Def Jam: Fight For NY
Mostly went ignored for being some Licensed game with rappers, but holy shit, it's one of the most complete packages you can get on the Ps2/XBOX/GC generation.
The game included the following features:
-Achievements: before they were even a thing, the game would award you wit in game trophies for completing specific milestones and challenges like breezing thru the first act in a certain time, developing your character past certain point and clearing one time events.
-Innovative Difficulty system: You could change the difficulty setting at any point in your home base, the catch? Playing in lower dificulties awarded you less money/development points, if you played the game entirely in easy mode you wouldn't be able to max out your character, however, playing in harder dificulty meant you were risking losing one time events or not getting time sensitive achievements, so you had to think carefully about changing the difficulty setting and thus, playing harder was more rewarding.
-Tons of customization: There was ridiculous amount of clothes, accessories, tattoos, hairstyles, moves and styles you could use to customize your character, and outfits were not just for show, a cool outfit would actually affect your charisma stat, and higher charisma meant charging your super meter faster to unleash any of the hundreds of cool looking super moves.
-Everyone is playable: Save for the low poly generic audience memberse, absolutely every model you see in the game is playable! Every single player opponet? Playable! Those 3 cops that show up only for the intro cinema? They're all playable! The shop owners? Playable! The girls that are only there to be your potential girlfriend for plot reasons? PLAYABLE! That shadowed guy you only see his foot for a second before creating your character? HE HAS THE BEST BASE STATS IN THE GAME! And in addition to that, if you saw a character in an alternate outfit in the game, you can unlock those outfits too.
-Stage hazards and gimmicks: This game is a fighting/wrestling hybrid, but all stages have hazards and weapons you can use, plus since these are "street fights" you can get the audience involved to help you beat your oponent. More than that, there are gimmick stages to when you can win by using the enviroment, one stage takes place in a subway, so you can win by having the train kill your oponent, other stages have similarly lethal gimmicks, but that's not all, there i one stage where you can win by ring out and another that takes place in a parking lot with your car and your opponent's where you can win by totalling your opponent's car (by slaming your opponent repeatly into it).
-Decent Story mode with tones of celebrities: basically what it says on the tin, the story basically it's like a war between two pimps, but instead of whores they manage street fighters and arrange fights between them in private venues, it's kinda silly, but it's amazingly good when you realize this is a game about rappers beating each other. Having the Def Jam license, you can bet your ass all artists on the label appear as themselves here, but they also threw in a few other celebirties like Danny Trejo, Carmen Electra and Henry Rollins.
Basically this game has all the qualities of an AAA Release, but i feel nobody ever acknowledges it.
ne of my gaming soft spots,good ole Landstalker.
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