This is the kind of beat ‘em up I like. It doesn’t try to reinvent the way the games are played, the fighting mechanic works and it works well. And there are a fair amount of combos you can pull off.
Anyone who has played games like Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, Final Fight, etc etc the list goes on and on will feel right at home with this for the most part. It doesn’t stray away from the basics that make games like that fun.
You go from left to right through 4 levels and a final boss fight beating the hell out of everyone that appears on the screen. No more, no less. It has the common palette swap style enemies, not a lot of animation (which I’m not knocking it for since games like Final Fight don’t have a lot of animation either) and bosses at the end of each level. Pretty simple run of the mill stuff. It does have some story to it, 99% of which is told through cut scenes that actually look pretty good, even though the story was apparently written by someone who doesn’t have English as a main language because there are a lot of grammar errors and whatnot. But at least it’s there. A city that used to be a good place to live in taken over by gangs and a big corrupt business looking to buy out the entire city. At least it’s not “hey, someone got kidnapped. Go get ‘em.”
The graphics are pretty basic, and while they aren’t horrible … they aren’t that great either. There’s a lot of palette swapping going on, and not that many enemy types. Everyone appears to have a weird duck style walk which just looks weird, and everyone has a very flat cardboard cut-out style look to them. The animation is also pretty basic, it doesn’t seem to be using any more than it actually needs, which is fine for a game of this type. The stages themselves, while they aren’t all that detailed they do look pretty good. But they have the same problem everything else has in the fact that they just look flat. The graphics may end up being a turn off for some people because the characters just look strange. Although the little rain effect in the prologue looks pretty good. But there’s no little animations of the rain hitting the ground.
The sound effects are also disappointingly light. There’s really only ONE sound effect in the entire game, and that’s the smacking sound that gets heard when a hit is landed. The music is pretty decent for the type of game it is though, and there is a fair amount of variety.
The gameplay is what really saves this game, because the fighting mechanic, as I said, works pretty good. You have three main options. Punch, kick and a grab. You can string together combos using those, when you grab an enemy you can either punch him, knee him in the face or flick the right analog stick to throw them. There are enough options for different moves that keep the game from getting boring, which is great. There are some things that are common in these types of games missing though. There aren’t any kind of special moves that will damage all the enemies on the screen, there aren’t any pickups of any kind (such as health or baseball bats or pipes. You know what I mean), and most importantly of all. It’s only single player. That’s what helped to kill Final Fight on the SNES. If this game had 2 or better yet, 4 player support it would rock. And, while giving you the option of being able to play any level you want is nice, it’s available right off the bat. I personally think something like that should be saved on a level by level basis. Beat level 1, it’s unlocked. Beat level 2, it’s unlocked. You get what I mean. There aren’t any difficulty levels either, and other than one boss, the game is pretty easy.
And the game is also rather short, only going through 4 levels, and then the final fight with the head hancho who was entirely too easy.
6.5 – Despite all the gripes I’ve got about it, it’s only 80 points and damned well worth it if you like games like this. It’s missing quite a few important things for games of this type (the biggest being multiplayer), and the presentation isn’t all that great. But once you get past that and the grammar errors and all that and play it, if you’re a fan of games like this you’ll probably like it. I know I do, and I’m still trying to pull off all the little combos … there’s just ONE that’s eluding me right now. :)
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