Game #861: Streets of Rage 4

  Ah! I missed invisible walls.

 The beat'em up genre is one of the most repetitive there are, and yet, I've always enjoyed them. I've always been more of a Final Fight guy, having only ever finished Streets of Rage 1 and not quite so long ago, but that wouldn't stop me from giving Streets of Rage 4 a fair shake.

 The graphics are very interesting. Usually I hate this non-pixelated sprites that look vectorized... but in this game they look REALLY good. The artstyle is good, the animation is good and the spritework is very appealing. That said, the proportions with background characters are all over the place, it's incredibly offputting when your characters look tiny in comparison to the characters that work as background decor.

 Can't say I particularly liked Axel's beard, it really doesn't fit him. Blaze looks great, but Adam is the returning guy that looks best, he had a very basic design in 1 before he disappeared from the series forever, but this new reimagining is pure class. The two new playable characters, Cherry and Lloyd are boring. You can unlock the classic SOR 1, 2 and 3 versions of most characters(Roo and Ash are missing, the latter is surprising since the game is quite woke(in a very non-annoying way, so I'd say it's well done)), but they retain their original sprites, so they look out of place in the game. It's not a bad extra, but I can't stand playing as these pixelated entities on this newer, crisper backgrounds and fighting crisper enemies. Characters retain their abilities from their origins, albeit tweaked to work with the new mechanics, which is pretty neat.

 The gameplay is interesting to say the least. As far as offense goes, it's a winner. They added juggling to the game, you can continue combos if you hit an enemy before he touches the ground, which opens up a lot of possibilities. Landing hits feels really good too. Special Moves are a bit weird, you get three of them: X, Move anywhere+X and jump + X, and instead of costing you health, like most beat'em ups, or having a cooldown before costing health like SoR 3, it instead consumes recoverable health. This is marked in green over your health bar, and it means that you can recover this health by landing hits, but if you get hit you take the damage and the green health is gone for good. I didn't really like this system, particularly because what SoR 3 was so much better. There are also Super Super Moves that use Stars, items that can be fought throughout the stage.

 On the other hand, the game offers you no defensive options. You can't block, you can't dodge and most characters can't run or dash. Pretty much exactly like the original Final Fight, but in Final Fight most enemies weren't as mobile or had as much super armor as they get in this game. A lot of times I'd get hit mid combo while I tried to jump cancel or something, and trying to walk away from incoming damage is almost impossible because everyone is just SO slow. And don't get me wrong, the game isn't impossibly difficulty, but you almost have to play in a very cheesy way for it to be fair. Enemies have a lot of super armor? Abuse diagonals and throw them. Or don't commit to a full combo and walk away if you didn't trigger an enemy's hitstun because he had super armor. The higher the difficulty the more boring it gets. There is a way to avoid damage, but it's risky: Press X and use a super move. Super moves have invincibility frames, so you'll avoid damage...at the cost of turning some of your health into green health. I can't say I like that, it feels like I'm getting punished because I don't have the right tools to avoid incoming damage. And don't get discouraged after the first couple of bosses, those are the worst as far as super armor goes, the next bosses are much fairer.

 The game is hardly impossible, and if it gets too hard you can just take a blow to your score and use an Assist to get extra lives and/or Star moves. Story Mode is fairly lenient too, infinite continues and you start every level with 2 lives, at least in the Normal difficulty setting.

 The game is just the perfect length, having 12 different stages. You get split-screen co-op, a player vs player fighting mini-game as well as an unlockable Boss Rush and Arcade difficulty setting that limits your continues to 1.

 At first I finished the game on Normal, while using Assists to help me clear the game, with Axel. Then I played it again, but on easy, with Blaze and, then, I played it again but with Adam back on Normal to see how much improvement I made. And the game did get progressively more fun each time I played it and got used to how it worked. I think it also helps that Adam can actually dash forward, one of the only two SoR4-type characters that have faster means of mobility other than walking.

 In the end, I think Streets of Rage 4 is really good but not without flaws or things I think could've been done better. Regardless, it's the perfect game to scratch that never ending Beat'em up itch I'm a victim to.

8.0