Elephant man def jam fight ny full#

On the flip side, fighting games that cater too much to folks whose experience with the genre amounts to a spending a couple of quarters at the arcade wonвЂ™t engender the longevity they need for a community to form around them. When a developer makes a fighting game too focused on high-level play, they risk alienating newcomers that might not be able to grasp advanced mechanics and techniques before becoming bored. Soon, the opponent will always try to tech the throw (which is done by inputting the same throw input) theyвЂ™ve been conditioned into thinking is coming, which gives you the opportunity to вЂњ shimmyвЂќ out of the way and land a huge punish while they recover from their throw whiff animation.Д®very fighting game walks a tightrope between competitive viability and casual enjoyment, and itвЂ™s clear the folks behind Def Jam: Fight for NY hoped to achieve both.

Conditioning can also be as simple as always going for a throw after a specific move. By consistently smacking them out of the sky with an anti-air move, you will condition knowledgeable opponents into understanding that jump-ins wonвЂ™t work on you, which will keep them on the ground and eliminate a chunk of their offensive options. Say, for instance, youвЂ™re playing against someone in a game that likes to jump-in to start their offense. The вЂњconditioningвЂќ Princler mentions is a key component to playing any fighting game at a competitive level and part of the various mind games players use to gain an upper hand against the opponent. We also liked the idea of making a game where you could sit down with your friends on a Saturday night, have a few cold ones and beat the hell out of each other.вЂќ We also wanted distinct styles and character choices so that there was lots of depth for players to explore and lots of characters to master. At the time, competitive fighting wasnвЂ™t a thing, but we wanted to deliver strong in-room, couch competition. вЂњWe wanted players to make decisions that mattered and to have to do that second to second as the fight continued. вЂњWe designed the core of the fighting system with strategy in mind,вЂќ Def Jam: Fight for NY producer Devon Blanchet told Waypoint via email.

Elephant man def jam fight ny full#

At a casual level, players can simply button-mash their way through matches, throwing martial arts strikes with Snoop Dogg and landing grabs with Ghostface Killah, and the way the camera remains static while the characters fight in a full 3D environment makes for awkward viewing as characters can often be obscured behind each other rather than in traditional 3D fighters like Tekken and Soulcalibur, which make sure the camera stays alongside the fighters no matter how they move around the stage. Sure, it has the requisite health bars and super meter, but itвЂ™s more of a hybrid wrestling game than a traditional fighter. That is partly why Fight for NY seems so вЂњoffвЂќ when compared to even non-traditional fighting games. Just as hip-hop was changing, though, the standard conventions for fighting games were becoming only more codified in the years following Street Fighter IIвЂ™s release in 1991. Jay-Z became president of Def Jam Recordings the same year Fight for NY graced consoles, cementing the label as one of the premier destinations for rap music thanks to his status as hip-hop royalty. Records was investigated for money laundering and many of the artists Def Jam had launched in the 1990s were losing some of their luster entering the aughts-Def Jam was still one of the biggest names in music. While it wasnвЂ™t all positive-the tumultuous years surrounding Def Jam: Fight for NYвЂ™s release saw the record label embroiled in controversy when distribution partner Murder Inc. Back then, mainstream wrestling games like AKI CorporationвЂ™s own WWF No Mercy were actually pretty good, and the Def Jam Recordings label was beginning a new era in its decades-long period of influence on the music industry. The gaming and music landscapes looked very different 15 years ago.

Def Jam was a crossover the likes of which we donвЂ™t see in video games anymore, an artifact of a moment in games and music that would finally, definitively end with 2009's 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Developed by EA Canada in cooperation with Japanese studio AKI Corporation, it combined the world of body slams and piledrivers with the hip-hop stylings of era-defining artists like Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, and Xzibit into a mashup of truly ridiculous proportions. Def Jam: Fight for NY arrived in 2004 on PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox.