Streets Of Rage 4 is the rebirth of a long dormant franchise. You take the roles of longtime protags Axel and Blaze, as well as a mix of newcomers and familiar faces. Your job is to beat in heads and fight your way through Wood Oak City, eventually making it to Mr. X's kids, the Y Twins, and beating the crap out of them.
Gameplay is similar to the originals. You beat on a variety of thugs with fists, weapons, and special moves, and star moves. There are some differences, though. The biggest differences are star attacks and what I like to call the Pinball effect. Star moves are semi-screen bomb that can be used as long as you have one star under your life bar. The Pinball effect is when you bounce enemies off of walls, leaving them open to further damage. You can really rack up a high-damage combo by utilizing this, but you can be pinballed, too. There are times when it can be annoying. If you've played the game, you know about a particular area when this feature is overused. It's fun for the most part, though.
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| At its heart, Streets Of Rage 4 is good, head-breaking fun. |
The character roster is both exciting and disappointing. As mentioned before, you'll play as Axel and Blaze and many others. You'll also get access to two newcomers, Cherry and Floyd, and three bosses for a total of seven characters right out the gate with the opportunity to unlock more.
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| The roster includes old favorites and their past incarnations. |
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| If The Shield had a female member, she'd look like this. |
Unfortunately, the unlockable characters is where the roster disappoints. I'm a fan of Adam making his playable return to the series. Sadly, the rest of them are past versions previously characters. Yes, it can be hard to create twenty characters for a game like this, but did we really need FOUR versions of Axel and Blaze? I mean, I love Blaze, but I don't need four of her. I wouldn't have minded if a few of those spots were used on shiny new characters or even making a few more of the bosses playable. Barbon would have been a good pick. Just imagine kicking your way through foes with Barbon's nigh-invincible roundhouse. What about a modern, aged-up version of Skate...or is that what Cherry is supposed to be?
Characters can be customized with special moves, provided you unlock them. You can also change the colors. It shouldn't be hard to find moveset and color scheme that works for you. I do wish they updated versions of previous costumes instead of just color palettes.
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| You can customize characters with moves you've unlocked. |
In terms of difficulty, the game is easier than past games. The reason for this is because the game saves after every level. Barring that, the true difficulty is harder than Streets Of Rage 2, but easier than Streets Of Rage 3. The enemies are very aggressive and varied. There are guys with shields, guys with guns, and chicks with bombs, among others. You'll take plenty of ass-whuppins if you don't know who to prioritize. Some bosses from the past are back and have also changed in difficulty. This is Shiva's easiest incarnation, while Barbon is much harder than he was in Streets Of Rage 2. Bosses also have attacks that give them anti-stun armor and use them frequently, so watch out for those.
Speaking of enemies, you'll also police as well as thugs. They don't just all gang up on you, either. If the thugs and cops get close, they'll start fighting each other. I love it. It's hilarious.
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| I laughed my ass off the first time I saw this. |
On to the little stuff. The graphics are stylish. There's a lot of flash and pop all over the place. The 16-bit characters look out of place, but they actually seem to look better than they did back in the day. And most importantly, they didn't screw up Blaze. She's still hot. In fact, they did right on a few of the women. The whip girls aren't my favorite, but at least they still look like women. The female thugs in shorts are now bare-legged, a plus to be sure. And Ms. Y is kind of doing something for me, too.
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| There's plenty of flash to go with the new style. |
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| Does liking Ms. Y make me a bad person? |
Just as hot as Blaze is the soundtrack. There's a lot of good stuff in here. There's some chill stuff, like the title screen theme. There's some pulse-pounding stuff, like the Chinatown theme. Certainly, a lot of MP3-worthy stuff to be found. You can even switch things up to play tracks from the previous games. Unfortunately, this game commits the sin of not having a sound test. Why not? The three originals did.
Outside of story mode, there are several other game modes. The Mr. X's Nightmare DLC is a survival mode where the beatings don't stop. There's also arcade mode for an old-school challenge, battle mode, and the boss rush. There's a training mode where you can beat on your favorite thug or thugs until the end of time if you want. There's also art to unlock, a few pieces showing characters you could have played as.
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| Survival mode allows you to choose perks before moving on to the next wave of enemies. |
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| Training mode is the place to beat on an army of swordswomen in minidresses as long as you want. |
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| This guy should have replaced one of the Axels or Blazes. |
Streets Of Rage 4: Anniversary Edition is a good, solid beat 'em up. It's got some changes, but it's old-school gaming for a new generation of gamers. The soundtrack is white-hot and while I would have preferred a gritter look like in the previous games, the graphics are stylish. The roster could have been better, but there are still lots of characters to choose from. Multiple difficulty settings and game modes will keep you coming back. Play It.
