Streets of Rage 4 (Xbox One)

Streets of Rage and Final Fight are the two titans of the beat ’em up genre, but the rise of polygonal graphics and 3D game worlds lead to a shift away from brawlers that took place on tilted planes. Understandably some were sad to see the Streets of Rage series go fallow for so long, Streets of Rage 3 coming out in 1994 and nothing else getting beyond pitches for decades. It seemed like Sega had no interest in bringing the series back even as digital distribution allowed for beat ’em up games find an audience, but the series would find a savior in Dotemu, a company whose bread and butter seems to be ports and revivals of old games and series. When they got the go ahead to make the fourth Streets of Rage game, they did not hold back, producing a new installment that was not only packed with love for the games that came before it, but sought to bring that classic style of play into the present with stylistic flair.

 

One of the most striking things about Streets of Rage 4 is its devotion to its aesthetic qualities. The music seems to straddle that line of 80s and early 90s flavor with funk, electric texture, and a range of attitudes from the feeling of strolling a city’s streets at night to the aggressive counterculture anger of people who have to live on them. Beats are heavily accentuated in many songs as the percussion pushes through without squashing the melody, and the urban action featured is made even more energetic when the music will dynamically shift to a more energetic track as enemies hit the scene. The art direction is perhaps given even more care, crisp detailed backgrounds giving a sense of identity to Wood Oak City’s grimier settings while bringing to life the more flashy or refined areas like the concert, dojo, or the Y Syndicate’s tower. The characters are animated beautifully as well, the playable cast full of vigor as they bounce in place ready for action and their hits are backed up by powerful follow-throughs and radiant energy flourishes. The thugs you are up against aren’t always quite so flashy, but many of the boss characters have stylish attacks that also pair well with their tells so you can avoid heavy injury when they whip out the big guns.

 

Streets of Rage 4 keeps the right sensibilities steeped in the past with how it pays homage to the era the series was built up in, but the story takes an odd approach of setting itself ten years after Streets of Rage 3 which doesn’t quite place it far in the past or too close to the modern day. Following the collapse of Mr. X’s organization in the previous games, Wood Oak City had thought itself safe from crime bosses and unusual technological experimentation, but his twin children have aged up into establishing their own Y Syndicate to help set the city on the decline again. Corrupt cops, rampant crime, and a budding plot to take things to a new level of control force a few citizens into action to fight back. Axel Stone and Blaze Felding return to the series looking much older and having taken different trajectories in life after breaking away from police work, but they find help from the young musician Cherry and the metal-armed Floyd in fighting against all of the goons and underlings who like Wood Oak City better under the new management.

Each of the four default playable characters fights in a different manner to each other that is easily felt if you switch between them. Floyd can hit single enemies incredibly hard and throw them around with ease but his lumbering stride and slower combos means he’s not a great fit for crowds of enemies. Cherry is a much more athletic and speedy character despite having to land more hits to put a foe down and is actually the only one of the four who can run around the battlefield. Axel feels like he can dish out hits and stand his ground better than Blaze, but Blaze has better aerial attacks than him and reaches out further with her kick attacks. Many more unlockable characters bring in their strengths and weaknesses, with the game even having pixelated versions of the playable characters from previous Streets of Rage titles that might feel a little stilted option wise but can surprisingly hold their own both in the story and in the multiplayer combat mode where you can fight against each other.

 

Players can swap between characters between levels of the main adventure to see who they like playing as, but one thing that makes doing so easy and enticing is the fact that most characters rely on the same controls to pull off their attacks. Every character uses the same button for the basic combo, but you can throw in some control stick inputs to target people behind you or pull off moves like a flaming knee or two handed electrical slam. Aerial attacks let you leap in to start a combo, and if you approach an enemy you can automatically grab them and even customize how you follow up on having them in your grip. While all of the fighting inputs are kept simple, you can chain them together with the same complexity you’d expect from a fighting game with move cancels and attack pacing allowing for some heavy hitting strings. The need for such advanced techniques and attack planning only arises in higher difficulty levels, but you’ll still need to be a smart fighter on lower ones to wear down bosses before they deplete your lives stock and avoid being overwhelmed by enemy groups.

 

Every character has a set of special attacks that can serve special purposes as well and are easy to activate. A defensive special is usually good for forcing enemies back to give you some breathing room while the offensive specials and their aerial versions focus more on heavy targeted damage. When you initially learn these come with a health cost it might feel like it’s hard to justify using these, but the life lost can actually be restored so long as you land enough hits before you get hit again. This actually not only allows players to utilize these special and often visually spectacular moves more often, but it adds a new layer strategy to battles where you want to time the use well so you can guarantee you can replenish the lost health. An extra powerful star move can also be executed so long as you found a star in the level, these often combining the benefits of a defensive and offensive special while covering a lot more of the battlefield to serve as an ace in the hole with an appropriate limitation on its use. Add in plenty of different usable weapons you can pick up like knives, bats, tazers, grenades, and even morning stars and you have a battle system with a lot of options but none that require esoteric knowledge to execute or overwhelm the player with options. Weapons wear down with use, special moves have associated costs, and your combos work well even if you don’t string them together like a pro, so fighting in Streets of Rage 4 is satisfying and deep even for players who don’t invest in learning the mechanics.

Player options are only one half of how enjoyable fights are in a brawler though, and thankfully the enemies can hold up their end of the experience. Admittedly, some of the goon you encounter in the first level are still going to be cropping up as foes in the last, but as the game progresses you will notice these enemies go from simple fodder to test your moves on into foes with some tricks of their own. Their intelligence will increase and they’ll start whipping out their better attacks more often, and as they start coming in larger groupings, come in swinging with their own weapons, or team up with other baddies, their reappearance becomes more justified. There are still plenty of enemy types, whip-wielding women, big obese men who roll around the battlefield, martial artists who try to counter your moves and stun you with their kick combos all added into the mix over time to make you consider how to approach your enemies beyond just hammering attack buttons. With some foes you need to pick your moment to strike, others you need to give a wide berth when you know they’re about to attack, and others can deal incredible damage or resist your own attacks and prioritizing them is key to not letting them whale on you. Some stages might even have the criminals and cops fighting against each other and you at the same time, others might throw in some set piece like a wrecking ball you can smash into your enemies but need to watch out for yourself, and dangerous factors like poisonous puddles can start to limit the battlefield space you can work with.

 

The regular fights keep players engaged well by throwing in enough factors and the steady rise in enemy competence, players soon learning to fear foes they might have trounced with ease in earlier stages. Up to four players can work together in Streets of Rage 4, but co-op doesn’t necessarily make the game easy. Bosses still pack a punch even though they communicate when they’re about to do they’re really powerful moves, and they often bring in a little back up so you can’t just focus all of your efforts on striking the main enemy and hoping you lose less health than they do. Many of the boss characters do feel cut from the same cloth as enemies, to the point some do reappear as regular enemies later, but since some boss characters are playable themselves you can expect them to have a robust move set that can be turned against you before you get your hands on it.

 

One thing that makes every enemy or boss character require a bit of smart play from the heroes is how the game manages your health and lives. Depending on your difficulty, the amount of lives you are given to complete the stage can vary, with the higher ones even asking you to potentially complete the game only on the first life you’re given and any you earn along the way. On the less extreme difficulties though, you are given a decent amount to tackle the stage with and enemies can wear that count down. If you lose your whole stock, you will need to retry the level, but the game does give you the option to retry it with additional lives but a hit to the points earned, points actually going towards unlocking extra content so it’s not a choice so easily made. This allows for players to adjust the difficulty a bit if a stage is stumping them while still continuing on with a challenge level that fits them well. It manages to add that layer of risk to the play rather than letting players breeze through with no concern for their health since they can just revive and get right back in, managing to balance the convenience of modern brawlers with the stricter skill requirements of older beat ’em ups without losing fans of either.

THE VERDICT: Drenched in aesthetic delights from the 90s but embracing the refinements of modern design, Streets of Rage 4 is a musical and visual treat on top of an exciting brawler. The playable characters feel distinct but are built around the same move inputs so you can swap between them to find your personal favorite with ease, and the variety in your options and special moves is broad enough to encourage different approaches to a fight without being too demanding in what you need to keep track of. Enemies continue to rise in difficulty even when they’re repeated designs and fights continue to bring new and challenging arrangements to the table until the end, but the difficulty balance allows for you to find a way to make it to the end without such a victory being guaranteed. Streets of Rage 4 keeps one foot in its series’s legacy while the other steps into the modern form of beat ’em ups, making this an excellent member of the genre rather than some retro rehash.

 

And so, I give Streets of Rage 4 for Xbox One…

A GREAT rating. Streets of Rage 4 may be reverent to the past, but it makes sure its design isn’t trapped there. The special move system drawing from your health but allowing you to regain it is a such a genius move for a feature of beat ’em ups that often goes astray, players sometimes never able to pull out the fun moves because of their cost or reliant on some extra system like energy. Streets of Rage 4 has you gamble on when to use it but the right layer of strategy can often mean you get in a strong hit but get that life back afterward, and the Star moves still manage to bring in the absurdly powerful special attacks that serve as dramatic punctuation to an already visually splendid set of attack options. The characters themselves have beautifully realized designs brought to life by excellent animation, the game not skimping on graphical detail to match its devotion to style. The substance is there too with the playable cast bringing a strong set of varied options to the play while not being prohibitive since you can always count on some consistent factors across their move sets. Weapons, enemies, and level gimmicks continue to throw in new variables as you progress, but I do think some boss battles perhaps should have been willing to shake things up some more. They are still excellent fights but compared to the kinds you’d face in a game like Double Dragon Neon they don’t ask for as much creativity from the player since bosses are often grounded in the same mechanics as player characters or other enemies.

 

Streets of Rage 4 definitely sits near the top of beat ’em up design where the next step to even greater excellence would likely be some sort of distinct mechanic at its heart or a story that is more present than just a means of linking together events. Like Final Fight or the older Streets of Rage games though, it’s a game that can be returned to for enjoyable combat as you fight your way through screen after screen of challenging foes with your satisfying set of attacks. Streets of Rage 4 is not only a refined brawler but a refined Streets of Rage game, embracing its aesthetic and its combat to an incredible degree and knowing where to make tweaks or add extra flourishes to really make this an excellent return to a series many thought would never return or a wonderful jumping on point for people just looking for an exhilarating brawler.