II supported in the PS2 and Gamecube versions. All games are THX-certified.
Overall, Def Jam: Fight for NY is an incredibly fun game. Fans of Def Jam Vendetta will undoubtedly want to pick this up. Even if straight-on wrestling isn’t your thing, the fighting element in the game is involved enough to please fighting game fans. Of course, fans of the hip-hop genre will love the atmosphere in the game. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Nov 4, 2004
|
