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Def Jam: Icon

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6.4 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 48 critic reviews
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Based on 92 votes
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Game Info

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: EA Chicago

Genre(s): Fighting, Wrestling

Players: 2

ESRB Rating: M (Mature)

Release Date: March 6, 2007

Summary

Infusing hip-hop music, culture and lifestyle into the gameplay, EA Chicago and Def Jam Interactive push the boundaries of game development bringing unique and innovative content to the next generation of gaming. Music is the cornerstone of hip-hop culture so EA wanted to incorporate music and rhythm into the actual gameplay mechanics. EA Chicago delivers star-stunning action and bone breaking beats as players live out the life of a hip hop mogul, going from rags to riches. Incorporating hip-hop culture into every aspect of the game, DEF JAM: ICON delivers the intensity of a no-holds-barred street fight but with style and rhythm. Music affects how players fight in each venue and environmental interactions and hazards become a key strategy to staying alive. The game's unique fighting gameplay controls introduce a new way for gamers to fight as they assume the role of top celebrity characters such as Ludacris, T.I. and Big Boi. Innovative controls give better feedback to players so they feel like they're actually throwing the combat moves. Gamers can now fight with the style and flash of the superstar personalities. [Electronic Arts]

Cheat Codes & Hints: GameSpot Hints & Cheats

Also On The Web: Official Website

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

XboxAddict

The game’s music system puts game audio in a brand new light, making it an integral part of the action. The whole game seems to course in line with the music in a synergy that hasn’t been done, but definitely should be replicated.

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GameZone

A great entry to the series, combining a fluid control scheme, pulsating environments, and cool simulation features for the most comprehensive Def Jam title yet.

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Console Gameworld

DJ controls are surprisingly fun.

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PGNx Media

ICON successfully combines the label-management career mode and surprisingly deep fighting. This, coupled with great graphics, interactive environments, and a killer soundtrack, make ICON an easy game to recommend.

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Armchair Empire

Spinning a new tune for the franchise, Def Jam ICON’s incredible graphics, a really fresh gameplay innovation, great hip-hop soundtrack, the ability to play to your own “beats” and solid online fighting come together in (Bone, Thugs-N) harmony.

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Planet Xbox 360

While the “DJ beat” system is not all it was cracked up to be, the deep story mode, destructible environments, and kick-ass soundtrack polish out the game quite well.

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GameSpot

Def Jam: Icon plays well enough, but it really shines thanks to its crazy story mode and healthy roster.

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Official Xbox Magazine

Fight for NY was a critical success, so EA has taken a curious risk by remixing the game's features and flow. [Apr 2007, p.84]

Team Xbox

In the end, Def Jam Icon is more like a bump-n-grind slow jam instead of the club banger that it should have been, but it still deserves merit.

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Hardcore Gamer Magazine

Icon is a fun ride, but it's got some pretty deep shoes to fill. It is fun and the music features are pretty cool, so give it a look. [Apr 2007, p.46]

Pelit (Finland)

A beat 'em up that is both pretty and a lot of fun with interesting music-related gameplay ideas. The controls are a bit too complicated for a beat 'em up, though. And where has the 4-player game gone? [Mar 2007]

GamePro

But as pretty as the game is, and as great as the soundtrack might be, the game's real draw lies in the eight amazingly detailed rumble locations. [Apr 2007, p.83]

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AceGamez

There are some minor drawbacks, but with its innovative fighting style, thumping tracks and visual excellence, Def Jam: Icon offers some fresh new school flava that you really have to savour with your neighbour.

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Game Informer

After a while, the recycled environments and repetitive battles start to feel like a chore rather than a reward. [Mar 2007, p.96]

AtomicGamer

While the environments, sound effects and music are some of the best that I’ve seen in a next-gen game yet, I can’t say the same thing for the fighting system that seems to lack variety.

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Gamer 2.0

Hip-hop fans will almost certainly have one hell of a time with this game, with the focus on building label and the extensive soundtrack.

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Game Revolution

Building a Label isn’t deep, but it’s fun and silly, the engine makes for some nail biting fights, everything looks great, and the musically-timed catastrophes are worth the price of admission alone.

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The New York Times

While Icon is the best looking of the Def Jam games, the combat system isn’t quite as entertaining, dropping the previous games’ over-the-top wrestling moves for more straightforward street fighting. It’s not a bad system, but it’s just not as wild and entertaining.

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Xbox World Australia

For me, there's too much 'on paper' that is wrong with this game – the music, the characters, the clichés, the lack of options and lack of variety. Yet, in practice and in spite of all this, I did enjoy Def Jam Icon.

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Gamer's Hell

Overall, DEF JAM ICON is a decent game, although a little disappointing in that the story line is unaffected by your actions and decisions throughout.

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MS Xbox World

There is no doubt that Def Jam Icon is a fun game that is easy to play and full of neat ideas for a fighting game. However due to the lack of depth and variety to the game play means you are left with a basic brawler that simply looks very nice.

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GameDaily

Too bad the slow-as-molasses combat (and too-savvy computer-controlled opponents) keep this fighter from rivaling classics like "Tekken," "Street Fighter" and "Soul Calibur," but the innovative use of music, as both an aesthetic and a weapon, adds depth.

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WHAM! Gaming

Fantastic visuals, a decent plot and an interesting music-based fighting system are hampered by some tacked-on non-features, iffy controls and a thinner roster of rappers. Bring back Lil Kim!

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Official Xbox Magazine UK

It's just a pity there isn't as much variety in the fighting as there is in the outfits, as we could've been looking at an even higher score. [Apr 2007, p.91]

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IGN

Weak fighting moves, a lackluster story mode and inconsistent game mechanics complicate what would otherwise be the evolution of the franchise.

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ZTGameDomain

The Xbox 360 version of the game lets you import your own music, but besides only being able to use your music in one game mode, the game just doesn’t do a very good job of bumping the background to your music.

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GamerNode

The move towards the slower paced boxing style of Fight Night was an interesting concept, but everything else in the game screams wrestler. The combination just doesn't work well.

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Electronic Gaming Monthly

Like the previous Def jams, Icon can't decide what kind of game it wants to be. [Apr 2007, p.88]

Play.tm

The whole thing feels like something of a work in progress, full of interesting and potentially brilliant ideas that somehow just fail to live up to their billing.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

Even if you don't own every Ludacris album, watching the rich environments rattle to the music is reason enough to give this a play. Just don't expect much depth from this beat 'em up.

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1UP

This one's fun, no doubt about it, and the way the beats bang the environment is a must-see. But its lack of fighting depth definitely keeps it on the casual tip.

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Play Magazine

There's no way to imagine these fights as anything but someone's absurd rap fantasy that was somehow shoehorned onto a fighting game. [Mar 2007, p.53]

Worth Playing

Def Jam: Icon is undeniably stylish, sporting wondrously surreal next-gen visuals and bumping the latest and greatest of mainstream hip-hop. But for all its flash, the fighting engine disappoints, coming off as sluggish and unrefined.

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GameTrailers

Despite a few different fighting styles, matches tend to play exactly the same way no matter what environment you’re in or who’s doing the fighting. It’s like an album where every song sounds the same.

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GameSpy

For anyone who feels like hip-hop is more than the soundtrack to the suburban mall thug experience, the game is really a disservice to a rich culture that involves more than misogyny and violence.

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Cheat Code Central

While the visuals are amazing, the game just doesn't deliver as well in the fighting as it should.

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G4 TV

Icon is serviceable, but it’s not something you’ll be spinning in your disc tray for very long.

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VideoGamer

The DJ system is unique and intuitive, the visuals well polished and, even with my rock/punk roots, the soundtrack is a commendable mix of uncensored beats. Nevertheless, the broken fighting mechanics and sluggish pacing are enough to keep this game from reaching true icon status.

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Extreme Gamer

It’s strange that EA Chicago responsible for the amazing Fight Night series couldn’t capitalize on the Def Jam series.

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Kombo

This isn't fun, this is sloppy. Fights devolve into senseless button and stick mashing, and often lead to a lot of controller throwing moments.

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360 Gamer Magazine UK

Stylish it may be, but ICON's core mechanics are simply too slack for us to recommend it to anyone that wants to splash out on a decent fighting game. [Issue #23, p.55]

Edge Magazine

Thanks in no small part to the slavish love of motion capture over more manageable keyframe animation, the fights in Icon are sluggish, crude and practically underwater when it comes to control. [Apr 2007, p.79]

Eurogamer

ICON may look the business, but it falls down in that most crucial of areas - it makes fighting a chore rather than an enjoyable experience.

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X360 Magazine UK

It's just about throwing people at stuff. And it's dull. [Issue 18, p.78]

Xboxic

This game feels more like "Fight Night: Street" than a next-gen Def Jam game, regrettably. All we ever wished for were new moves, new fighters, better graphics and online and EA gave us all that but in the process they broke the main thing that made this series interesting in the first place; the fighting engine.

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GameShark

The controls are slow and unresponsive, the kiss of death for a fighting game.

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GameCritics

Even if I couldn't set my love for the series aside for this review, I'm sure that Def Jam Icon's problems are so clear and inarguable that even if I'd never played any of the previous titles I would have rated it exactly the same.

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Gaming Age

The controls are a bit sluggish and sometimes unresponsive.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this game is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 92 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

JP Mac gave it a2:
The game looks great. The soundtrack is exceptional (if you like rap and hip-hop). That is where the goodness ends. EA and Def Jam effectively removed all of the components that worked in Fight For NY and replaced it with a poor attempt at making an urban RPG where you pretend to be a record producer, and added in a horribly executed combat system to fill in the holes between checking email and seeing how much money you made. The non-stop combat under the most ridiculous circumstances were annoying - but a direct result of a genre not being chosen for the game. Is it a fighter or an RPG? It's neither. Specifically to the combat - it's repetitive and it gets old. Punch once, grab enemy, chuck into environment, execute scratch move, rinse and repeat. The removal of weapons, the crowd, the available fighters, the build system, training system, and special moves cripples this game right out of the gate.

TheBigmac gave it a2:
Def Jam Fight For New York Is one of my favorite games for the original XBOX. It had interaction with the crowd, with the environments, the fighting styles were kick @ss, The fighting was perfectly balanced and controlling your character was a blast. This game plays awful, there's no interaction of any kind with the environments and is SLOW as hell. Way to Kill a good franchise. On top of things DJFFNY is not compatible with the 360 so I guess I'm gonna have to buy an XBOX off ebay if I want to play a decent def jam game again.

Shaun L. gave it a4:
I must say I am very disappointed with this game. The previous two titles were great in the whole concept. Which should have carried over to this one. All of the moves, and fighting styles are completely transparent. Yeah, you can choose different "styles" when entering a fight but they are all the same. No special attacks, no building strengths in each individual fighting style, and no real entertainment value. I bought this game and finished it the same day I spent hard earned money for it. The graphics are next-gen and very well done, but a good game shouldn't stop there. If EA and Def Jam wanted to do something different with the third installment of "Def Jam" or whatever you would call it, they have succeeded. In doing this they have successfully made this consumer think twice before purchasing Def Jam 4.

Timmy T. gave it a10:
For sure this game has great graphics and you can see that out the gate, what you may not get initially is how to actually play this fighting game. Looking at this as a sequence to FFNY is probably the worst thing you can do, instead I suggest giving it a chance as a brand new title because it does not play like any other fighter out there.

Drew gave it a4:
Initially, I was wowed by Def Jam Icon. I was a big fan of the previous two games, not because of the stars, but because of how solid the games were. And Icon definitely seemed solid. It wasn't like the other games. That didn't matter to me. More, it was about the music, how the beats could just devastate your opponent by smashing them around and wrecking everything. It was awesome. But then something changed. It was probably me. The problem with the game, I discovered, was that the fighting was absolutely broken. The concept is great on paper, and initally works well. Soon, the player discovers that no matter what blocking you do, no matter how you defend yourself (by rolling or punching or grappling), the only thing that really matters is the song. If your song isn't on, you better change it. And if you can't change it, then too damn bad. There is no defense. No strategy. The entire game devolves into a throwing match where the winner doesn't know the beats, but tosses his opponent into the same old type of environmental hazard, and watches the guy fly across the arena. The small arena. Graphically, the game looks great. Blood and bodies fly. Lighting is cool, like a music video, with special filters applied. But no matter how you spin it, the game is about playing. And playing this just plain sucks.

one arm gave it an8:
Gameplay-I don't like the fact of being forced to use the hazards it's repetitive, shallow and boring. Controls- a bit laggie Graphics- the characters and clothing look realistic, the environments are pretty interesting, but I hate the building with bass-what a waste. The color treatment through-out the fights is fun and stylistic. Storymode- fast paced -thank goodness- the cut scenes are ok ,but way too low in volume everytime they come on I have to turn up the volume to hear them. The lip-sync is ok to. Audio- the audio is good, but two things bother me about the audio: the punches sound exactly like the explosions, and the overall mix is sub-par. I say this because the gameplay is louder then the cut scenes and the hub tv area is louder then them both. It's annoying always having to change the volume-I just want to set it and leave it.

Michael D. gave it a10:
Give it a chance. I am a huge fighting game fan and all the ones on the 360 are the same as ones on PS2. To be honest, I hated it at first. The whole concept didn't make sense to me. The AI was killing me. The DJ Controls were really strange. I was expecting Tekken with Rappers. Then finally it just hit me, the idea behind the gameplay is to control your opponent around in the environment. It isn't just offense vs defense but more about positioning yourself and your opponent. I was trying to play the game like Tekken or VF. It all makes sense now and is absolutely amazing. You can't compare it to any other fighting game. The depth of the gameplay is all in the way you use the environment. I am learning new stuff everyday. The AI did an awesome hazard combo to me which i didn't even think was possible. Yesterday I learned that the grab attacks power up your directional attacks. Besides looking Next Gen, this is finally a game that doesn't play like any other game in the past. For everyone looking to buy, you can't approach this game like a traditional fighting game, treat it like a completely new experience.

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Def Jam: Icon

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