When the most entertaining part about having a new video game spinning in your Xbox 360, in this case Electronic Art’s newly released Def Jam Icon, is watching your wife take repeated stabs at playing it - that game might not be worth the hefty price of admission.
Sure, watching her frantically push random buttons on one of my controllers as she enthusiastically tells whatever hip-hop “Icon” that she’s controlling, say perhaps, Method Man, to “kick him! Kick him while he’s down! No, don’t let him kick you! Kick him NOW! Kick him in the BALLS!!” is insanely entertaining, especially as she can probably be heard by the entire neighborhood, but I’m not letting her go out and add this particular game “feature” to all the copies that are actually sold of this game.
Everyone else can get his or her own spastic spouses, I figure.
Being new to the Def Jam series, I’ll confess that it was the insanely gorgeous graphics that lured me into giving Icon a shot. Fortunately, that is the one thing that holds up to scrutiny in the game. Simply put, everything from the characters themselves to the environments that they fight in are jaw-droppingly beautiful. It makes me wonder whether that was the one thing that Electronic Arts focused on for this release, as it definitely has a very nice “Next Generation” shine to it.
If only the same could be said for the game play.
Perhaps the problems stem from the fact that I’m not quite sure what kind of game Def Jam Icon’s creators intended it to be. If they wanted to make it primarily a fighting game, then I would have expected the control scheme to have been designed with that in mind. Instead I find myself faced with a scheme that requires controlling my character through the use of the right analog and the directional pad.
By the time I’ve remember the Machiavellian maneuvers I must do in order to have my fighter even attempt one of the moves described in the manual, the other fighter has had time to go out, take a nap, wake up, go for a snack, eat, return, and giggle as he defeats me with the same move I was attempting.
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