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Home : Games : Reviews : Xbox 360 : Def Jam: Icon
Def Jam: Icon is much different from its predecessors, and EA Chicago are on their way to proving that that’s not always a bad thing for a series.
When I first found out that the Def Jam series was coming to the 360, I was quite excited, as I was a fan of the previous two titles. Then, however, press releases came out and highlighted some of the new features of the title, namely that the environments you fight in would thump to the beat and by controlling the beats you could “use music as your weapon.” Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical, and was sort of leaning towards the opinion that I would not like that part of the game.
In early February, in order to give us fans (and skeptics) a taste of what was to come – EA Chicago released a demo of the game for download via Xbox Live Marketplace. GWN was Johnny-on-the-spot when that happened, and gave a hands-on preview of the demo. Those interested in reading it, can check it out here.
As we pointed out in the preview, Def Jam: Icon would bring some drastic changes to the successful series. First of all, the controls are much different. Button presses are for weak upper and lower attacks, while the right control stick serves as a way to deal devastating blows to your opponent. You can grab your opponent by pressing Up-Up on the control stick, which is actually less convenient than it sounds. A button press would have been much nicer. Secondly, there is a lot less emphasis on executing wrestling moves. Rather, in Icon the majority of the fight will be power strikes using the right control stick, with maybe a few button-pressing weak attacks in there for good measure.
It is still possible to grab your opponent and perform some sort of wrestling move (like a body slam for instance), but you’ll most likely want to throw them across the environment you are fighting in, towards one of the hazards. Yes that’s correct; the third change to the series is environmental hazards, which means that in each place you fight, the background will pulse along with the beat of the background music. Each place then has a couple of unique hot-spots that, if you can time them right, will deal major damage to an opponent that is thrown into them. An example of this is the Rooftop level, which has an electrical box that sparks into a nearby puddle of water.
If you can pummel your opponent enough to throw him into the puddle while the bass of the background music is thumping, he’ll get the shock of a lifetime! Sounds cool right? Well it is! Another cool aspect is that you can control the beat of the music by holding down the left trigger and spinning the left control stick. This means that even if you didn’t time the throw correctly, you can still rewind the song while the guy is laying in the puddle to make sure he doesn’t get away shock-free! This makes for a very cool feature that is nicely implemented.
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