Have you ever found one of those video games where you wish more people would hear about them? Not as in an acclaimed franchise that you want everyone around you to try out, or small independently made games that no one has ever heard of due to obscurity. I mean games that pop up one year and then proceed to be forgotten. Let’s take Psychonauts for instance, because it’s one of the best examples of almost fading into obscurity. The original game sold extremely poorly and was released on a console no one really wanted to buy. The game was incredibly goofy and well written, but at the same time that wackiness drove players away. The game was a flop at launch, but it doesn’t mean it was terrible. Years later people began discovering Psychonauts and the magic lying underneath. It was a game ahead of its time and people praised how geniusly made the story was. This success eventually led to one million copies being sold and the sequel which came out this year. We’re not here to talk about Psychonauts though, because that’s what we did a month ago. I’m here to talk to you all about a franchise that a lot of gamers, including myself, have forgotten even existed.
The year is 1991, the old school days of the video game industry. Microsoft didn’t come out with the Xbox yet, and neither did Sony come out with the Playstation. We didn’t have 3D modeled characters or environments due to technological limitations. Even if a game did look 3D then it was because they were finding ways to bend 2D sprites to make them look 3D. There were two main competitors in the video game industry and they both hailed from Japan. The first we all know very well, Nintendo, and the other you probably didn’t know even made gaming consoles. That company was Sega and in 1991 they would begin their rivalry with Nintendo to see who was the number one company in the video game industry. The king of consoles is what we all called it. Nowadays we call it the Console Wars, but at least back then it was about the companies trying to look the coolest rather than whose fans can shout the loudest.
Nintendo pulled out the SNES, which stood for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. 16-bit graphics, a vibrant color palette, more strength than the NES, and the ability to create longer and more complex adventures. The Super Nintendo had a very strong library and it grew stronger with time. A Link to The Past, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and much more. Meanwhile Sega was stepping onto the scene with their brand new spanking system, the Sega Genesis. It could take more pixels than the Super Nintendo, ran faster than the Super Nintendo, and had its own library of games. We all remember Alex Kid right? No. You don’t, but jokes aside it had a strong collection of games despite some of them never being touched by Sega ever again.. One you all know of. The speedy blue blur we all know, Sonic The Hedgehog. We’re also not here to talk about that. Then what the bloody hell are we here for?!
During the year the original Sonic The Hedgehog came out, definitely not that weird one released for the Xbox 360, another game was made to serve as a selling point for the Sega Genesis. It was a fighting game, but it wasn’t your average fighting game. It was a side-scrolling beat 'em up influenced by other games of the genre like Final Fight and Double Dragon. Noriyoshi Obda, the director and lead designer behind this game, wanted the player to be swarmed from all sides rather than have enemies flung towards them just to be punched easily. The player would actually have to use their skills to disperse crowds of foes, and if they were possibly working with a companion they would have to rely on team-up tactics. This is what led to Streets of Rage, the highly successful beat em up series on the Sega Genesis. The Streets of Rage series would go on to have three entries all on the same system, but afterwards it just…. disappeared. No sequels or spin offs were made since then and the franchise was left abandoned . Sega never really touched any of their old franchises outside of Sonic , and it didn’t seem like they were ever coming back. This all changed in 2018.
Ben Fiquet, lead artist behind Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, planned to make an animated remaster of the original Streets of Rage. He had the drive to do so, but the programmer he relied on didn’t seem so eager to work on Streets of Rage and went to start their own project. Fiquet still wanted to work on the Streets of Rage property so he approached Dotemu, a studio mainly known for re-releases. He negotiated a deal with them and they went to Sega to ask if they could use the Streets of Rage franchise. Sega gave them a thumbs up and together the artist and development team got to work. A couple years pass by and the project is near completion and set for releases. There were more than 400 frames worth of hand drawn animation, and the devs at Dotemu were busy programming these frames into the game. This would be the return of Streets of Rage and the beat em up genre. Streets of Rage 4, the fourth entry in the series and the most ambitious to date. The game was met with a ton of praise from old school players and newcomers alike, and was even put on a few end of the year lists.
Streets of Rage 4 is great, but what prevented me from playing it? I’m not really a big fan of beat em up styled games and at first it looked really mindless. Nothing bad about mindless games, but I do love frenetic combat that gets the player thinking. Doom Eternal is a mindless game, but one of the best designed shooters in years. I have a bit of free time on my hands and since it’s almost the end of the year I decided to get one more review out before we close up. Picked up this game during a sale and man I was not expecting this. Streets of Rage 4 is not only just great, but one of the most well thought out in its respective genre. It’s still mindless though, but it’s that good level of mindlessness and I want to share with you all why it’s awesome. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Streets of Rage 4 and why it deserves your attention.
Story
The story takes place ten years after the events of Streets of Rage 3. A criminal organization named Syndicate X led by a devious crime lord named Mr. X tried to take over the city, but two highly trained detectives Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding managed to beat their way through his forces and put a stop to his plans. They went into retirement afterwards and ever since then peace has kept the streets clean. However, a new form of evil would arise. One that would take the place of Mr. X. A new empire had arisen in the heart of the city, and ever since they made themselves prevalent crime has risen like crazy. People are beating each other up, shops are being smashed up, more people are beating each other up, people have unworldly powers and weapons, and they are beating each other up even more. Wow, everyone just really hates each other. Axel and Blaze never thought anything like this would happen again, but it seems like they will have to come out of retirement and raise their fists to stop this new form of madness. They also gained the help of two young allies willing to help. Cherry Hunter, an inspired guitarist who is the daughter of their old friend, Adam Hunter. Then there is Floyd Iraia, a mechanical armed brute who used to serve as an apprentice to Dr. Zan. The four rush through the streets to discover the ones behind this madness.
Two similarly looking twins possessing high tech equipment and skill claim to be the children of Mr. X. They own the new found empire, Syndicate Y, and plan to continue their father’s plans to take control of the city. Using their knowledge and experimentation, they developed a way to brainwash civilians and have them be driven into causing mayhem. They also found a way to corrupt the city police force and believe the four heroes coming after them are actually criminals wanting to cause chaos themselves. Estel Guirre, a recently recruited highly trained officer, plans to put these heroes behind bars and she will stop at nothing until her goal is complete. So our four fighters are on the run as no safe place lies in sight, but they do plan to stop the Y Twins and reclaim their fair city. It’s time to fight through the streets of rage!
Gameplay
The story is pretty forgettable, but what Streets of Rage 4 prides itself off of is its fun beat 'em up style gameplay. The goal of each level is to fight through hordes of enemies and beat the boss at the end. That may seem simple and mindless at first, but trust me the game finds a way to push you beyond your limit. There is a life system and you probably know how these work. You have a limited amount of times you can die, and once you run out of lives it’s game over and you have to start from the very beginning of the stage. Extra lives can be picked up while traversing through a stage, but they aren’t items that can be picked up in the open. You have a score number and everytime you earn 5000 points you gain an extra life. The way you earn points is through beating up enemies and chaining combos together for as long as possible. The longer the combos the higher the score multiplier goes. Your score also adds up at the end of the stage and you are ranked based on how high your score is. It can be challenging at times since when you run out of lives you are sent back to square one. You aren’t given any checkpoints during a level, but this is how old school gaming worked back then and it feels really satisfying once you master the flow of combat and just get good.
There are a couple of ways to beat up enemies and send them falling into their graves. You have your simple punch attacks which are quick and can lead into powerful finishing combos. Aerial attacks when standing still and aerial attacks when lunging forward. You can be punching an enemy in front of you and then swing around to punch an enemy behind you. Grapple a guy and slam them into the ground, or suplex them over your back and slam them onto other enemies. You are given quite a bit to work with, but what if I told you there is more than just the plain simple attacks you already have. Introducing your special attacks which are mapped into their separate button. They deal more damage than regular and can be paired alongside regular combos, but they come at a cost. It’s not that they have their own special meter, but that you spend some of your health to perform special attacks. You can recover spent health by beating up enemies. However, if you take damage before you can recover spent health then the health you spent is lost unless you find food items to restore.
The two games I can compare this to is rallying in Bloodborne and Dead Cells, but I love the way those games do it. Healing was an important element in those games as resources were limited, but it means even if you did take some damage that knocks a good chunk of your health off you weren’t totally screwed over. You could retaliate back and recover some health without having to expend resources, and it helped encourage an aggressive playstyle rather than a cowardice one. Same can go for Streets of Rage 4, but there’s more risk to this rallying mechanic as you aren’t carrying any healing items . So it’s more of a mechanic for those confident enough to continue racking up combos.
There are a plethora of enemies to fight in the streets, and they all have different tricks to knock the player down and get the edge on them. You have basic crooks who walk up to you and try to beat you up. There’s these prostitute looking enemies, I’m sorrying that I have to use that word, that will try to dive kick towards you. Others can slide towards you and some will prepare suplex attacks. Motorcyclists who headbutt charge from a distance, and these shirtless long pants guys who spin kick you into oblivion. You have cops who carry shields and heavy weaponry, karate masters who attack in quick succession and use ancient arts, these fast guys who try to crush you or set your skin ablaze, and then there’s guys with guns. Just guys with guns. Sometimes these enemies have extra health and other times they have to be attacked in certain ways.
Some enemies carry weapons and you have the ability to use them yourself. They have a limited durability level and their attack animations can be janky, but they can be quite useful if you know when to use them for the appropriate situation. There’s money scattered across every level which can be added to your number score, food to either replenish your health partially or completely, and stars which can be used once to perform powerful ultimate attacks. Use them wisely as they are hard to come across.
Finally there is the selection of characters you have to battle through every stage. All of them have their own attacks, abilities, and playstyles so use whatever you think is best. Axel is the well rounded character who attacks moderately and hits hard. Meanwhile Adam is much faster and focuses on dealing a heaping pool damage in quick succession. Floyd moves and attacks slowly, but hits hard and has a powerful grapple. There’s quite a few characters to choose from and they are all fun to use. That’s about it for the gameplay section. Hopefully you can stop the city from reaching damnation.
Thoughts
Streets of Rage 4 is a great game and it helped me fall in love with the beat em up genre. There’s a lot of elements to appreciate about this game, and even though it has a couple of crippling flaws it is still worth checking out as it left an overall fantastic impression on me. The combat is great and it encourages you to get creative as possible with the moves at your disposal. There’s a lot of combos and transitions you can chain together and the challenge ramps up as the game goes on. Each of the characters are fun to use, and even though the space you have to work with is limited the encounters are all varied with the different enemy types thrown at you. Plus a ton of replayability is added to the game thanks to the ranking system, an arcade mode, and remember there are those different characters and trying to master each of their movesets. The entire game is hand animated and the art design is gorgeous to look at. It looks like it came out of a modern day comic book. The vibrant colors, visual flares, the thickness of the outlining, backgrounds, and how controlling the characters feels like a comic book itself. It doesn’t have completely smooth animation, but it still looks great. The music is great and fits in with the tone and characters. The story is decent although forgettable, and it doesn’t constantly shout into your face as cutscenes are short comic stylized panels that don’t last for that long.
The game is great and I expect a lot of people having fun with this, but this is a video game review and I have to talk about the problems I had. We already explored the rallying system, so let me summarize it for anyone who skipped through the gameplay section. It’s almost well balanced, because there’s that idea of risking your health for a higher damage output, but mostly overconfident or highly skilled players will use it because they mastered the flow of combat and memorized enemy positions and behaviors. Movement does not feel good. That’s the one thing that hasn’t aged well with these types of games. You can only move in four directions rather than a convenient eight, and positioning yourself during busy fights can be annoying because of how stiff it feels. The reason why I died a ton in the late stages is because I couldn’t move my fighter in the way I expected or needed them to. I also think the game would have benefited from having the ability to dodge or even quickstep to help make evasion easier. Some characters do have the ability to quickstep and can follow them up with charge attacks, but performing it can be odd as well. There were times I double tapped forward on the controller and my fighter just wouldn’t double dash forward. The last two to three stages can be very unforgiving with the amount of enemies they throw at you, and some of the enemy types can just be annoying to deal with.
These flaws are what prevent me from giving it an excellent score which it honestly deserves seeing how much passion was put in, but it’s still a recommend when all the areas it succeeds at are done well and the love put into this project is shining brilliantly. The art design, the combat, the joy of mastering each character and stage, and that feeling of excitement it gives. This is the game cult followers have been wishing for years now, and I’m happy they got what they wanted. Streets of Rage 4 lives up to expectations, and is one of the best beat em ups ever made. I recommend it and for those struggling to break into this genre this is the game to help you finally get in. In the end I am going to have to give Streets of Rage 4 a 9/10 an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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