Do you mean the type of things that can happen to Nate in UC4? The melee combat from UC4 was pretty cinematic, but playable at the same time. Not to mention the boss fights vs Nadine and Rafe were pretty brutal, though I am not sure what the fail states look like since I never failed them when I played. That will change for the DLC, lol.
But yeah, all of the deaths that I had during the single player were due to ranged combat. But if you let enemies get close to you I am pretty sure they can use all sorts of different melee moves on you.
As far as the final combat scene from the DLC trailer we just saw, I am almost positive that was playable, at least for the most part. Here is an example of a fight scene from UC4:
You can see all the different grapple animations the enemies can use. It's pretty cool, though there was no button to block which got kind of annoying.
But anyway, I wonder what the chances are of having any female baddies to fight against? I am hoping the enemy force isn't comprised of 100% male mooks as they are in every other UC game. But so far from the trailer it looks like that may be the case. That shit pisses me off, lol.