Then, about halfway through the game, Fat Joe challenges you to a steel cage fight. You’re accumulating experience points and you’re leveling up your abilities, and all is well. So you’re beating up fighters-such as Omar Epps, Danny Trejo, Ice-T, and Sean Paul-and yes, it’s difficult, but it’s not too difficult. “I’mma take your tongue out! And lick my ass with it!” Classic. Its power move is contextual you require a nearby wall to pull off the flying kick. If you’re a beginner, never start with Martial Arts. Wrestlers can suplex or powerbomb their opponents. Street Fighters can throw wild haymaker punches. One unique aspect of Fight for NY is that you cannot beat your opponent with basic punches and kicks you have to finish them with a final, devastating move. You weigh this when choosing your fighting style (you can eventually choose up to three): Street Fighting, Wrestling, Kickboxing, Submissions, and Martial Arts. Most of the time, however, you’ll be fighting on your own with your bare hands. Occasionally, the crowd takes an even more active role, holding you in a full nelson while your opponent pounds the crap out of you. During the fight, you can grab objects from the rowdy audience, ECW style. You fight everywhere: a subway station, an old timey saloon, an MMA steel cage, and an underground parking lot, to name a few spots. So the basic premise is that you get recruited by Method Man as part of an underground ‘fight club’ circuit. Clever and cool-and when you see your designed character talking and interacting with Method Man two minutes later, it’s even cooler. The game accomplishes this through a unique framing device-you’re sitting with a forensic artist, and she’s ‘drawing’ the suspect at a crime scene.

The single player campaign gives you the opportunity to create your own fighter-you can even select the voice that you want.

And I’m hard pressed to think of a fighting game as purely fun a s Def Jam: Fight for NY, which retains its humor, accessibility, and entertainment value even today.

First and foremost, however, games should be fun. All told, on an on-and-off basis, I’ve been playing this game for close to ten years.įrom an objective, competitive perspective, the Street Fighter games are the best fighting games ever made-they have the diversity, the strategy, and the depth of gameplay. I’ve logged hours of multiplayer with my friends. I’ve probably beaten it six or seven times, not including the single player campaigns I’ve started but never finished. I first played Def Jam: Fight for N Y on Playstation 2, and then on the Wii (via its Gamecube backwards compatibility).

Elephant man def jam fight ny