Def Jam Fight for NY takes AKI's and EA's hip-hop heavy fight game to a whole new level with a whole new system for fighting, a slick presentation and interactive environments that chew players up and spit them out. Gone are the trappings of wrestling as AKI continues to refine and reinvent the engine that was originally used for WWF No Mercy. Combining that ever evolving engine with some bits and pieces from other fight games it has worked on (notably Ultimate Muscle), AKI has turned out the wrestling and brought in pure unadulterated hardcore fighting. Fight For NY is a different beast from its predecessor in so many ways.

For one thing, the fight environment has been moved from the squared circle (for the most part) and taken into the seedy underground fight circuits of New York. These environments are set in such locales as bars, clubs, construction sites, offices, parking lots and more. What's great about these new venues is that they are fully interactive. Players can use elements of the environment to batter and bloody opponents with great success; you can slam your opponent through wooden walls, bounce their heads off of equipment, bash them into neon signs or even run them head-first into a jukebox. But there's much more as well - now most venues include spectators that interact and even attack fighters; some of these spectators might bounce a bottle off your head, or give you a weapon, or push you back into the action. Some more aggressive spectators might hold you while your opponent works you over. This element of gameplay really mixes the action up and can sometimes turn the tide of a battle. Battles can be won and lost simply on using the environment or launching your opponent into the crowd. The crowd also serves as a "ring rope", pushing players back running out into the center of the venue giving players an opportunity to score an Irish whip style move.

Instead of serving up a select number of moves, Def Jam Fight For NY takes a different approach in outfitting your character. Now the game lets players - as they progress - take on several fighting styles that deliver a mixture of fight moves and styles. Players have at their discretion the ability to purchase and change finishing moves, but overall selecting the basic moves is handled by picking a fighting style. The game offers a lot of variety in the regards including such styles as wrestling, submission, street fighting, and many others. The moves in the game are fluid no matter what fighting style you choose and experimenting with these varying and oftentimes contrasting styles is a great way to get some replayability out the experience - something the first game really lacked.

Fight For NY not only brings a decent fighting system and character building component to the franchise, but it also brings the kind of style you'd expect from EA Canada. These folks know how to combine popular entertainment into the mix and meld it with a presentation style that will appeal to just about everybody. You don't have to know who Snoop Dog or Redman are to enjoy the over-the-top style and presentation that this game delivers flawlessly. From the music and acting in the game to the interactive nature of every last element, Def Jam Fight For NY does everything right.

So what other interactive moments are sugar coated with style? Just about everything. Players can spend hard earned cash to train with Rollins, Get a haircut, buy the latest fashions, stock up on bling bling (that actually sparkles like bling bling should), receive cellphone messages and tackle characters with their own chosen style. Even the beginning of story mode starts out with a unique way of creating a character using a sketch artist as a backdrop for choosing everything from the way your character looks to the way he talks. I just can't say enough good things about the presentation of this game - Yuke's could learn a thing or two from EA's games about how to create an overall cohesive and decent presentation.

Def Jam Fight For NY offers a lot of unlockable content and a ton of star from the hip-hip world including Redman, Snoop, Ludacris, Lil' Kim, NORE, David Banner, Sean Paul and many more. But beyond that the game also offers a lot of new game modes that can be unlocked - something the first game was pretty thin on. There's cage matches, fire matches (where players are trapped in a ring of fire), Window matches, tag matches, singles, free for alls and lots more. These matches are pretty cool because, as we mentioned earlier, you can use the environments to your advantage as well.

Overall Fight For NY is probably the best fighting game I've played in a long time. AKI has finally managed to step away from the wrestling game genre that made it a household name and create an experience that is - in a lot of ways - more of a satisfying experience. If you're a fan of fighting games then you won't want to pass Def Jam Fight For NY up. It's a must have game.