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Def Jam : IconReviewed by John Burrell Jr.
The world of million and billion dollar industries is a land of cutthroats, shady deals, and scandal. The music business is no exception to these types of happenings. The rap section of the music industry is by far the most sinister of them all, or at least that’s the way it’s portrayed in EA’ s latest entry in the Def Jam Vendetta series. You’ll make friends, enemies, hit records, business ventures, and meet beautiful women. All of this you get by fighting, literally, to the top of the rap game. On your way to being a record label icon you’ll encounter ruthless label CEOs, paparazzi, lost loves, and even crooked cops. Def Jam: Icon has some of the best graphics to date on either the PS3 or the X-Box 360. The character models are dead-on to their real life counter parts. The story mode in this game isn’t as good as previous games, but not bad at all. The addition of running your label is pretty cool. You can do anything from signing artists to bailing them out of jail. Utilizing music during the fights is key and requires you to get familiar with particular songs in order to reach victory. The music affects the backgrounds, causing explosions and other events to trigger during certain parts of a song which in turn can be used to beatdown your opponent with maximum effectiveness. You can use your iPod or Zune music players to use your own music from rap to classical, but this option is only available on the X-Box 360 version of the game. The online play is also a plus for this game as well as a first. The downside of this title is the extremely limited feel of the fighting mechanics. The team that made Fight Night’s fighting system used some of the system from their boxing dynamo. The directional attacks assigned to the right analog stick are preformed like haymakers from Fight Night. There are only six of these directional attacks in each of the six different fighting styles. Although the fighting styles are distinctive, the commands are all the same to perform the attacks which lead to monotony. The best part about the other two Def Jam games was that you could pick from the different rappers and use their unique move sets and finishers. In this game, there are no finishers and no unique move sets from character to character. This was a major part of the fun in the past but not so much now. More Screenshots (click image to enlarge) :
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Developer: EA Chicago
Even though this game has many ups, it has major downfalls. The monotony of the fights, due to the lack of moves weighs down on you after a while and kills the fun. The distinctive “Blazing” finishers from past games are absent. These few changes have detracted from the original formula far too much, taking with it the fun factor from the game. This latest entry in the Def Jam franchise grabs a low Evo Factor from me. Hopefully the minds at EA Chicago can turn it around and get back to Def Jam’s roots and make it fun again.
