Let's Talk About Streets of Rage 4

I love beat-em ups. When I went into an arcade it was the one type of game I always gravitated towards. My personal favourites were The Simpsons and X-Men arcade games but there were others I enjoyed as well like Golden Axe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Speaking of Golden Axe, it's developer SEGA made quite a number of beat-em ups for both arcade and their own home consoles, one of the most popular being the Streets of Rage trilogy. Talk to any Mega-Drive fan and they'll tell you that these games rank among the very best on the system, Streets of Rage 2 is especially held in high regard. What started out as an answer to Final Fight on Super Nintendo slowly turned into a series that matched and surpassed Capcom's genre defining master work. Yet despite that popularity the series never lasted beyond the Mega-Drive though there were several attempts that never got off the ground. I mean there was Fighting Force which started out as a Streets of Rage game but we don't talk about that. Now, 26 years after the release of Streets of Rage 3, good god I feel old, we now have a fourth entry in the series brought to us by DotEmu and Lizard Cube who made the excellent remake of Wonder Boy 3 with help from Guard Crush Games who developed another beat-em up called Streets of Fury, haven't played that one but it looks ok from what I've seen. So does Streets of Rage 4 live up to it's predecessors or is it just a filthy cash grab? Let's find out.

I'm not going to bother much with the story because, this being a beat-em up, there isn't much of one. There's a new crime syndicate causing trouble and Axel and Blaze decide to put a stop to it along with newcomers Cherry Hunter and Floyd Iraia with Adam hunter from the first Streets of Rage game tagging along midway through. I'll give the game credit for having cutscenes between stages to give some context as to what is going on and for the numerous references to previous entries the game throws in but this is a beat-em up and you don't play those for the story. Streets of Rage 4 is classic Beat-em up action in all it's glory. You walk forward, beat the living daylights out of whoever is unfortunate enough to get in your way and then fight a boss at the end. It ain't complicated and it can get repetitive but my god is it fun. To me you only need 4 things to make a good beat-em ups, a strong cast of distinct characters, good enemy variety, lots of moves and interesting locations to travel through and Streets of Rage 4 handles all of these pretty well, for the most part. There are 5 main playable characters you can pick from and they all play differently. Axel, Blaze and Adam are the most balanced characters though they do have different styles, Axel is a more grounded fighter, Blaze is faster and more about mobility and quick strikes and Adam is slower and less focused on long combo's but more on short damaging ones. Then there's Cherry and Floyd who offer more extreme differences. Cherry is the weakest character physically but she's also the fastest being she's the only character that can run. Floyd on the other hand is the complete opposite, he's slow but he's a tank and can do tons of damage with his throws, even being able to pick up two enemies and slamming them together. There's bound to be character that fits your style. Personally I wasn't a fan of Cherry but others have said she was there favourite, so there really isn't one character that is superior to the others it's all a matter of taste.

Each character has a large variety of moves to pull off, basic combo's, jump attacks, throws, if you've played any of the previous Streets of Rage game you should be able to jump in and perform them no problem as the controls are mostly identical to how they were before. There have been some changes though, for one thing picking up items now has a dedicated button. It took me a liittle while to get used to but there is a legacy option if you want the controls to be exactly as they were before. In terms of mechanics the game feels very similar to the original trilogy but not quite 100%. It still feels good to play, I've played a lot of beat-em ups and none of them feel as good as Streets of Rage. Something about how crunchy, for lack of a better term, the attacks are in this game just feels right. Game feel is vitally important and Streets of Rage 4 feels good to play. It's not as heavy as before, there's definitely a bigger emphasis on juggling but not to an extent that it ruins the original feel. One mechanical change is that you can't knock enemies off screen, instead they bounce off the wall and you can juggle them. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand it feels satisfying to knock these enemies around like that but on the other hand knocking them off screen was an effective crowd control method and its been one in nearly every beat-em up I've played so, why make this weird change?

Special moves work similarly to how they did in Streets of Rage 2, when you perform one you lose a small bit of health but now you can regain the small bit of health lost by attacking enemies, though you will lose that health permanantly if you are hit adding an element of risk vs reward. They even added some new special moves for each character. Aerial special moves which can be done in the air and star moves, which are very powerful but require collectible stars to use. The star moves are similar to the police attacks in the first Streets of Rage only not as devastating. Streets of Rage 4 borrows heavily from previous entries, Streets of Rage 2 especially, which can come off as nostalgic pandering but it does add just enough new things to give itself it's own unique flavour. Take the enemies for example. Most of them are returning enemies from the original trilogy, even a few bosses, but there are plenty of new foes to take down each with their own strategies to take down. You'll visit similar locations to previous games too like back alleys, bars, tall towers but there are some new areas like a sewer and a police station. There's more to the levels than just walking forward, there's obstacles to avoid and pits that can be a help or a hinderance depending on how you handle it. There are 12 stages overall and the game takes about 2 hours to finish though there are some additional modes of play.

When you start the game you'll only have access to the story and battle modes but after completing the story mode you'll unlock a bosh rush, which is a fight with all the games bosses, and an arcade mode where you attempt to beat the game with only one credit. As you play you'll get points which will unlock classic Streets of Rage characters and music. In theory this gives Streets of Rage 4 a lot of replay value but there's one major issue with this, it takes far too long to unlock everything. I've replayed the story mode at least three times and I'm only just now unlocking the characters from Streets of Rage 3 and I haven't unlocked any music yet. I wouldn't mind this but there isn't much replay value outside of that. You can try harder difficulties or go for higher rankings in the levels but that's about it. The classic characters are at least fun to play as, they even work like they used to in their original game so the Streets of Rage 1 cast are as restricted as they were in that game so if you want an extra challenge you can pick one of them. Not that you need the extra challenge because this game is tough enough on it's own. For the most part it's a fair challenge but you will get those moments where the game flips the bullshit switch and gets way harder for no reason at all. I really hate it when that happens, I don't mind a challenge but when the difficulty spikes like this it really dampens the experience. At the very least the bosses are a fair fight and you can even find secret mini bosses in some stages, though the game has a habit of reusing bosses which I'm not a fan of.

While we're on the subject of things I don't like let's talk again about game feel. I mentioned that the game had good game feel and that is true but it's also a little different from the original trilogy, maybe a little too different. While the originals were a bit more free in how each move worked on enemies, Streets of Rage 4 is much more rigid and methodical, use the wrong move on certain enemies and you'll eat the pavement. You can't just go in swinging wildly you have to think each move out and time when you use them correctly since, much like fighting games, each move has recovery frames that leave you wide open to an attack. Now let me make this clear, this isn't bad and there might be some who prefer this style of beat-em up, but I don't. This just isn't my style. But that's just personal preferrance, it may not apply to everyone, but the more objective flaw is how little Streets of Rage 4 does to improve the series and how it often does the opposite. The game takes heavy inspiration from Streets of Rage 2, which makes sense since it is the most popular in the series, but it does so to a fault. I don't like Streets of Rage 3 that much but it introduced a lot of new mechanics to the series like universal running and improved how special moves work so to see Streets of Rage 4 scrap those is disappointing. The run is an especially odd omission since it's become a standard of the genre, yes Cherry can do it but why can't everyone else? Why remove such a great feature? If it was for the sake of nostalgia I don't think it was worth it. Worse still, while the additional special moves are nice why then remove the blitz moves from Streets of Rage 3 as well. The idea of a sequel is to build on what came before it not take away from it. Streets of Rage 3 wasn't perfect but at the very least it tried to improve the formula, Streets of Rage 4 taking a sledgehammer to it's additions is a baffling choice to me.

And what on earth did you do to the weapons? These were awesome in the previous games but they feel so neuterd now. They still do good damage but you don't really feel it, that classic thwap sound effect is sorely missed here, and they break for some reason. So you removed the good mechancal changes from Streets of Rage 3 but kept the weapon breaking? That's great, that's just great. I do like how you can toss them at enemies and catch them again when they bounce off them, that can be fun when you get the rhythm for it. My last complaint has to do with replay value. I mentioned the lack of it earlier and one of those reasons is the lack of alternate paths or endings, something that was in Streets of Rage 3. Seriously Lizard Cube, what did Streets of Rage 3 do to you? Look if you're going to have me replay the game multiple times to unlock everything at least give me a better reason than just going for better rankings.

Alright that's enough bitching, let's talk about something more positive. I love the way this game looks. I mean I'm a sucker for anything that's hand drawn so obviously I was going to be biased towards this visual style but even if I wasn't it's hard to deny how good this game looks. The thick dark shadows and darker colours give the game a comic book feel. I would love to see these guys handle a reboot of Comix Zone. I even like the new character designs, even though Floyd is a rip-off of Jax and Blaze somehow looks more like a prostitute, at least Axel nails the “I've lived in the mountains for ten years” look. there's some visual effects you can add to the game to give it an old-school look, it goes well with the classic characters. You can even change which food you can pick up for health, I love little touches like that. Then, there's the music. The Streets of Rage games are known for their exceptional soundtracks and Streets of Rage 4 is no exception. Series composer Yuzo Koshiro returns to help but the bulk of the sound track was handled by Olivier Deriviere and he does a fantastic job of matching the style of the original soundtracks while also adding a unique flavour that's entirely his own. What I like is the variety it offers. Streets of Rage music was heavily inspired by the club scene of the 90's and that inspiration is clear here but there's also elements of jazz and even music inspired by kung-fu movies. It's a really good soundtrack but even if you don't like it, for whatever reason, you can always switch the music to either the Streets of Rage 1or2 soundtracks when you unlock them. Streets of Rage 3's soundtrack wasn't included, what a shock, but I'm ok with that because it wasn't very good.

I'm torn on Streets of Rage 4. I love how it looks, sounds and plays but it has a lot of issues that got in the way for me. Wasn't a fan of the game feel, difficulty spikes were obnoxious, the lack of replay value was disappointing and the fact that very little evolution was done made it feel like a lesser sequel than it's predecessor. Does that make it bad? No, I would still say it's a good game but with other beat-em ups on the market offering arguably more content for less, the excellent Fight'n Rage comes to mind, I find it hard not to recommend those a little more if your after a solid beat-em up. Mind you I've been reviewing this game as a single player experience which isn't how your supposed to play these games. No they're best played with friends and Streets of Rage 4 features both online and couch co-op for up to four players. There's also a multiplayer battle mode if you want to get competitive. The online was a little spotty from what I played and due to present circumstances I wasn't able to test co-op properly but if you have friends to play with this does come recommended. If your flying solo though, I say wait for it to go on sale. Now all we have to do is pray that we get a new Golden Axe. Until next time, stay safe and have fun.