Def Jam: Fight for NY

"I'm from tha streetz, chump...."

Introduction:

Welcome to the world of Def Jam, violent, arrogant, thuggish and damned entertaining. I mean, who doesn't want to play a badass fighter who has the strength of a Rhinoceros? Def Jam incorporates the basics found in all fighters with street brawling, bone crunching violence. If violent, intense beat 'em ups are your thing, read on for the review of probably one of the most brutal fighters on any console around.

Gameplay: 9/10

The game is very well designed, and carries a lot of depth and enough extras to shake a stick at. The main story consists of moving through a fairly linear set of fights that progress along with a storyline. After each fight is completed various goodies are unlocked, and become available to your character. These include new characters to use in multiplayer, more blazin' moves (explanation still to come) and point awarded for your fight along with money. The point awarded are used to train up your skills such as Upper body strength/Lower Body strength, health, toughness etc, they also can buy you new blazin moves which you've unlocked from battles. Even though you've unlocked the new blazin move, you still need to purchase them with your skill points, once bought you can use these skills as a brutal finisher, or just to knock down your opponent strength substantially.

Basically, blazin moves are a devastating combo that you use in battle, when beating on a playa, you're blaze meter goes up, once this becomes full, you tap the right analog stick, and your guy goes berserk. Then, when you approach your opponent and grapple him, you tap the right analog stick again in a certain direction to perform the move. it's really quite simple. You can assign these deadly moves to each direction on the Analog pad to your preference, you do this in the gym.

Also the money you earn from fights can be used to purchase new clothes, accessories, tattoos, chains, jewellery. The more you earn, the more bling you can afford. By getting more bling accessories, it raises your "Charisma" stat. As your charisma stat gets better, your blazin moves will get to full quicker. Nice touch eh?

Now onto the beef of the game itself, the brawling! This is great, you can do several different styles of fighting for your character which you create. The customisation part of it is superb. You can change every aspect of the character from hair to eyes, from size to height. You can also purchase new hair colours and hairstyles from the barber.

In game fighting is intense, you CAN literally kick the living crap out of your opponent, blood flying from there face as you deal that deadly Haymaker (an extreme punch), you can grapple them, lay them up against the wall, and crack there skulls against the concrete wall with your feet!!! Brutal!

Additionally, you can use the crowds in the arena who will supply you with weapons such as crowbars, metal pipes, glass bottles and more. You may also throw the enemy into the crowd and do a variety of team up moves with the crowd, or the crowd will get involved themselves and attack him with the weapons they hold. Once the enemy reaches a critical level, there health bar goes read. At this point the enemy is vulnerable to a finishing move. You need to either lay them out with a Haymaker, Do a wall combo, Use a blazin move or crack them over the head with one of the weapons whilst they are in this state. If you fail to use the initiative quickly, there health bar will go green again, in which case you'll need to give them the beat down some more before you attempt finishing them again.

What makes this game so entertaining is how the brutality is portrayed. You really get the feeling that you're pummeling your opponents face against the wall when you smash your foot hard onto his skull, and the blazin moves are breathtaking dedicated tributes to violence, and are great to watch. The gameplay is superb in almost all cases, the one small gripe I had was regarding the camera angle, which at some points can be terribly frustrating, but it doesn't occur enough to ruin or spoil gameplay.

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics used in Def Jam: FFNY are very good eye candy. All the characters are done perfectly, and all have there own individuality about them, although nearly every character in the game are big muscle bound brutes, which is not really a realistic concept, but then you don't want them looking like wimps, so it's forgivable. The Venues for the fights themselves are all very different, and have lots of destructible and/or interactive environments, which makes it great fun. They are all depicted very well, with a great fight brawl sense to the way each venue is laid out. Like the circle of fire stage, with interactive flames which burn the characters to the interactive garage stage where you can throw your enemies against vehicles, and even use the vehicle to smack the door against your defenseless enemy. All in all, the graphics will not disappoint at all.

Storyline: 6/10

Hmmmm, suspect. Well, there is a storyline, but It's not really a work of art. You'll get various clips of whats going on throughout story mode, and what you'll be facing. The general story revolves around to main rival gangs, D-Mob's crew (which your character is a member of), and Crow's crew (Snoop Dogg). You battle it out with each others crew members, it's pretty straight forward, although the story does have one half descent twist to it, which I'll give credit for. Not really the strongest point of Def Jam, but it's not really that big an issue, as it does not detract from the gameplay.

Controls: 9/10

Controls are easy and don't require to much brain work, unless you are a complete loser at computer games, you should have no problem picking up the controls within minutes of playing the game, although the grapple moves take a little while to master perfectly.

Lastibility: 8/10

This game has LOADS to unlock, there are over 70 characters to unlock and play as in multiplayer, clothes to unlock and wear, jewellery, rings, hats, shoes, trousers, shorts, hairstyles, blazin moves, shades, earrings, tattoos.....see.....loads! There are also certain trophies to be earned for achieving certain targets, and even after story mode, there are additional characters to be unlocked through multiplayer. There is certainly a lot to do, although, If played straight you could clock the story mode in about 6-7 hours. This is ok, since the fighting doesn't lose it's fun for ages, and if you have 4 controllers and some friends the game lasts for ages, it's just a shame they didn't include online capabilities, that would of kicked ass.

Closing Comments

Def Jam is undoubtedly the most brutal fighter I've played, and just for that you should go out and buy it. The characters make this game fun to play for a long time, so I would personally recommend buying this, although feel free to rent first to check out what I mean. I highly enjoyed playing this game, and even now it comes out for the 4 player multiplayer action regularly.

What are you doing still reading this?? Go out and get it......And enjoy kicking some gangster ass....

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/04