Def Jam: Icon Demo Impressions

Last night, I have downloaded the game demo to get a feel of how it plays.  I admit that I was kind of intrigued by the game since it has been announced because it’s touted to have a radical departure from the previous Def Jam incarnations…which I’m not too crazy about.

When I saw the first gameplay video a few months ago, I was impressed by how the game looks (albeit the character facial expression is always lifeless despite the detail)…but was let down on how the game moves…to take a quote from the movie “Invincible”: I’ve seen glaciers move faster.

Now with the actual game in hand, I have nothing really positive to say about it apart from the nice graphics and somewhat-consistent framerate:

• The EA trademark long loading times (to think this is loading from the HDD, i can’t imagine how it would be loading from a DVD!)
• The characters still move stupid slow.
• Combos are absent.  Nada.  Zilch. 
• Next-to-impossible throw maneuvers.  You have the simple throw wherein you use the right analog stick and then there’s throwdowns, where you use the analog stick + the D-pad.  What? 
• Unintuitive blocking system.  
• The “fighting with the music beat” and music mixing is utterly POINTLESS.  I couldn’t care less about throw my opponent in the exact beat; I just want to beat the crap out of him.  And DJ mix move?  Wow, so underwhelming.
• The deal breaker for me is the off-the-wall button configuration for punches or kicks.  Note that it’s not punch AND kicks.  you press the X,Y,A,B to do upper right/left strike and lower right/left strike respectively…depending on the character, it would either punch or kick.  Big Boi doesn’t have a “kick” button.  T.I. is all kicks.  Now to do a super stike or kick…you use the right analog stick!  Holy crap, talk about convulted button configuration.  I needed to pause the game several times to review the button config.

I really wanted to like this game.  It’s just horrible.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.