The Def Jam series has managed to carve out a niche of its own. It's not quite a fighting game, its not quiet a wrestling game, yet the game somehow manages to be both at the same time. Its uses a liscense that should even logically fit in a fighting game, and yet it does. The current-gen versions of Def Jam were solid fighting games that told the story of an up-and-coming fighter as he rose through the ranks of an underground fighting league. It dazzled gamers with great graphics, a decent story, and easy to access gameplay. So now there is a new version on the PSP, Def Jam: Fight for New York: The Takeover. Does it suffer the PS2 to PSP curse, or does it manage to rise above it console bretheren?

FEATURES:

• Fight Dirty with New Moves: No rules. No limits. Humiliate other fighters by throwing dirt into their faces, continue hitting them as they fall down, then mount and pound them senseless so they can never get back up.
  
  
• Five Brutal Fighting Styles: Featuring street fighting, kickboxing, martial arts, wrestling and submission fighting- throw down with the technique that fits your style.
  
  
• New Venues: Four new venues include Black Alley, a tense grotto-style enviornment for street fighting and dead making, and the Barge, where you can throw enemies into the water to win.
  
  
• Interactive Enviornments: From the destructible enviornmental objects to rowdy specatators who like to get involved in the action, the venues themselves are the ultimate weapons. Venue-specific "sticky points" allow you to set up the big takedown with style.
  
  
• Dozens of Weapons Up the Ante: Shatter bottles on your opponent's head and inflict repeated beatings using wrenches, 2x4's and more.
  
  
• WirelssBattle: Choose from 60 online characters and 24 venues- including four PSP exclusives- and take on friends and enemies in a wireles 1-on-1 Death Match to prove your stuff on the streets.
  
  
• 40 of the Biggest Names in Hip Hop: Featuring the hottest names in hip hop from Def Jam and beyond including Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Flava Flav, Freeway, Ghostface, Ice T, Joe Budden, Kimora Lee Simmons, Lil' Kim, Ludacris, Method Man, Redman, Sean Paul, Slick Rick, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit and many more.
  
  
• Create-A-Fighter: Build your own street-ready fighter and outfit him with thousands of pieces of unlockable licensed gear, tattoos, and bling from the jeweler to the stars, Jacob the Jeweler.

For anyone looking for a solid brawler that doesn't require re-learning how to use the PSP, Def Jam is it. Unlike the recently released Tekken: Dark Resurrection, the control scheme of the game fits perfectly well with the PSP configuration. You can't customize the settings in any way, and while that is a bit annoying for those of us who would rather use the digital over the analog disc to move the character, it's easy to adapt to. Within a few minutes of playing, you should be snapping up the enemies with devastating hits, combinations, and grapples. What is neat however, is what Def Jam: Fight for New York: The Takeover> adds to the basic gameplay.

Much like the console series, you make a fighter who uses one of five styles: Kickboxing, Martial Arts, Streetfigthing, Wrestling, and Submissions. Each plays differently, though in the console versions it could be argued that Kickboxing was the most powerful style. As your character progresses through the story, he will be able to pick up any three of these he wishes. With the number of mixed up ways to blend styles, you have a lot of variations to try out. For the PSP version, AKI also saw to add new moves for the overall game. Added in are the ability to do ground tackles and mounted attacks. Simply put, you will no longer pick up an enemy who is lying on the ground. Instead, you jump on them for some quick face pounding mounted attacks. This has added some serious depth to the one fighting style that needed it most, Submissions, and made it far more dangerous. Thankfully, the Kickboxing style has been toned down somewhat, with heavy grapple knee lift and other mixed attacks being both reversible and much easier to shake off.

Your fighter is made by you, with a slew of customization options. From height to body mass to skin tone, you have hundreds of variations ont he basic character. Also, as you progress in the story mode, you'll unlock new ways to deck out your created character. Not only can you build your stats, but you can also change his clothing and ice him up at the jewelry store. In short, you can play through the main story several times each time with a completely different looking main character.

Speaking of the story, it's designed to link both Def Jam Vendetta and Def Jam: Fight For New York: The Takeover together. Acting as the prequal to the first game, you star as the nameless/faceless hero Manny, the Tatoo artist recruits at the beginning of Def Jam Vendetta. How does he go from savior to fighter to butt-kicker? You'll have to play to find out. Just don't expect those animated cut-scenes you saw in the console versions. Every single cutscene in the game is text based. The only thing that is even slightly animated are the story scenes, and there are about ten of those total. In fact, only one venue in the whole game, the Dragon House, has the traditional pre-match taunts. Every other venue you fight in has a random starting face to face with the enemy. Sometimes, these can alter the way you fight. One, for example, has you on the receiving end of several crowbar shots to the head, while another has you simply shove the enemy away. This does add a bit of variety to the fights, but some can be cheap and put you in a terrible position when the fight starts.






All the fighters from the console version have made it to the PSP intact. Each has gotten a tweak for the new moves, and some have gotten new stats entirely. The most noticeable is the lynchpin of the story, D-Mob. In Def Jam: Fight For New York, he was a pushover. Now, he is one of the toughest characters in the game to fight. However, don't expect those cool four player battles anymore. With the amount of detail they managed to squeeze into the game, you will probably not be shocked to see its be reduced into a series of one on one battles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the game never slows down or has a graphical hiccup. Still, we have noticed a few sound glitches, and unfortunately, a bug which crashed our game.

The game has an extra saving grace of Ad-hoc and wireless multi-player. Got a friend with a PSP? you can take your custom fighter up against him anywhere you like, with all the depth and gameplay of the console version in tact. Feel the need for a quick beatdown? The game lets you do a series of one-on-one throw down battles. Every signature match from the PSP has made it with no problems, from the subway match to the window match, each is in tact and just as playable.

Def Jam: Fight For New York: The Takeover is a solid rental or buy for anyone who owns a PSP and is looking for that brawler fix. Check it out today!