Def Jam Fight For NY

THE BAD:
No online play. High difficulty level. Not very much depth in gameplay.

SUMMARY:
The follow-up to Def Jam: Vendetta, Fight For NY is a hip-hop blend of music and hard-hitting fighting with a nice variety of gameplay. The story picks up where Vendetta left off: D-Mob is on his way to the slammer until your character crashes into the cop car and you bail him out, and you team up with D-Mob, Blaze, and others to take back the streets from a rival gang led by a fighter who looks kinda like a pimp in some ways.

The graphics are generally excellent-the characters show a lot of detail in all areas, right down to the blood after a hard beating. The enrivonments are nicely detailed but the crowd is too static despite looking real. Sounds are the best part of this game-there are lots of music tracks by various Def Jam artists, and many rappers and actors supply the voice talents for their characters, including Method Man, Redman, XZibit, N.O.R.E., Omar Epps, Ice-T, Carmen Electra, Lil Kim, and an unmentioned job by Snoop Dogg. Sound effects are really good and sometimes there's some dead-on commentary during matches, like when you go for a powerufl finishing move or some post-match parting comments. Cotrols are simple to pick up at first but do feel unresponsive at times-it's hard to do a combo and switch from one move to the other because of how they react to your inputs. They're also complex when trying to to the more powerful moves-it's easy to forget that you must hold one button down while trying to enter the other inputs, and it's frustrating too. Gameplay is deep yet a little bit simple-the fighting engine is based on Aki's (developer) system used in THQ's old WWF games-it's fairly easy to pick up but in the long term lacks some depth for a game like this. The characters have a selection of 5 different fighting styles spanning different genres, so there's something for everyone from street fighters to wrestlers to martial artists. There is a good single-player Story mode with an excellent Create Player option, and several unlockable modes of play for up to 4 players. Unfortunately there is no online play which is a big disappointment. There are over 60 characters to unlock (for a total of 74) and several new venues that can be unlocked by earning points via gameplay, which helps contribute immensely to replay value even though it takes a lot of time to earn enough points to unlock everything. While the difficulty level is adjustable, it's kinda unbalanced-some characters are overpowering and some are too hard to win with. Story Mode is a little too hard especially at first.

The $20 price tag is the biggest reason to get this game if you haven't already. And even if you don't like the Def Jam artists or their music, don't let that stop you from buying this game because it's a fast-paced and quite satisfying fighting game experience that has enough hidden away to keep you racking up the KOs and accumulating the bling for a long time. Get it as soon as you see it in the bargain bins.