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Thursday 12 October 2006 A feature planned for Xbox 360's next-gen outing of Def Jam, EA's hip-hop flavoured fighting game, will enable you to import your own songs into the action, see how they affect the beat-driven fighters and their moves, and even set up clashes between your chosen track and a friend's preferred rhythm.
"Let's say you like speed metal and I like Sade," says lead designer Kudo Tsunoda, "so we both put in our songs and we fight and I can prove to you that Sade is better than speed metal," Tsunoda revealed to MTV.com.
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As we found out in our last eyes-on with Def Jam next-gen, this episode of hip-hop battling emphasises the link between sound and action, so arenas reverberate to the rhythm of the music, each fighter's moves are tuned to work best against a certain type of track and hazards around you are triggered by the ever-pumping beat. "That's the main thing of the game - knowing the beat's coming and pow!" Tsunoda says.
Plans for next-gen Def Jam will see a move away from the gritty, underground feel of previous titles, with Tsunoda commenting that TI - one of the rap star characters in Def Jam - is "not hanging out in these underground fighting clubs".
Other features will also include the ability to build your own hip-hop empire, releasing music videos cut with scenes from your fights and signing up other artists to your label.
Tsunoda is aiming to shake up the world of beat-'em-ups with Def Jam's fresh, intriguing beat-based focus: "There haven't been any real innovations in the fighting-game genre in the longest time. It's all the same."
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Next-gen Def Jam won't burst on to the scene until well into next year but expect to be moved by its ambitions when it finally takes centre stage.
Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.
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