Def Jam: Fight for New York

Review - Slaps in the city...

Commercialism, dontcha hate it? Take anything with a heart, a soul and commercialise and merchandise it till it is nothing more than a way of generating massive revenue for a small number of connected people. Not only does the original idea/movement become irrevocably tainted by its association with the giant corporations that suck the spirit out of life, but the associated ideals and dreams that created the thing in the first place become so diminished in their authenticity that they no longer have any meaning. In the case of hip-hop, a legitimate form of urban expression has been turned into a way of selling overpriced tat to the gullible and easily influenced, destroying any message that the music once contained in favour of reinforcing stereotypes and exploiting the talented for the gains of the leeches.

So on to Def Jam: Fight for New York. The Def Jam label morphed from a well respected purveyor of east coast hip-hop into a shamelessly over-commercialised enterprise that sold caricatures of black ghetto living to vapid white teenagers in the suburbs. After a rash of dodgy compilation albums and dodgy comedy extravaganzas (yours from Time-Life for only 49.99!) they entered the realm of the video game with the decidedly unimpressive Vendetta a few years back. The pathetic wrestling game that title was has been given a dramatic overhaul into the celebrity infested wrestling game FFNY. This sequel picks up the story from the end of the last game, with underground fight supremo D-Mob finding himself under arrest by a couple of bumbling cops. On the way to the precinct the cop car is rammed off the road by a shiny digital Escalade driven by none other than the player. What follows is a meaty story game that will see you compete in over 90 fights across 22 different venues in your quest to become the ultimate urban fighter.

The character creation screen is probably the most inspired part of the whole enterprise. Taking the perspective of one of the cops from the intro movie, you are led through questions which ask you to help create a photo-fit of the intro's mystery assailant. It's a refreshingly different take on the now obligatory custom character, even if the final 3D model is sufficiently different from the photo-fit to ensure another few years of police ignorance.

Once this is done it's off to your new pad. This is your base of operations for the game. From here you can check your messages, visit the map, and rummage through your wardrobe. And while the 'bling' culture is now an entrenched part of the hip-hop lifestyle the amount of time and energy that has been devoted to dressing up the game's virtual dollies sits most uneasily with the vicious fighting that the game is ostensibly meant to be about. Along with the character creation it seems that all EA games must now have a dressing up aspect about them. The amount of shops selling clothes, jewellery, tattoos, furniture and even haircuts in the game quickly makes one think of the Sims. Or maybe, in this case, the Urbz. Anyway, this is the first fighting game where the player is encouraged to spend his winnings on trousers and necklaces. There is also a training mode which is nothing more than another store where you purchase stat upgrades and new moves. An actual interactive training mode would have not only fleshed out the actual fighting part of the game but it could have allowed the player the time to familiarise themselves with the unorthodox controls.

Once you tire of the confused gender issues there's always the actual fighting to test out. Within the space of a few bouts I could now see why EA spent so much time on the frivolous asides such as celebrity endorsements and shopping. The fighting game sucks. One fight was seriously enough to make me want to never pick up the controller again while this DVD was in my Xbox. But in the interest of this review I persevered. Things did not improve. The total lack of a tutorial and the reliance on trial and error to discover the variety of moves did not get things off to a splendid start. There are a total of five fighting styles - street fighting, kickboxing, martial arts, wrestling, and submission fighting - to unlock through the course of the game. Interestingly these will combine with each other to give a lot of variety in the different kinds of fighting styles that you can implement in the game. It's just a shame that so many of the moves are common across the styles, and that for all the kicking and punching styles on offer the game's primary mode of conflict is the grapple. Yup, wrestling is still what this game is really all about. FFNY nicks wrestling ideas such as weapons and audience participation in its Fight Club styled arenas which do manage to add a bit of variety to the combat.

So it's a shame that the fighting engine suffers from a sluggishness that matches the preposterously huge appearance of all the game's male characters, (of course the ladiez are slim and buxom). The opponents seem to always outclass you, with the AI coming across as simplistic, relying instead on superior stats as opposed to any kind of impressive fighting prowess. They will also repeat the same move over and over again throughout a bout, which is both tedious and frustrating, as most of these moves are grapples, which are very hard for the player to avoid but apparently easier than offending the Moral Majority for the AI.

You can have up to four players join in a bout for some multiplayer thrills, and as is often the case this can be a lot more entertaining than duelling with the AI. There's absolutely no online play so loners will be stuck with the mediocre story mode. FFNY is not a terrible game. There's a lot of merchandise and endorsements in there, so if you like the idea of a virtual clothing catalogue this could be right up your alley. However, if you are looking for a mature and engrossing fighting game then I suggest you pass right on by. Maybe wait for the Superstars of Nashville Bar Room Brawl game instead.

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