Def Jam, Fight for New York (FFNY) is the sequel to the wrestler/brawler, Vendetta. It derives most of its content from its Def Jam license, including its characters and soundtrack. If you liked the source material of Vendetta, you'll like FFNY. As you might expect in a sequel, there's more of everything - more girls, more rappers (40+), more venues (20+), more fighting styles (5), more character customization, more moves and, fortunately, these are all good things.

If you're not familiar with the Def Jam world, you can take a quick test whether you'll like the source material by watching some hip-hop/rap music videos on MTV one afternoon. If you enjoy what you see (the emphasis on money, women, and style), chances are that FFNY will hold some interest for you.

The gameplay is conducted through the Story and Battle Modes. Battle Mode is more for multiplayer or practice; in it you can customize a fight any way you like. You can earn points by winning fights, and these points can then be used to unlock fighters and stages for use in the mode. In Story Mode, you'll be able to create your own character. As you progress in the story line by winning fights, you'll earn money and attribute points. Money can be used to purchase and change your clothes, hairstyles, jewelry and even tattoos. Looking nice actually has an affect on your fighting, as the better you dress (essentially the more expensive the jewelry you wear), the better you'll interact with the crowd and gain momentum during fights. The create-a-player mode is really comprehensive, and the number of options you have to customize your character is staggering. When you first create your character, you'll even get to pick your voice type! One thing that bothered me about the initial part of the character creation tool is that the facial structures tend to be the same despite all the variations. For example, if you want to match your character's face to a real person, you probably won't get anything close to it. Going through the creation process multiple times, I always felt like I was creating the exact same guy each time no matter how much I changed things.

When FFNY came out, I was initially leery of playing it because I didn't want to relive Vendetta. When I did start playing it, some of the beginning fights were reminiscent of my experience with Vendetta; I didn't feel like I understood what was going on nor did I feel like I was slowly learning how to play the game better from fight to fight. In fact, I was half-way through Story Mode before I really started to understand how things worked. The big key difference between the two games is that if you keep trying in FFNY, eventually you'll win the fight, even if it's through random button mashing or luck. There aren't too many penalties for losing in FFNY - lose, and you can still retry the fight most of the time. In Vendetta, if you were in a tournament you would have to retry the whole tournament, leading me to reset the game instead of losing because it would be so difficult just to win one fight, let alone three or four in a row. This key adjustment for FFNY makes the gameplay much more reasonable.

In Story Mode, you've just joined a gang and been given a chance to establish yourself. By winning fights all over New York, you'll cement your gang's reputation and power all over the city, and create your own reputation as a fighter at the same time. The story centers on a turf war involving your gang, with hip-hop artists and other celebrities as characters in the drama. You'll find yourself teaming up with or fighting against hip-hop stars including Ludacris, Ice-T, Method Man, Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe and David Banner, but you'll also encounter "regular" celebrities such as Danny Trejo, Carmen Electra, Omar Epps and Henry Rollins as well. You'll spend Story Mode going from fight to fight, building your character and changing your appearance and skills between fights with the money and attribute points you earn. Along the way you'll pick up a girlfriend and your music video lifestyle will gradually become more and more complete.

FFNYM is completely linear, but this doesn't affect the actual quality of the game. The fighting is really what matters.

For your fighter, there are five different fighting styles (kickboxing, street fighting, martial arts, submission and wrestling) you can pick from, each with its own distinct move set. While you'll pick one style when you first create your character, you may pick up to two more as your progress through the game. No matter what style you choose, you'll always be able to block, counter, grapple, kick, and punch. The fighting style you choose determines the special moves you can do with each type of action, but also adds special bonuses to specific attributes.

Your fighting skills don't solely depend on your attributes, however. Fights will take place in many different environments and situations. For example, you may find yourself in team battles, free for alls, or one on one's. These battles may take place in bars, wrestling rings, junkyards, or even underground subway stations, where you'll be able to throw another fighter onto the track to get run over by a train! Each environment has its own characteristics which you can use or can be used against you. The crowd is also an active part in the fighting. You can use the crowd to hand you weapons or appeal to the crowd to increase your momentum, and you may also enlist a crowd member to participate in team attacks as well.

Every real-life based character has the distinct look of his real life counterpart (this means that Snoop Dogg in FFNY really looks like Snoop Dogg in real life). Fighting animations are very fluid, and overall there isn't much to complain about. The pace of the fights is very quick and, graphically, the game keeps up. The animations make FFNY fights look like "real" movie fighting, which is perhaps an oxymoron, but what I mean is that the fighting looks great, in that it's similar to the choreographed fighting scenes in movies. Whether that also corresponds with realistic fighting, I really can't say. Physical damage is modeled well, and when you customize your character, these modifications show up when you fight. Any changes in clothes, hairstyles, jewelry, tattoos - you'll see them all while you're fighting.

Perhaps it's the combination of ultraviolent moves, responsive control, fluid animation, and hip-hop that make it all work, but simply, FFNY is unbelievably addictive. FFNY is a game that's easy for someone to pick up to play for a few minutes, and then that someone will find himself in disbelief when it's three in the morning and he's trying to decide whether he wants Lil' Kim or Kimora Lee Simmons to be his girlfriend.

In other words, it's safe to say that FFNY is definitely slanted towards a younger male audience.

If you're interested in the Def Jam license already, then you'll probably enjoy the large assortment of music tracks that play throughout the game. If not, you can always turn the music down, but custom soundtracks are not supported. Hip-hop stars do much of the voice acting in the game, and the results are good. The story certainly doesn't mandate any serious acting ability, but the acting is effective and properly reflects the atmosphere of the game. FFNY does support surround sound, but it's not really noticeable in the game, and the sounds effects are solid.

An initial run through FFNY takes about 10 hours. Even after you've completed Story Mode, there's plenty of replay value. While the story may be nothing worth remembering, it moves the game along well in the context of its source material. The fighting is fun enough in that you may want to create a new character to try out new fighting style combinations, or you can simply use your character in Battle Mode to open the rest of the unlocks. You may have some difficulty with getting a true grasp of the fighting system, especially if you pick the wrestling or submission styles, but FFNY's difficulty is balanced enough to keep you from getting too frustrated. FFNY is definitely not for everybody, but if the concept interests you this is a game worth purchasing. A fun brawler with extensive create-a-player options and an extensive roster of hip-hop celebrities, the problems of Vendetta are fixed in creating a much more balanced, and thus enjoyable, game for the sequel.