Streets of Fury

In the early 90's, digatized fighters was this amazing thing that nobody quite believed was possible. Then Mortal Kombat came out. It looked like you were controlling real people, on your TV. With that leap forward in video games, everyone thought the technology would last forever and it was the unrivaled future of video games. But as 3D models got better, photo-realistic sprites went by the way side.

Streets of Fury brings them back with a vengance. The developers knew exactly what they intended to do and they went for it. And gamers like myself who still reminisce about the days of photo-realistic sprites immediately have to get our hands on this game.

Take that, and the fact that the Beat'em Up / Brawler genre is one of my all time favorites, and also more of a "thing of the past" this game had me firing on all cylinders. After playing the demo for less than the entirety of the first level, I promptly turned around and purchased the full game.

The game has the classic bralwer like interface, individual characters with individual healthbars, the same sprites used over and over again with different palette-swaps. It was a receipe for a win in my book.

Some of the animations are extremely smooth, clearly video-captured. But unfortunately, some of the combat feels clunky and unimproved. I wanted it to feel like Batman Returns on the SNES, not play exactly the same. And the unfortunately small pool of 'actors' used in the game makes it a bit TOO repetative. Palette-swapped colors, darkened (ala Noob-Saibot) and enlarged sprites did not add enough variety to the game.

But where the characters lack, the levels swoop in to the rescue. After each level is a quick bonus round, where the simple goal is to rack up as many kills as possible in a very short amount of time. Literally dozens of baddies flood the screen at once, and the game never skips a beat. Some of the levels are completely abstract as well, taking place in the clouds, with no ground beneath you - but it is still just as fun to whoop up on ten or twenty thugs at once.

The game had all of the things that I was nostalgic for in video games, so despite the lack of variety (and some of the typographical errors that this English-Degree having nerd noticed) I have to rate this game very high. It brought back brawlers and digitized actors in a mashup I just can't get enough of. Here's looking forward to what these guys will do in the future!

This is a long, deep, challenging brawler that hits every right note with me.

I'm entertained by the digitized graphics, and particularly amused with the silly poses and complete lack of martial arts superstars used for the fighters. I appreciate every nuance of the combat system; there's a three-plane system taken straight from the Sega Saturn classic Guardian Heores, multiple special moves per character, blocking high and low and air attacks / air combos. There are characters that attack with footslides from across the screen, bosses with specials that envelop multiple planes, decent music and sound effects, and cpu teammates that get involved in gigantic brawls that are an absolute riot.

If I had to complain or make a suggestion for an update, I'd allow for a save point or two. The game takes a good half hour or so from start to end, and it's a bit grating to have to work your way through the bonus levels for the dozenth time. And I'd love to see a sequel with objects to use as weapons and some pile-driving suplexing throws. But that doesn't really detract from the fun that's here, and it's an awful lot of fun to me.

Definitely a really cool idea. I’ve personally been waiting for this game to hit for a while. Well, ever since I saw the trailer a little while back. It looked cool as hell. A Streets of Rage style game with real actors? Hell yeah. But then I played it, and it only vaguely resembles any of those old beat ‘em up fighters that people like me know all too well.

The story is pretty thin. Street gangs have taken over Paris and the cops finally just say “Screw it.” and send in American gangs to fight the Paris gangs. That’s about it. It has two different story modes, one where you just take everybody out. And another where you befriend the bosses and they fight for you. But neither of them last very long, and once you get good at the game you’ll probably beat able to beat each one in no time whatsoever. There’s the typical Survival mode where you just fight wave after wave of enemies on one life bar (that get replenished a little bit after each wave). And an up to 4 player Versus match.

Thankfully, they give you little training videos on the main menu to kinda show you what to do, and to show off the combo system in the game where you can get some pretty insane stuff going.

The graphics are the first thing you’re going to really notice about this game, and while they are good … they’re not without their problems. The characters are large and highly detailed with lots of different animations going, and they all look great. The characters scale very good, and the backgrounds look awesome. But, the animation doesn’t flow. At all. You’ll especially notice this in the walking animation, but it haunts everything. The graphical effects are good for fireballs and whatnot.

But with all the enemies and bosses in the game, it’s the same 4 guys for ALL of them. Just different colors (which are horribly done) and sizes. Some of the bosses are as big as the entire screen, other enemies are only about as big as your shoe. But they all look exactly the same in the end. So there isn’t a whole lot of variety and it gets real old to be beating up the same boring looking guys. Yeah, you do the same thing in beat ‘em ups like Streets of Rage, but the enemies are a hell of a lot more interesting.

You get different characters to fight with as you play through the game, and they do have different strengths and weaknesses. But the unlockable ones are just the same boring palette swaps you’re gonna see everywhere in the game. And it takes so damn long to unlock everything, I got bored and quit trying.

The music is actually really good with a decent variety in styles and tracks and they all sound great. The sound effects themselves are unfortunately not so lucky. Especially when the characters talk. They only have a few little quotes or grunts that you’ll hear a LOT. And it gets tiresome. A little more variety would’ve helped immensely. But the music is pretty damn good.

The gameplay, the game uses this weird multiple planes idea. Normally in a fighter like TMNT, The Punisher, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, etc you move independently all over the screen. In this game however, you dash in between the planes. Which is a huge irritation and really tends to get in the way. There are 3 basic attacks you can do, and a combo system. The attacks don’t really feel like they land though. You basically move through the entire game beating the crap out of everything in site, and this game can UNLOAD the enemies onto the screen without even a hiccup. And there are little bonus areas to break it up where it sticks you in a room full of enemies with, for example, infinite Fury. Which is a meter that builds up as you attack. It goes up to three levels, where you can unleash a super move of sorts. In one of the bonus areas, you get infinite Fury where you just unload on a room full of enemies that look the exact same. Other times, the game will move faster, or you’ll be moon jumping. But the enemies never actually attack back, they just stand around saying “Come on!” and “Get him!” over and over and over.

All in all, it tries to reinvent the wheel a little bit,a nd goes back to the days of the old beat ‘em up arcades while adding something modern. But the “miltiple planes” system is a terrible idea and more annoying than anything. Free movement is much much better. The game is entirely too short and kinda forces you to play it over and over just to unlock all the characters and difficulty levels. Having a 4 player Versus match is a cool idea, but the game isn’t good enough to back it up. And the fact that they don’t run … they walk with their broken walk animation entirely too slow, or you can hold down the R trigger and do a ridiculous looking slide.

One really high point for this game though (once you go through and unlock the stuff after numerous annoying playthroughs) is that you can configure the HELL out of the game outside of the default difficulty settings. You can adjust how many credits you have, enemy life which you can make almost as hard as you want. Enemy aggressiveness, enemy count, Fury, players speed, gravity and friendly fire. Unlocking them is annoying as all hell, but they do significantly change the game.

6.0 – The game is only priced at 240 points ($3), and for the price for all it’s faults it’s definitely worth it. I got some fun out of it, and I still play it from time to time, the multiple plane system of playing is irritating as hell, and the bosses are brain dead. But you get kinda used to it after a while. The ending for the mode of play where you befriend the gang bosses is pretty funny and actually made me chuckle.

More reviews on Wasted Seconds

As a brawler and 2D fighting fan I'm happily surprised how deep this game be ! Me and my friens play 4 players versus mode during hours and hours, so much fun !

but I found it annoying. The idea of having actual people as the playable character is different and kind of fun. Yet, I found the actual graphics grating and the sound was especially annoying as it is very repetitive. It is the same sound effects over and over.

I love this games concept, I may just blindly walk into this purchase, sense there is such a lack of REVIEWS \_('o')_/.. This game is over 130mb and is only $3.. Ok, so the games basis is being a fighter, NOT BEATEMUP(on tuesdays), the game takes place on three 2d surfaces(ala LittleBigPlanet) which is an EXCELLENT idea if we ever want fighters that are more than 2 players at once. This game has a generic combo system using x,y,b, and A is jump. the ability to slide between surfaces with the right trigger works perfect, and the more hurt you put on enemies the more your fury meter fills to perform a fatal attack, each character has about 3, and it can clear the screen of 10+ enemies if timed right.

The characters make the game though, literally, I think their 100s of screen capping of these actors is why the game is such a large file size. The backgrounds are quite nice and 3D, they sometimes are actual photos to... I havn't played beyond the demo yet, but I believe these few actors are just skewed throughout the game until the end, as in made larger/smaller, get the color of their shirt changed etc, luckily they are quite funny and it's probably worth it for the short cut scenes, I can't think of anything bad to say about this game for $3, seems right. Hopefully, they pursue female characters in their next game, I'd like to call "Bikini Brawler Beach Bombshells!", no sexism intended.(on tuesdays)