Some games give you a lot to talk about, and some others are pretty straight-forward mindless fun!
I don’t have a huge history with the Streets of Rage series, but I am quite familiar with multiplayer games, and this just happened to be one of the popular ones when I looked at lists online. Still, I never prioritized it as much when I had plenty of other options, and I also wasn’t a big fan of the artstyle from the screenshots, since I really preferred the pixelart style the series had had during its original trilogy on the Sega Genesis.
In any case, I saw the physical edition of Streets of Rage 4: Anniversary Edition for cheap online, I lost control again, and by the time I noticed I had the game on my collection and pretty much played from start to finish with friends on a weekend.
While this is a fantastic game I will return to many times, I didnt’t have that much to say about it and it’s not like I am incredibly passionate for it—or so I thought. I almost didn’t feel like writing a review and sharing it because I don’t think I add anything new to the conversation, as someone who isn’t super familiar with beat’em ups and such.
However, I write whatever I want here so that’s irrelevant :P
The story is simple and to the point. The children of Mr. X (a villain from previous games) started their own Crime Syndicate and have brought the city to chaos once again, so it’s up to you to save the city once again, venturing into the streets of rage to clean it up from the criminals raoming around.
The gameplay is great! it’s a beat’em up after all. It’s fun, it’s easy to learn, but there’s a high ceiling to master especially if you are chasing high scores. You basically have regular attacks, throws, and Blitz moves. A new addition to the series are some special attacks, which will lower your HP, however, succesive attacks will let you recover it, unless you get hit, providing a great risk-reward balance that I enjoyed a lot. There’s a variety of characters, some new ones and some old ones, all of them with their own unique styles. Tanks, lightweights, etc.
The art was neat. As I mentioned before the franchise started and stuck on the Sega Genesis, and never went through an early 3D graphics phase or high-res pixelart like other classic series did. This new entry—a couple decades after the previous one—went for hand-drawn character art, which looks absolutely incredible. At first I wasn’t a fan, but as soon as I started playing it, the animation work did its magic. It works perfectly and the lightning, shadows and other visual effects make the whole thing amazing. The locations and background art is good too, some of it is inspired by old stages from the original trilogy , but most are brand new ones that fit right in with the overall aesthetic. Every boss and enemy has pretty good animation and attack patterns too.
The soundtrack of this game is as amazing as it gets. It fits perfectly with the rest of the franchise and it’s one of the main standouts of the game. This will hype you up like nothing else and get you in the mood to go to the streets and punch some criminals and corrupt policemen. Seriously though, it adapts depending on the action going on and is something I’ll definitely listen to while going to the gym or running around.
Some other cool things this game offers are a Roguelike mode, which comes included in the Switch version (both physical and digital) and some great extras like concept art, pixel art, character profiles, a PvP mode, etc.
Overall, this game was a fantastic experience to go through. This review was made after a single playthrough of the campaign and a couple of runs of the roguelike mode, I think there’s quite a lot of other things yet to experience, and I kind of want to get better at it on the Roguelike mode.
