Infusing hip-hop music, culture and lifestyle into the gameplay, EA Chicago and Def Jam Interactive push the boundaries of game development, bringing unique.

In collaboration with urban lifestyle powerhouse Def Jam Interactive, EA Chicago - the team behind the critically acclaimed EA SPORTS Fight Night series - is integrating hip hop culture and gaming like never before. With the hottest music seamlessly infused into the world around you, the game's environments pulsate, crumble, and explode to life with every bone-jarring beat. Time your attacks to the driving bass and use falling debris and exposed environmental hazards to pound your rivals.Featuring an all-new single-player story, the game takes you deep into the life of a high-rolling hip hop mogul to build a record label, discover new superstars, and become a hip hop icon.Infusing hip-hop music, culture and lifestyle into the gameplay, EA Chicago and Def Jam Interactive continue to push the boundaries of game development bringing unique and innovative content to the next generation of gaming, changing the way fighting games are played. Key Features:Music is Your Weapon: Beats trigger interactive hazards around you as your environment comes alive and reacts to the music. From exploding gas pumps to spinning helicopter propellers, taking advantage of your surroundings is just as important as your toe-to-toe fighting skills.

Become one with the beats to rule the streets.DJ Controls: Use the analogue sticks like turntables to add beats, switch songs, and make music your weapon. Take control of the music to control the outcome of the fight!Become a Hip Hop Icon: The story mode will allow you to build an empire and live the life of a music mogul by signing artists, managing their careers, and releasing their hit songs.

Do whatever it takes to become an icon in the world of hip hop. But bewareyou never know who is watching you.Hip Hop's Hottest Stars: Fight with or against the biggest stars in hip hop.

Artists like Big Boi, The Game, Ludacris, Paul Wall, T.I., and more are all instrumental in your building a record label and becoming a hip hop icon.Online Gameplay: Go head to head with friends across the country for the ultimate hip hop showdown.

'We like where they're going with this.' That's the first thing that came to mind when the guys from, namely Fight Night's Kudo Tsunoda, showed off his team's next big project,. Though it's still early in production, Icon takes an approach to the fighting genre that we've never seen before. Or more specifically, heard.Developed from the ground up using bits and pieces of the Fight Night engine, Icon does away with Aki's old influence and mechanics to create something new. EA Chicago is big on using the analog sticks, after all, so most of the game's control stems from the idea of using those. But before we get into that, let's talk a bit about Def Jam's most unique feature - its treatment of music and how it relates to the in-match action.

You see, rather than just use the musical score as a supplement to the foreground it actually influences every aspect of the contest. As hip-hop blares over the speakers, a built-in equalizer detects its beats and rhythms, which then forces the entire environment to move along with it. And when we say 'entire environment,' we mean it. In the demo we were given, for example, recording artists Big Boi and Ludacris were throwing down to the backdrop of a gas station in the middle of a sprawling urban city. But as the music thumped over our 7.1 system, the buildings, cars, people, and every other object bounced along in tempo. With each successive bass hit, the environment became more and more damaged too.

Skyscrapers on the horizon were crumbling, glass was breaking, and cars were shaken silly. But all this isn't just for show. The key to winning a match is to use the music to your advantage. Players must time their combinations, solo hits, and placement of an opponent to what's happening acoustically. If timed right, finishing a combo simultaneously with a beat means extra damage - or more importantly - if you can throw an enemy into a structure as the cadence hits its climax, you'll get even more damage or a cool environmental effect.

Just a few examples of how this system was put to work when smashing a guy into an object at the apex of a beat: A small fire turned into a fireball to consume an opponent; a car wash scrubber slammed into the back of one of the fighter's heads; the convenience store's cadre of air tanks blasted some dude from one end of the screen to another. These are just a few examples of what to expect in the final game. This sort of audible system will play to the strengths of each fighter too. As each combatant has a different style, certain techniques lend themselves better to specific tunes. The most intriguing aspect of this mechanic, though, is that the user-defined advantages are far more important. If you know a song better than your opponent, then you're going to have an advantage since you'll know exactly how to time your attacks in sequence. Of course, your opponent may know another song even better than you do and if that's the case, you may find yourself in a battle for song supremacy.

In fact, that's one of the features of the game - earning the ability to force the invisible DJ to flip the record to a different track so that it changes how the environment moves and how the timing of environmental hazards and combo finishers work. The good news is that players aren't limited to using only the music that ships with the game via Def Jam's label.

PS3 and Xbox 360 users will both have the option to import their own tracks to change things up however they want - and because the equalizer picks up on multiple aspects of a song, any genre of music can be used. Industrial, Pop vs. Rap, Folk vs. Classical - you name it, it's theoretically possible. As for the combat itself (told you we'd get back to it), it runs off the same 'two-stick' idea that EA Chicago's Fight Night does -only the stick movements serve different purposes.

Any combination of movements allows users to modify their attacks from heavy to light, kicks to punches, and further adjustments can be made with the buttons to pick up objects as projectiles, change mid or high, etc, etc. Taunts are a big part of the battle system too, and showboating in the middle of a combo or right after a reversal will have positive effects for your fighter (an in-depth explanation is father down the road). Because of the earliness of the build, there was still a lot not working in. Only the aforementioned Luda and Big Boi were playable at this point and their move sets were severely limited. Also, the Xbox 360 version is farther along the PS3 build, and because of this fact, it's running a little smoother than its Sony counterpart (yes, we saw them both). At this point, it doesn't really matter though - because of its young age and a lack of optimization, the action was only moving along at about 10-15 frames per second. Maybe even less; so to say that we hope EA fixes that before its ship date in March is an understatement.

Nevertheless, Def Jam has major potential. With customizable music that plays such an important part in the gameplay and a truly unique concept, it could definitely influence other developers in how they approach making a fighting game (graphics aren't everything). The real question is, will it become a great videogame or just remain a great idea?