Remember the days when Wrestling games were good? When there weren’t DLC packages for them? When there were tactics to be used? The good old days had great games for WWE fans and newcomers alike. Unlike most beat-em-ups, the WWE games used the full 3D plane for the fights making them unique. These games became a staple of many childhoods.

AKI Corporation, one of the original developers on WWE duty decided to add a twist of their own. Rather than having matches in controlled areas, they decided to take it to the streets. They wanted to have matches in bars, nightclubs, subway stations and everywhere else there could be people throwing down the gauntlet. To help make the game easier to approach, they teamed up with Def Jam Recordings to make a game series. 

Today we look at the second member of the series: Def Jam: Fight for NY. 

Before we continue, I want to point out that while the game was played on a Nintendo Wii it was also replayed on Dolphin the GameCube and Wii emulator to take screenshots and videos. For proper functioning on Dolphin I made the following changes to the emulator’s configuration:

• Graphics: Changed Backend to “Vulkan” since it works quite well on AMD cards
• Graphics: Changed “Synchronous” to “Synchronous (Ubershaders)” to improve performance
• Graphics: Enabled “Compile Shaders Before Starting” for a bit more of a speed boost
• Hacks (Found under Graphics): Disabled “Fast Depth Calculation” to make the text in the menus display
• AMD Relive: Disabled “Chill” for Dolphin since you need a constant framerate.

Story:

D-Mob (Christopher Judge) is under arrest and being transported to the station in the back of a cop car. As the cops talk their car gets T-boned by an SUV. The driver of the SUV (the player character) helps D-Mob out of the cop car and into the SUV before escaping. 

D-Mob takes the player character back to his hideout to meet his men and start training him to be a fighter. After training, the player character goes out and starts taking on fighters at various bars before meeting Crow (Snoop Dogg). Crow is D-Mob’s opposition for the clubs of New York. In an attempt to weaken D-Mob, Crow starts offering cash to fighters which relieves D-Mob of his clubs. The rest of the game has the player character winning fights to take back clubs from Crow. Crow kidnapping the player’s girlfriend and having him take the clubs back from D-Mob’s crew and finally a showdown with Crow.

The story is delivered by cinematics before and after fights as well as voicemail on the player’s phone. 

Sound:

I’m going to be raving about the sound.

The music is good and I mean GOOD! It was kind of expected, since an actual record company is in the game’s name. All the tracks set the mood right and show themselves off at the correct time. The menus have a background music with lyrics while the fights only have instrumental tracks. This is perfect so that the music doesn’t distract you during combat. 

The sound effects are good too. It feels like every different menu type has its own sound effects and with so many different menus you never feel like it gets repeated. The in-game sound effects are spot on too. Glass, metal fences, wood, ring mats all sound unique, this along with people cheering keeps the flow going. The sounds of punches and kicks are comparatively weak, they are just great in a world of awesome.

After seeing the maddening cast list, I thought maybe they just used the likeness of the people on that list. I was wrong, everyone in that list is present and was told to threaten a microphone. They all sound exactly like they do TV; be it Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, Danny Trejo, they all sound right. They shit talk to each other before and after a match with some great lines. It’s just sad that you don’t hear them in pain when they get hit during a match. Hell, there is no talking during a match except for the announcer making comments. 

Graphics:

Being such an old game, the graphics aren’t great. The fighters are well detailed along with the fighting area and weapons. The audience and background on the other hand feel like they are from the previous console generation. It works out though since you don’t notice anything other than your opponent when fighting. 

The full game has an underground grunge/graffiti look to it starting from the menus and going a step darker for the fights. Each fighting area has a theme from a run-down old club that has seen one too many fights to what might as well be a high-end cabaret club along with dojo and powerplant areas thrown in for a good touch. 

Effects are rare but they show up to keep the theme of the game going. There is blood splatter and spit particles when the fighters take decent hits. Ropes bend when fighters run into them, even fencing shakes when hit. One of the funnier ones is the fighter’s bling shining when the camera zooms in on the fighter. There is also a hue thrown over the entire game when a character is in his special mode and when the final move of a special combo hits its mark. 

With decent character models, a good variety of themes and sparingly used effects the graphics do their job and you don’t notice their shortfalls without looking for them. 

Gameplay:

As mentioned at the start of this post; Def Jam is by a developer famed for WWE games. It does seem like a WWE game when you first play. However, once you start understanding the game a bit you notice that the WWE playstyle is the doorway to rope new players in. After the initial stage, Def Jam: Fight for NY has its own thing going. 

Def Jam: Fight for NY has a key corresponding to all the standard wrestling moves, namely: punch, kick, grab, run and block. What it does uniquely is making the surroundings the main weapon. You can punch an opponent as much as you like but a much better way to damage them is to throw them at a wall before using it to pulverize them. The audience helps too by holding onto the opponents if you’re popular enough so that you can do some mad combo damage to opponents.  That along with weapons being held or thrown in by the audience is a great way to add damage. 

There are quite a few different types of matches including the standard 1 on 1 but there are also team matches, cage matches, ring out matches, demolition matches, window matches, inferno and a 4-person free for all. All these matches take place at unique locations with different elements so learning to use and abuse the elements is key to winning.

After every fight, you get points and money. Points are used to upgrade your character’s stats like punches, kicks, the speed at which he hits, health and toughness. All of these have to be picked according to your character’s fighting style of which there can be up to 3 at a time. An example of this: a streetfighter does not need lower body strength so you can let it slide while you upgrade the upper body. You also buy the other fighting styles with points. The last thing you get with points are special movies called “Blazin’ Moves”. These are heavy grapple moves that do a ton of damage but you only get a short period to use them.

Money can be used to buy clothes, shoes, jewelry, and tattoos to customize your character. Besides customization it also improves your character’s charisma which increases the rate your momentum grows. When your momentum bar is full you can use your Blazin’ Moves.

Once in the ring, you need to find out a fighting style that will trump your opponent. Don’t ever think that the same style will work on every opponent. Charging your opponents will work some of the time while blocking works at others but usually you will need a hybrid of assault, grapple and defense. To add to the difference is that every hit a character takes can be recovered to some extent so you have to do decent damage at a time or be in for a long fight. Study your opponent closely and remember to upgrade whenever you can to stand a chance. To win the match you have to either knock out your opponent, make them submit or toss them out of the ring. Knocking Out an opponent is the most common practice because every level has something to help you knock out the opponent or a Blazin’ move will always assure a knockout on low health.

Conclusion:

In conclusion Def Jam: Fight for NY is a well-hidden masterpiece of a fighting game. It’s tactical, brutal, good fun and the fact that it has rappers beating each other up only adds to the wow factor. It’s fun factor doubles if you can grab 3 friends to play with in competitive modes and is something that must be done over drinks.

We didn’t take many screenshots this time around so you can see a playlist of fights here.

Pros	Cons
Decent Character Detail	Poor world detail
Sound is awesome	Hit sound could be better
Great cast list	Few female fighters
Tactical fighting	NA

Recommended Price: $20 or ₹1200

Final Score: 9/10