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Streets of Rage
 
   
 

Enter the Streets of Rage.

Name: Streets of Rage

Genre: Side-scrolling beat-'em-up

Publisher: Sega

 

Review by Swift

 

I will say this about the first Streets of Rage title; it's not perfect. It's certainly not the best. In fact, I enjoy the two sequels more than the first Streets of Rage in terms of gameplay. I'm not going to deny it; nostalgia is the one thing that makes me come back to this game over and over, but even now, I'm still glad I downloaded it.

The story is that some bad guy by the name of Mr. X has cast a negative influence over the streets, to the point that nobody is safe anymore with thugs patrolling everywhere. Three ex-cops decide to take the law into their own hands and get rid of this guy, thereby making the streets a safe place again.

Streets of Rage is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up, where you can play as one of the three ex-cops; Adam, Axel and Blaze. Each of them plays differently, with Blaze being the quickest yet weakest character, Adam being the complete opposite (very strong but slow) and Axel being the all-rounder (though his jumping sucks). You get to choose between one of these three characters to play as.

In the game, you are essentially walking up and down the streets or various other places beating up thugs until you reach the end of the stage and come face to face with a boss. That's essentially all you do. There are ways in which you can call for assistance – by hitting the A button you can summon a police car to use weaponry to take down any enemy surrounding you. This defies logic in that the missiles do not affect you at all, and sometimes the police cars can be summoned at places that logically would not seem possible. Putting that aside though, the police cars can in some instances be very helpful.

You can also play this game in a co-op multiplayer, which is actually kind of fun, as you can team up to take down enemies. The only major difference in multiplayer is that you have to face down two bosses at the end of each stage instead of the one you would face in single-player, but it's not that much of a problem. It just adds challenge to what is, unfortunately, a fairly easy game.

The lack of originality in design also shows, as some character sprites are reused a lot. Yet again, this is present in the sequels to Streets of Rage, but is not shown as drastically as it is here. One case in particular is the boss at the end of the level on the ship – the bosses are exact duplicates of Blaze, just wearing a different colour.

The graphics aren't all that great, at least not compared to the sequels, though the music is fantastic and incredibly memorable.

Overall, I have to say, if you must download a Streets of Rage title, I'd get the second one, as that is easily the best of the entire trilogy. That's not to say that this is a bad game – it isn't – but this game is not as good as its sequels. Though if you really want to have the complete Streets of Rage trilogy, I say this game is an okay side-scrolling beat-'em-up that does offer up some fun.

 

RATING:

7/10

 
   
 

Fans and their reviews of video-games. xD