Def Jam: Icon [PS3]

It's a tough time for hip-hop. Sales are down over 20 percent, audiences are dissatisfied with the image and lyrics of the lifestyle, and even CNN is running articles asking if the music has stagnated. All that makes it even more difficult to swallow EA's third Def Jam fighting game, Icon, in which rap superstars duke it out to thumping beats amid shattering urban arenas.

Indeed, Icon focuses on many of the aspects of hip-hop we've grown frustrated with: violence, bling, money and power. It (sometimes) takes place on the streets, but it's not about the streets or the neighborhood. And the core of the game -- the fights -- are too slow and unbalanced to overcome our disillusionment with the image. In short, Icon ain't keepin' it real.

The Def Jam games have never been exactly deep in the classic fighter's sense of the word, but Icon reduces the formula even further. Despite a greater number of controls to memorize, it seems like there's less to do, or at least less that works from fight to fight.

As per tradition, the face buttons launch attacks, but that's not the meat of the game. The right stick is used to unleash a series of context-sensitive blows, and can be used in concert with one of the shoulder buttons to scratch the background track like a DJ, essentially resetting the beat to trigger an environmental attack.

Those environmental attacks are the key to the game. Every arena, whether it's a neighborhood street or the BET stage, bounces and shakes with the beat of the soundtrack. Hazards are timed to major beats, and explosions, bouncing cars and stage pyrotechnics all put more hurt on an MC than any fist.

Using them takes a while to learn, because the game moves at a much slower pace than most fighters. Maybe that's because the MCs, or their digital counterparts, are bigger and thicker than most fighting characters. It might simply be difficult to react quickly wearing a massive parka. Regardless, the game's rhythm takes some getting used to, even with big obvious beats guiding the actions.

It's not even the slow fighters that prove most frustrating. After a short while, you'll learn to sink into Def Jam's rhythm and find a sense of movement, albeit one that falls short of Super Street Fighter II Turbo speeds.

Def Jam's most damaging flaw is the single-mindedness of the combat. Unleash all the punch and kick combos you want, but in very short order it will become obvious that environmental hazards are the only way to take an opponent down. Basic punches are useful only for setting up a throw or to lead into one of the moves unleashed by the right stick. You'll almost never be able to humiliate an opponent by using a love tap as the final blow; it often seems as if a straightforward punch does no damage at all.