15:23
Craig Mcbeth
Let's take a trip back in time to 1992 when video games were still young, heavily stereotyped and made almost entirely in japan. Today I bring you 'Streets of Rage 2', a sequel to the very successful 'Streets of rage' ( duhhhhh). SoR2 was very well known for it's quintessential early 90's theme; evident in character design, environments and the soundtrack.
SoR2 is part of the 'beat em' up', side-scroller genre, a genre which in recent years has seen some decline from its former glory days in the early 90's. Players complete levels by traversing a map from left to right (generally), defeating numerous enemies along the way, each with different amount of health and forms of attack. These two aspects pretty much exemplify the genre and is an award winning formula to video game genius. So why is this game any better than other beat em' ups? It's not exactly the first or the last game in the genre, so what makes this game so great? Well, let's take a look.
Early video games where not exactly well known for having intricate, complicated or even compelling story lines... And this game is no different. It's a simple concept, Adam (a character from the SoR1) has been abducted and held by the notorious Mr. X; whom you supposedly killed in SoR1. Axel and Blaze are informed via Skate, Adam's much, much younger brother ( I'm mean seriously, there must be like 20 years between them!) and they all decide to save his ass. So they, with the assistance of Max (some random wrestler who would put Brock Lesner to shame) set out the Kill Mr. X, again, disrupt his syndicate and rescue Adam. That said, It's time to pick your character.
Welcome to the days when people moved in one of eight directions and only had three buttons to control attacks, jumps and specials. Simple times. But yes, it is as bad as it sounds; generally the controller was the primary cause for some serious RSI's (Repetitive strain Injuries), noticeably the 'Nintendos thumb' condition. Characters are slow to react to the pad compared to modern gaming controllers, but at the time, they were great, some may even say fantastic. No need to memorise long, arduous combos; instead just mash the crap out of the 'B' button until your enemy was dead. Even better, was the ability to literally walk up an enemy and your character would grab them, this made them your bitch for a good few moves, with a partner you could take an entire screen of enemies to pieces using this tried and tested method. However, that said, two things really peel my potatoes. First and foremost is the shy enemy; you walk towards them, they walk away... you walk away, they walk towards you... This cycle is continuous, monotonous and down right aggravating. My favourite solution was waiting for the dick to get close, turn around and lamp him one with a baseball bat or throw some sharp object at them. The other issue isn't really an issue but more of a preference. When you press the special button, your character does a little display and generally fights off all the enemies around you at the price of some health. But I much prefer the special in SoR1, press that and a mother fudging police car rolls up, and the smallest cop hops out clutching onto a freaking rocket launcher! Why remove something so cool!
Playing this game with friends will undoubtedly result in hours of fun, enjoyment and endless arguments over characters and accidentally killing one another. Personally, I always choose Skate, he's little, fast and the way he controls suits my style of gameplay, however, everyone else I play with also always wants him... And as you can imagine, being six and debating on who gets what instantly becomes a 'mine or bugger off' conversation. The game compensates for the addition of the extra player by adding additional enemies and generally doubles up on stage bosses, which in some situations, can make the game harder than it would be solo. But as I've always said, the social aspects, whenever introduced into a game, will generally outweigh any other aspect in the game as long as it flows well and adds, if not makes, the game experience better.
Considering this game, along with several others, was built for a 16-bit console, the colour scheme and depth is intense and way beyond what this reviewer would have thought was possible. Then again I did just read that a 16-bit console has 65,536 available colours to use. The environments are very reflective of the early 90's, to me it's very reminiscent of the 'Teenage mutant ninja turtles movie'. The music from SoR2 is very memorable, composed by Yuzo Koshiro (who?) who at the time was known as the master for 16-bit music composition. It is heavily influenced by synthetic music played on numerous synths and keyboards which makes you feel so immersed in the 90's sub-culture. It does become a little grinding listening to up-beat dance/rave music constantly but the music variates itself enough that it doesn't become to monotonous, if anything I would say it's rather well done considering.
Score Breakdown:
Visuals – 7/10 - Unfortunately, by modern standards, it doesn't hold a candle to it, but what we are treated to is far beyond what most would expect from a 16-bit video game, bright colours, pretty detailed graphics considering the pixel ratio and just some damn fine detail put into the environments.... Except the part when we see the same background over and over again...
Presentation – 7/10 - story line isn't amazing and it definitely wasn't groundbreaking. I don't even remember caring about the story if I'm honest, you seem to zone out and just concentrate on beating the crap out of things and throwing knives at people. Any game that can completely immerse you into its basic mechanics while presenting such piss-poor story telling deserves some reward and for that it gets a 7.
Sound – 8/10 - As stated above, the soundtrack to the game is undeniably fantastic and heavily saturated with that 90's club vibe. Sound effects are also well done, punches are enthusiastically loud, picking up fruit or 'lives' makes either an interesting 'gulping' sound or a loud 'beep' to acknowledge the command and is kind of funny at times.
Gameplay - 8/10 - Sweet, simple and to the point; Kill everything and move right... Can't realy think of a simpler concept if I'm honest. Few things let it down, like the sticky controller, which havn't been improved upon the newer 'virtual consoles'; one can only assume it's to preserve the concept of the old system and not detract from the games original imperfections.
Overall - 7.5/10 - I bought this game via XBOX arcade for about 400 MS points, so about £3.50 ($5) and I can honestly say I don't regret a single penny. It has given me hours of enjoyment and some serious challenges in terms of achievement hunting. The only thing that really got to me was the inability to recover this game on another console, there are some major issues here. That said, if you haven't already played this or its predecessor, I would immensely advise It. Now... has anyone seen my lead pipe?.. I think I'll need it with these London riots...
Craig
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