Def Jam: Fight for NY - EA Canada - Xbox

[schild]

There are some fighting games that hand hold the newbie player, showing them all the options within the game, what key combos to hit at what times and so on to gently groom them in how to play the game properly.

Def Jam: Fight for NY isn't one of these games. You get one tutorial fight and by fight number two you will be getting curb stomped (literally) by opponent AI that takes no prisoners. Button mashing rarely works while DJFFNY is also a 'slow' fighter, which has seem some people put off of this game. However, once you get past the getting-the-crap-kicked-out-of-you learning phase, DJFFNY becomes an excellent fighter.

Plot-wise, you enter a fantasy street gangsta world where the ownership of fight clubs is passed onto whoever can kick the most ass, with you playing the role of ass kicker for the good gangsta crimelord against an evil, corrupt gangsta crimelord (played by Snoop Dogg). DJFFNY is full of recognisable hip-hop, R'n'B and similar figures (well, recognisable a few years ago) but don't let that put you off if that isn't the kind of music you like - the fighting system is excellent, merging martial arts / boxing styles very well with grappling / submission styles. The fights themselves are brutally exaggerated, with valid tactics being smashing glass bottles over the heads of opponents, crashing them head first into wooden crates or executing a bone-breaking Blazin' move.

On top of this, the character customisation system is fantastic, with (if you can afford it) the options existing to completely change your character's clothes from top to bottom after every fight and never repeat an outfit, to outfit yourself in ridiculously shiny bling jewellery, to get new haircuts or covered neck-to-ankle in tattoos.

Although the AI is a little cheap at times, DJFFNY is an excellent and challenging fighter that requires you to use different tactics depending on who you fight. It is full of unlockable extras, the voice acting is pretty good most of the time and the fights straddle the line of brutality and cartoonishly violent extremely well. Provided you can get past the learning curve, DJFFNY is a brilliantly versatile fighter that more games should learn from.

--

Buy it.

Sent in by UnSub.

[Azazel]

As I recall it, this is the evolution of the Aki wrestling engine, as seen in several of the N64's Wrestling games (that were the best of their day, and for quite awhile). I don't recall their names, and I'm about to go to bed, so I won't look 'em up right now. At least 1 WCW/nWo one, and a couple of WWF ones. I still have the carts, as it happens.

WWE/THQ went with the NJPW engine, which morphed into the SD Series, and in turn SD vs RAW. Since the Aki engine had near-universal acclaim, I guess someone had to pick it up, and the DJ series was born.

[HAMMER FRENZY]

Yeah, the AKI engine is bar-none the best wrestling engine there is. From what I remember it was 4 games on the the N64, WCW Vs. NWO World Tour, WCW Vs. NWO  Revenge, WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy. All those games kicked face. No mercy was just awesome. From what I heard, The guys who did Def Jam licensed out the AKI engine and did a whole lot to it. There was some interview I read about it, it was pretty interesting.

On another note, if anyone is into Kinnikuman, the Ultimate Muscle games for the Gamecube and PS2 were also running on the AKI engine. Those games were actually pretty fun.

[murdoc]

I played the Hell outta this game. I really liked the first two Def Jam fighting games, but thought the 3rd one was rather stinky.

[stray]

Yep, this game rocked. Good fighting engine, and c'mon.. Henry Rollins and Danny Trejo are playable characters. How cool is that?

A little dated though unfortunately.

[UnSub]

Any game where you can smash a steel bar over Sean Paul's head is worth at least a look.

But yeah, the difficulty curve at the intro is rough.