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really hard, but pretty amusing

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Def Jam: Icon is the newest game in the Def Jam series of games. In this one, you make your character and are taken from being a typical street hood to a producer for a big shot music mogul named Curtis Carter. As the story goes on, and you sign more artists and become richer, a whole conspiracy unfolds involving a rival music mogul named Troy Dollar and off-duty cops.

The game starts off with you creating a character - you can customize pretty much everything from his eye seperation to body build to head size to hair color - and then from there you are thrown into the game. You can purchase jeans, shirts, hoodies, jackets, shoes, hats, tattoos, jewelery, shorts... pretty much anything that you could in real life but just couldn't afford haha. Anyway, after that you have to fight; the controls are simple really - right analog stick does strong attacks, and the buttons do either quick or semi-strong attacks. As your empire grows you can begin to do favors for the artists under your label like bail them out of jail (I had to do this for E-40 atleast 17 times) or send their familys to Europe under your expense. Additionally, on the same lines of your artists, you have to budget how much money to spend on the marketing and air-play of their newest singles to depend on how much revenue they will bring to you in the end. Finally, you can also get girlfriends who will also ask you for money.... hmm...

Now this particular Def Jam game relies on the environment for the bulk of your fights. By this I mean there are random hazards strewn about the level like stereo speakers or helicopters or cars and the point of them is to throw your opponent into them and activate the "DJ Turntables" to have these hazards to explode and cause additionally damage. The DJ Turntables basically have your character stand still and rotate (quite literally) air-vinyl tracks and cause things to explode. You can also use these to change the song during the fight.

The best part about this game, besides the customization, is the online play. I can truely say that DJ:I has some of the most balanced online fighting I have experienced and it isn't filled with a bunch of foul-mouthed punks talking yang non-stop. I had a lot of fun online, and there are achievements to be found through X-Box Live.

The graphics were pretty solid, and quite impressive. The way the levels were designed and how they interacted with the fighters was pretty cool. The rappers looked practically lifelike, so that was a plus. Only, there was a serious clipping issue - your necklace would go through your clothes, enemies would grab you and their arms would be through your body (lol)... it wasn't big, but it took away from the semi-serious tone of the game.

The music was off the hook. I loved the tracks (though now I have a new found dislike for Mike Jones) that this provided. However, there wasn't enough of a variety in the songs I mean there was like..I think 10 (give or take) artists to listen to.

Now for the bad part - this game is SERIOUSLY hard. The fights last really long, enemies always seem to counter your attacks and always throw you into hazards regardless of how far away they are from it, and Young Jeezy is almost impossible. The camera tends to place itself in awkward positions making seeing the action hard, and like I said the game difficulty is RIDICOUSLY hard. Oh, and sometimes you'll be in the middle of pulling of a move and the enemy will just come over and tap you once causing you to stop the move all the way... errrr...

The ending was flat out terrible. You unravel the conspiracy, and have to fight the last boss. After winning, you become the top man in your own label. You find yourself sitting in a club with Method Man (who in this game is called Goosh or Coosh.. something like that) as he talks to this guy Senator Jacobson. Thats it... all that brain hemoraging anger from the difficulty for that? Hmph, I smell rip-off.

Anyway, Def Jam: Icon has a pretty good fighting game underneath its flaws and I do recommend it.... as a rental. Cause after all the aggravation and cheesy story, there isn't much left to the game except run through it again and earn more money. 7.2 Platinum Records out of 10.

Beautiful graphics, horrible repetitive gameplay

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are absolutely amazing, and the way the soundtrack interacts with the environment is unique and well-done. Everything beyond that is terrible.

For whatever reason, the developers decided to get rid of the very fun and very successful fighting engine from the previous two games. We went from a system of several different grapples, counters, and strikes that gave each character literally hundreds of moves to chose from to...a system with a punch, and very slowly animated kick, and a throw (and all you need to beat the game is the throw).

Every single character seems to have the same basic moves, fights are nothing more than throwing over and over again, loading times are terrible, and the music selection is awful. Luckily, you can add your own songs.

You will get bored of this game VERY quickly. I can only hope that the developers decide to go back to the old system, since this game could have been perfect with the old N64/AKI/THQ wrestling engine.

Not Nearly as Good Def Jam Vendetta

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: June 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was really looking forward to this game, breaking my normal habits of only buying used games. I loved Def Jam Vendetta, and I thought the new feature of utilizing music, including MP3s from my collection would put a great twist on the game mechanics. Sadly, the best parts of the previous game were lost - there is no training, the fighting styles can't be mixed and the game was somehow both short, and far too repetitive.

The concept of becoming a producer could have been interesting, but wasn't. And the overarching story was rather predictable, and at times a bit too far from reality, even for a fighting game.

Repetition

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: May 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is very repetitive. If you like doing virtually the same thing repeatedly while changing clothes on rare occasion, this is the game for you. Talk to your boss, go fight, talk to your boss, go fight, ... ZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

Not bad.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: May 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Not what I expected, so I was a bit dissappointed. I didn't read into it and only found out after I received the game that THQ had nothing to do with it. So the wresting aspect was really toned down and was replaced with a more Fight Night control scheme. It was still fun, but long sessions were a no go as it became too repetative too quickly. And as for the selling records to level up, I really wasn't a fan.

No Replay Value...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

-once you beat the game in about 3 to 5 hours, theres NOTHING else to do with it.

-the story doesnt really hold weight. your fighting cops in the street..thats not something youd get away with in real life. nor does a real cop KICK IN YOUR DOOR WITH NO GUN AND CHALLENGE YOU TO A FIST FIGHT LOL. its just very retarted.

-theres really no sense of "free will" in the Build A Label mode. most of the story's problems stem from your character FIGHTING people and ending up in deeper problems than he already is in..and thats because you cant CHOOSE rather or not you want to fight. for instance, theres a situation where a rival artist is using some of your sampled music for his mixtape..and youll SAY your going to go and talk to him...but there is no talk...you just fight him. there should have been an option to talk it out or fight it out. another example: an artist wants to come to your HOME and fight you..WHY WOULD YOU EVEN LET HIM IN THE HOUSE? they dont give you the OPTION to NOT LET HIM IN...they just start u off fighting in your house. and you only have two options for girlfriends...but you cant even choose them...theyre automatically GIVEN to you rather you want them or not. neither can you choose the artists you really want to sign to your label. u have to pick between 2 random artists in most cases...and half the time, i really didnt want to sign either of them...but i had no choice.

but even with this...it all would have been fine if they had just had an on-going mode where you could release songs with your label and compete with other other labels for the charts. and occasionally one of your artists would have to fight and yada yada. kind of like a Season mode so to speak..and the choices you made would reflect and effect the things that happened around you.

graphics are nice, fight system is like Fight Night, youll get use to it..everything looks and plays great...but it just doesnt have any replay value whatsoever. rent it, youll be tired of it in 1 day..

iLL .

Def Jam Weirdness

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: April 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is retarded. Sorry that I have to start my review like that but seriously, this is one of those games where I try to explain it to people and the words fail me every time.

I'm not saying it's the worst game I've ever played. For one, the graphics are really impressive and the way the levels are affected by the music is pretty interesting. Looking at the character models, you can tell exactly who you're looking at, i.e. The Game looks like the Game, Big Boi looks exactly like Big Boi, etc. The fighting engine is okay, if limited and not overly responsive. The music is okay as far as today's hip-hop goes (sorry to say it but rap music these days is in a sorry state... that's a whole other conversation though) but luckily you can upload your own music to play with and this feature works well.

The premise of this game is what makes me scratch my head. I mean, a typical scenario in the game would go something like this:

The record label exec you work for needs you to sign an artist, but Ghostface Killah might be there to stop you, so you two have to duke it out.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that's pretty much what the game is and it also has a lot of fighting which gets repetitive fairly quickly. The game has a weak frame around it which attempts to incorporate a kind of lifestyle management aspect like what to wear, how much to spend on your girlfriends, how much to spend on artists and their records.... but it all gets boring pretty quickly, especially when you're really just having the same fights over and over.

I've played online and like with most fighting games, I found the lag times to be a bit of a pain. Sometimes I'd have a clean match and other times, my opponent would be teleporting all over the level.

I'd have to suggest a rental on this one first or at least try the demo out. Seriously, this game is just really weird in too many ways to count to make any kind of recommendation.

There's one other thing that I should mention. I find it kind of sad that this game promotes the exact same kind of violence that gets the rap industry into so much trouble all the time. While it's all handled in a tongue in cheek way (I mean, fighting Sean Paul for whatever reason is just plain silly, no matter what), the fact that this is an officially licensed product from a well known record label makes me wonder what the intended message is.

repetitive frustating and slow moving

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

this game have a pretty solid create a charater and the story line is somewhat interesting. i also like the way you can dress your charater in the latest fashions. The graphics look pretty cool when you first start. on the negative side is the fighting mostly this being a fighting game i dont recomened it. the amount of charaters that you have to choose from is weak the last game had alot more. your gonna hear the same couple of songs over and over if your favorite song is on the game it won't be your favorite for long. i got this game for $60 plus tax the game is'ent worth $20 I say if you dont belive me rent it hate it and take it back.

Fight....for a day

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game has defenetly improved in graphics since its last tittle, fight for NY. The controls are easy to master but the counters are a bit tricky to use. One of the major options in this game is the ability to use your own sound track in the fighting scenes. In general you donthave to be a hip hop fan to enjoy this game, you can fight to punk, rock, metal or if you like.....classical. The enviroment will come alive with whatever music you choose. The only down fall to the game is that you can finish it in one day, if your really devoted to it. It has a medium replay value and the mini game of managing your rappers sales is a good way to earn money to buy bling. Overall, i beleive the game is worth buying, its fun and what better way than to releive strees than kicking the crap out of your friends.

not that bad

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: March 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is not as bad as people are saying it is.

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