DEF JAM: ICON.
The premise is simple enough: start as a hired thug for the President of a hip-hop record label and work your way up to (eventually) VP in charge of artist development.
Along the way you do what Def Jam games are known for: fight. And the fighting is pretty cool-- each character has his own fighting style including taunts, grabs, throws, jump kicks, hay-makers, and some very crazy aerial attacks. The game also incorporates hip-hop songs (decent soundtrack, too) into the game. Each fighting zone has unique hazards-- speakers that blow, lights that fall, helicopters that whack you with their tailblade (no joke!)-- that are triggered by the break beats within the songs. One of your abilities is a 'dj' function which allows you to scratch a record, speeding up or slowing down the beat using the left trigger and both thumbsticks. If you can consistently knock your opponent into a hazard and then use your dj controls to trigger the big bass hit, you are unstoppable. If they do it to you consistently (and they will), you are boned.
So the fighting itself is pretty cool, if not perfectly programmed. What killed the fighting wasn't the fighting itself-- it's the way the fighting was used. Because, in Def Jam: Icon, you don't just fight. You also run a hip-hop label. You choose which artists to sign, set royalty rates, attempt to keep your roster happy so that they produce more albums, choose how much to spend on certain aspects of certain songs (do you focus on air play so it sells longer, or PR appearances so that it sells better off the bat?), and attempt to become a hip-hop mogul.
Hands down, this is the best aspect of the game. It's engaging, innovative, and simple. It's downright addictive, like playing a virtual hip-hop stock market. The most unique video game experience of the last couple of years for me, without a doubt.
And it's a natural synthesis: you fight to pass a week, going on missions ranging from 'somebody is stalking Ludacris, stomp them out' to 'this promoter stiffed E-40-- go collect the money', then check the Billboard charts, your royalty payments, and your emails, responding to offers from various ladies as well as lawyers, tour managers, jealous rivals, and generally whiney rappers.
Then you fight again because, apparently, in hip-hop there is always someone to kick in the face.
The only downside is that once you have your artist roster set and the money rolling in, you stop caring about fighting. In fact, the fighting gets ridiculous in context and I stopped caring completely, just trying to win so that I could see how many albums my artists sold.
Beautiful concept. But this beautiful concept was eventually marred by the most unnecessary of aspects: STORY and PACING.
So you start as a hired thug, fighting paparrazi and stalkers, then you become a businessman with hired thugs of your own. Except your thugs do nothing-- you still go out and fight. The VP of a major label who gets $800,000 weekly paydays is in the street squaring off against an undercover cop in front of a crowd. WHAT?
But that undercover cop is just the beginning. The plot, honestly, still confuses me but it involves a government conspiracy, some obnoxious white senator, a chick you knew as a child, a face-off with the 'villain' president of an opposition record company, and Method Man. Of course, Method Man.
Then you get shot in the face.
I'm not kidding. You beat your rival and rejoice. And then you get shot in the face.
But let me backtrack.
Just before I was shot in the face, I thought I was on top of the world. It took me about 4 hours of game time to get my roster set (roughly half the game) and then my record label fell apart in what I can only describe as Def Jam: Icon's version of every Madden game since 1994's 'Suddenly Unbeatable' mode where you can be winning 49-0 at the two-minute warning and suddenly all your players turn into retarded hot dog buns and the computer scores 7 TD's and an easy 2-point conversion to win.
I was doing quite well for a while, chasing that multi-platinum record. My roster included Ludacris, E-40, Ghostface Killah, and The Game. I was set to take over hip-hop.
But Luda put out exactly one song which sold moderately well, then homie just disappeared.
E-40 put out two decent-selling songs then promptly got arrested and stopped making music.
Ghostface Killah put out one song then quit my label and threatened to kill me because, while I was willing to put up $180,000 on some crazy blaxploitation film he was producing, I was unwilling to replace a diamond bracelet that was damaged during a photo shoot. That pissed Ghostface off, I guess-- enough so to tell me if he ever saw me again, my family would have to identify the remains.
The Game was my star artist: I signed him and pumped well over $4m into two songs which both sold well-- the last one hitting 910,000 copies sold before the game took a complete 180 into Shitsville.
When I got shot in the face.
And this is only maybe 6 hours into the game. Let me repeat: you spend 4 hours building up to the fun stuff, get to do the fun stuff for 2 hours, and then you get shot in the face.
Turns out, that undercover cop and the chick from my childhood (Platinum-- when will men learn not to trust women named after precious metals??) were in cahoots and shot me in the face and buried me in the desert. Method Man shows up and drags me from my grave and takes me to an old Asian dude who offers to give me a full facial transplant, at which point I am forced to redo the arduous fun-to-do-once-and-only-once task of creating a face on the stupid create-a-character screen.
Oh, and Russell Simmons shows up. Why? He's the President of Def Jam-- HE DOES WHAT HE WANTS!
Anyway, as a 'new' man I no longer have artists. Or a house. Platinum now has my artists. I guess in the Wild Wild West of hip-hop, killing another person means their shit now belongs to you, no questions asked.
Ostensibly, the fun part of the game is gone. But I still have a score to settle, which involves fighting. Except between fights now there is nothing-- just standing on the street corner and then fighting again, but at least you can save the game between fights. You fight your way into Platinum's office and try to blackmail the crooked cop. You fight one of his body guards in the office and then are magically on the roof fighting the cop, with no chance to save between.
You beat the cop up. Platinum runs out of nowhere and hangs off of the building for no reason, you yelling down at her to make her realize who you are (or something). Then the cop shoots her. And you fight the cop again.
Without so much as a courtesy save or a 'wtf' from Method Man, You fight the same person two times in a row. You beat him again and a cut scene shows you resuming the running of your record label.
EXCEPT THE GAME FUCKING ENDS!
They promise to give you the fun part back, and then the credits roll. 8 hours of game play with 2 hours of actual fun in the middle.
I don't know why I was surprised that the people who can barely hold my attention for a 4-minute song starring Akon & Young Jeezy couldn't produce a coherently plotted video game script. Instead, they turned a potentially amazing game into a frustrating cluster-fuck which I kind of want to replay because I still never got a damn platinum album.
I must be insane.
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