Def Jam Vendetta

"A step in the right direction..."

Ever since WWF No Mercy, I have been craving to see a wrestling game with the No Mercy type wrestling engine. So when I heard that a wrestling game was coming out with the AKI engine, I was excited to say the least. I am also a big hip hop fan, and the addition of the Def Jam roster definetly upped the anticipation for this game. The game takes some very big steps forward, but it also has some huge drawbacks. On to the review:

GRAPHICS:9/10

The graphics in this game are great. The rappers are ultra life-like, and I love the hand-drawn wrestling animations much better than the motion capture stuff. There is some slight clipping problems however.

SOUND: 9/10

If you like hip-hop, you will definetly have the sound blasting on this game. With tracks from DMX, Redman, Method Man, and others from the Def Jam label, you will be nodding your head while kicking some ***. The rappers voices are a nice touch too.

CONTROL: 5/10

Now here's where my experience became soured. The controls are downright fustrating. I found that every button I pushed seemed to have a nice little lag on it, which made gameplay tedious and nerve-racking.

GAMEPLAY: 2/10

Well here's where I got a little angry. First off, we are in the year 2003, and you don't have a create a wrestler feature in this game? That standard has already been set, not only in other developers games, even the ''prequel'' had a CAW. This KILLS the replay value of the game!! The story mode is kind of weak to. I wanted to take my favorite rapper through the streats and cause havok in underground fighting arenas. Instead, however, i get some duck that i have never seen or heard before. It made the story mode less attractive to me. The only reason I gave it a 2 was because of the excellent AKI engine. But even this had some flaws, as it was lacking moves that were present in No Mercy and even Wrestlemania 2000. I felt like I was playing WCW Vs. NwO Revenge for a couple of minutes.

FINAL VERDICT: AVERAGE

This game had a lot of potential, and it did take some steps forward. I am a big fan of original ideas, and this is probaly the most unique wrestling game to come a long in a while. I think they could tweak the things I listed in this review, and I would gladly spend me hard-earned cash on it. Until then, go rent this, but I wouldn't recommend anymore than that.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/30/03, Updated 04/30/03