Def Jam: Icon demo on Thursday!

LINK

Should be interesting. The Fight Night demo was popular...

EDIT: Ok, HERE you can see it in action. I' m guessing the Gas Station Trailer is what we' re looking at specifically with regard to the demo.

I can' t remember on what console I played the first Def Jam on but I remembered I was surprised at how good it was. I' m definitely going to rent this game.

This has kind of come out of nowhere for me. I haven' t been watching it and even though i knew a Def Jam game had been announced and i loved Fight For New York, i didn' t really think any more of it.

It appears that some significant changes ahve been made to how the game plays. According to Wikipedia (i know i know but it' s late and it' s quick)...

It will feature more than 35 artists, and will reportedly be much less professional wrestling-oriented than the previous games, Def Jam Vendetta and Def Jam: Fight for New York. Producer Kudo Tsunoda has said that he did not feel that wrestling and hip-hop went particularly well with each other. However, early previews of the game have revealed that throws and environmental damage will remain in the game.

The developers have aimed to make the music and the environment a much larger factor in the fight. The environments will include rooftops, streets, gas stations, A Club (unknown location), Chinese Resturant, Atlanta neighborhood, and other locales, as opposed to the wrestling rings or arenas of the previous Def Jam titles. In addition, the producers are promising massive levels of interactivity within each environment. Fighters will bleed and show visible signs of their injuries as fights progress and as the player' s character gets hurt.

The music will actually affect the environment. Different events will occur on the beats of each song - some of which are dangerous. For example, a column of fire might shoot up from a ruined gas station on every " bass hit" of a song' s chorus. Other changes will be purely cosmetic: hubcaps on cars will spin and twinkle to the beat of each song. The developers have added more damage to a fighter' s punches and kicks if they occur " to the beat" or making a rapper stronger if one of their songs is playing. By listening to the beat of the song and then timing a throw, the player can toss his opponent into an environmental hazard just as it goes off. The player will also be able to load up their own music, and the game will have beat detection to find the beats from any song.

Def Jam: Icon will also feature some levels with area switches, for example in the Chinese Resturant you can throw, kick, or punch your opponent through the window and lead the fight onto the street. Or in the Gas Station mart you can throw your opponent out the glass door and take the fight to the Gas Station area.

Now this actually sounds like what the genre really needs. It would have been easy to throw together another wrestling game, but the changes they' ve made sound really cool. It should be interesting.

...and really quickly, the fighters include...

Big Boi
Ludacris
T.I.
Paul Wall
The Game
Fat Joe
Young Jeezy
Lil Jon
Sticky Fingaz
Redman
Method Man
Anthony Anderson
E-40
Kano
Sean Paul
Ice-T
Jim Jones
Bun B
Ghostface
LeBron James
DMX
50 Cent
Eminem