Def Jam: Icon Preview

Last week, Electronic Arts officially inaugurated its Chicago-based development studio. The studio was formed over two years ago after EA acquired the Chicago area developer NuFX. EA Chicago has been in operation since then, with the commercially and critically successful Fight Night Round 3 under its belt, but only recently moved into its trendy current location downtown. Now, the studio is heading up Def Jam: Icon for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the third game in EA's hip hop fighting game series previously headed up by EA Canada in conjunction with Aki Corporation. During its studio opening ceremony, EA Chicago had one level of Def Jam: Icon available for hands on impressions. I spent some time with the game and spoke with general manager Kudo Tsunoda and associate producers Brian Hayes and Azan Martin about what is in the works for the full game. The most surprising aspect of Def Jam: Icon is how visually engaging it is from the very first glance. "One of our main design goals is infusing hip hop lifestyle with all of our core fighting mechanics," noted Tsunoda, and it shows. In some respects, Icon feels like the fighting game version of Q Entertainment's Lumines. The game's presentation, gameplay, and soundtrack are all intricately tied together in an incredibly pleasing way. In time with the music track playing during a given fight, the entire environment will react. For example, the level on display was a gas station set against a dense urban cityscape. On each downbeat, the entire city, from the skyscrapers in the background to the SUV and gas pumps in the foreground, visibly shudders. When the buildings thump, they do so in a mechanical cascade effect going from background to foreground, producing a sense of clockwork. If you manage to land a blow on your opponent right on a beat in the song, the environment's response will be much more pronounced on that beat. The bigger the beat, the bigger the reaction that occurs when you land a strike on it, so if you manage to top off a lengthy combo right as the music releases after a huge buildup, the whole environment nearly explodes in a cathartic convulsion. It gives the game a very tactile and interactive feel that is in stark contrast to the static backdrops of most fighting games. When a player lands a hit in time with the music, the environment not only thumps in time but also degrades somewhat. This means that in a long protracted battle where players are trading heavy blows, the backdrop and foreground objects will eventually become quite dilapidated, making the scene feel like a battlefield. Each level has a variety of environmental hazards. For example, in the gas station level, a large roller cylinder constantly swivels in and out of the station's car wash facility, doing damage to any fighter who comes in contact with it. There are also hidden hazards. If either fighter does enough damage to one of the gas pumps, it will explode, leaving a jet of flame spouting from the ground. Icon's music integration ties into these hazards. One of the game's standard moves is to perform a DJ-style record scratch motion in mid-air. Performing the maneuver will briefly interrupt the music and replace it with record scratching sounds, and the music will return on a particularly strong beat. When that beat comes in, environmental hazards will become briefly amplified. It's tough to pull off, as scratching takes a few seconds and leaves you completely vulnerable to enemy attacks, but if timed properly it can make for some powerful combos. Ideally, you'll knock your enemy out so that he has fallen over the destroyed gas pump, use your brief moment of freedom to pull off a record scratch, and then watch as a big beat hits and he's enveloped by a column of fire. Multiplayer adds another dimension to the mix. In a multiplayer match, each player can choose their own track. Each in-game hip hop character fights best when accompanied by his own music, but only one of the two tracks will be playing at a given time. By successfully executing a record scratch maneuver, a player can switch the music over to his own track, much like a DJ would crossfade between records during a set. "If you're fighting with Big Boi and I'm fighting with T.I., I'm going to go with the T.I. song because T.I. fights best to the beats of the T.I. song," explains Tsunoda. "Big Boi fights best to the beats of the Big Boi song. We go into the game, a T.I. song is playing, I'm kicking your ass--sorry, kicking your butt--but you grab and throw me then use the DJ turntable controls to switch songs. Suddenly your song is playing, and now you've got a fighting advantage." For players who have little interest in hip hop, both versions of the game will allow custom soundtracks taken from the user's hard drive or external storage device. As with the standard tracks, custom tracks will sync up to the gameplay. The game has a beatmatching engine that ensures that whatever style or tempo of music is used, players can exploit its rhythm to deliver powerful strikes. Turn the page for more on Def Jam: Icon. _PAGE_BREAK_ The fighting gameplay itself, much like EA Chicago's previous title, is represented without an overabundance of meters or interface elements; there is literally nothing on the screen except for the environment and characters. "It's just like you're having a fight in real life," said Tsunoda. "If we're fighting in a parking lot, it's not like there's a little health bar over your head that tells me how much you've been damaged. The stuff that does it naturally is stuff like your body language. After getting more hurt and more tired, you're going to go from a really aggressive fighting stance to being more tired and slumped over, where you're breathing hard. The damage on your face as you're taking more impacts, taking more damage--bruises, cuts, swelling are all going to show up on your face. [If] you're in the gameplay experience, in the game, and you think 'What's my health?' or 'What's the other guy's health?' then you pull yourself out. We want to keep you focused inside the game, and keying in on the other character and see their body language and the damage on them to see how close they are to winning or losing the fight." Though it's tough to get a complete feel for the game based on brief hands on time, the lack of rumble in PlayStation 3 might prove to be unfortunate given the entirely contextual and feedback-driven "health" system. Still, Tsunoda pointed out that the team is trying to capitalize on the strenghts and weaknesses of each system. "As game developers, the way we look at each of the consoles is that we try and figure out what is the optimal gameplay experience that we want to deliver to the consumer," he said. "We don't really care if it's on one or the other. The consoles are different, and it's our job as developers to figure out what is the core gameplay experience and then to figure out ways to make that happen on each console, so that anybody that has any console is going to get the best gameplay experience possible." For example, the PS3 version of the game will use the controller's tilt sensitivity to activate various taunts that can be strung together as part of combos along with actual physical blows. Tsunoda also tied in PS3's motion control with EA Chicago's general goals of making game control less abstract and more intuitive. "Things like the Sixaxis controller just help remove the barrier behind 'I'm thinking something in my mind, and it's happening in the game,'" he explained. "Instead of saying, 'Okay, I've got to do this 18-key combination' like you see in most fighting games, it's about the gestural control in Def Jam: Icon, whether it's the analog sticks or the Sixaxis controller, just making those intuitive motions that cause your character to make the same motion on screen." In addition to decreasing the health of your opponent, successful blows will decrease their fighting effectiveness. Landing a long combo string will weaken your opponent's block, and make him more susceptible to a slower but more powerful directional kick that slams him into an environmental hazard. Unfortunately, at the moment it's tough to tell how the game will hold up for hardcore fighting game fans, as the framerate is currently unacceptable. The game is certain to improve dramatically, as it is not set to be released until March of next year, and the team noted that part of the development process is simply an issue of optimizing for the new next-gen hardware. According to one producer, the game has been improving in turn on both consoles. At first, he recalled, the Xbox 360 version was running smoother due to developers having spent more time with the machine, but at the moment the PS3 version has the edge. The game mechanics seem solid and the presentation is excellent, but right now the framerate simply makes the game's pace too slow to accurately judge. Def Jam: Icon takes a different approach to single-player than its predecessors. "Previous Def Jam games were based around this underground fighting scene where the rap artists went and fought in their spare time," said Tsunoda. "I'm not best friends with T.I. or something, but I can tell you this much: he's not really in his spare time going to any of these seedy underground fighting clubs fighting people for money." This time around, the story mode puts the player in the role of an aspiring hip hop mogul. By signing and marketing artists, releasing records and videos, and managing a music portfolio, the player attempts to build the most successful record label around. One on one brawls punctuate this progression. They can arise from situations such as beefs with rival labels, crazed fans getting a little carried away, an ex-girlfriend sending her burly brother for some revenge, and so on. The game's single-player mode was not available at last week's event, but it seems to play out like a stripped down tycoon game. While Def Jam: Icon is clearly still in a fairly early state, the game has a great deal of creativity behind it and is coming from a team that is recently formed but whose first game was well regarded by both gamers and press. The presentation should be top notch, assuming all of the game's environments are as visually and sonically convergent as the demonstration level. EA Chicago is shooting for around ten levels in the final game, each of which will play out differently depending on which one of the 30-40 planned included music tracks accompany it. Electronic Arts hopes to ship EA Chicago's Def Jam: Icon in March 2007.