My memories of arcade style brawlers are of playing them in an actual arcade with friends at birthday parties or at someone’s house on a NES, SNES, or Genesis. However, I don’t have much fondness for playing them by myself. My console library as a kid was mostly RPGs, platformers, and sports games and I just never felt the desire to ask for these myself (OK, I did own TMNT on the NES but everyone owned that one).
Arcades are long gone and the friend’s I played these with on their home systems have either moved on from games or, like most people, the arcade brawler genre all together. So, I took to Streets of Rage 4 knowing my experience with the game would not match my memories. My skill level in these games though sure did.
Look, I’m bad at these types of games. At the arcade I always had to spend way more tokens than everyone else to keep continuing in the game and on consoles, I was the one burning our continues screwing everything else up. Fortunately, Streets of Rage 4 has variable difficulties accounting for the masters of the genre and well… me.
One of the big things about these games is your character. Playing solo, I could choose any of the four characters open at the start. Blaze and Alex are returning classic characters and Cherry and Floyd being the newcomers. I went with the classic character Blaze. She has an awesome look to her, much better than her scraggly geriatric partner, and generally women are faster characters in these types of games, which fits my playstyle (more on this in a bit). Playing on normal, I pretty much sucked so I dropped it down to Streets of Rage and settled in to a rythym where I’d lose about half of my lives but be able to finish a level.
You have your standard punch and kick, as well as a super move. One thing, I didn’t notice at my disposal was a power move but occasionally would do something cool. Turns out, I either missed a tutorial prompt or it was never shown but the game actually has an interesting risk/reward system for it’s power moves. In a lot of brawlers, you can expend energy to perform a power move. Streets of Rage 4 however, allows you to perform the power move and then the cost goes in to a reserve bank which you can earn back by not taking damage over a set period of time. Once I learned this, I started to perform a bit better (not much because I still suck).
The game is pretty short, like most arcade brawlers are, clocking in at about two to three hours over 12 levels. I’m sure better players than me though are clearing it way quicker but honestly, the game is designed for you to tackle it over and over improving your scores. It actually encourages this by having a lifetime score that provides unlocks as you hit thresholds. It aso provides bonuses for playing as the different characters for the first time, which leads me back to my selection of Blaze. Turns out Cherry is the faster, easier (more fogiving) character that fits my play style. Where I scored a D on the first level on Normal, I improved that to a B with Cherry (I also had the knowledge of the power moves at this point to). I’d still suck at the game but she probably would have made my playthrough much easier and she carries a guitar everywhere with her.
So the game plays like you’d expect and it takes up the amount of time you’d expect, providing plenty of replay value for score chasers. But how does it look and sound? Well, if you are a fan of these types of games, Streets of Rage 4 looks exactly like you remember those classic aracade brawlers looking (side by side it looks so much better) and the music is top notch. Seriously, this is an awesome looking and sounding game. The visuals are beautiful classic animation styled and the soundtrack is filled with great music.
If you are a fan of the genre, I can’t see any reason not to recommend this to you. It’s a pretty awesome little game. If you aren’t a huge fan (like me) then I’d say give it a try on Game Pass, as it is included there. Maybe see if you can get someone to play it with, as I assume that would make it even more enjoyable. Either way though, this is an impressive release.
Played on: XB1
Time to finish: 2.5 hours
About Author
