This game IS the fucking shit :)

Fighter games get boring real quick in my opinion. Most of the time I think this is because there's so little to differentiate them from all the other Mortal Kombat ripp-offs, tributes, call-them-what-you-will.

Def Jam Fight For NY is excessively cool, fucking brutal, and just plain funny.

There's four different fighting styles to choose from, but what's really nice is that none of them are over the top 'we are kung-fu gods' type shit. One of the styles does use some farily basic martial-arts moves, but the rest of it is plain brutal arse-kicking. I mean, you can throw a juicy haymaker, kick them in the nuts, or simply grab their pretty hair and slam their face into the wall, before dragging it back and forth a bit. Nasty.

You can play as your own dude or pick someone from Carmen Electra (or some other foxy bitch) through to Henry Rollins, Method Man, Crazy Legs, even poofer Sean Paul.

There's a slew of different arenas to fight in each with their own risks. Cage matches are fairly safe (apart from the dude trying to kill you) but if there's no cage then there's nothing to stop 'audience participation', occasionally they'll chuck someone a weapon, shove you round, or pin your arms back while the opposition boots you in the face. If you're in the subway, trains go flying past from time to time, trains can really fuck you up.

As you progress you earn dollars to pay for training and beef up a bit, or just buy some Bling Bling. Bling will not only gain you cred, but if you actually dress your dude with some style you get more points when kicking someone in the arse!

If you're kicking arse you build up to a 'Blazin!' rage, when you get to punch out a special combo move. These vary from slightly ridiculous flippy-flying-through-the-air crap to nice and realistic headbutting in the face and bitch slappin fun.

To end it all off nicely it's actually quite hard to finish people off, you can knock their health down to nothing, but you can't put anyone down with a little punch in the face, you've got to succeed in getting them with a decent hard hit before you can guarantee they wont get back up. This evens up the fights a lot and minimises fluke wins.

Five minutes in you'll find yourself talking like you're some hard fucker from the ghetto.

"I'm gonna rip out your tounge and lick my ass with it."