Retro Review #3: Streets Of Rage 2 (SMD ,XBLA, PSN Sega 1992)

New graphics, new characters, new music and new combos are welcomed whole heartedly in this sequel to the 1991 beat 'em up classic

Just one short year after the release of Streets Of Rage and Sega are here to spoil us with a great sequel. Like it's previous game, the premise is a standard "left-to-right" beat 'em up but with the addition of new special attacks, characters and weapons, it's easy to see why people value this game so highly. The first thing I noticed when starting this game is that the graphics had had a massive overhaul, the sprites are so much bigger than in the previous game and they look great. With the new graphics and sprites also came a huge batch of new enemies such as ninjas, kick boxers, bikers, karate masters and even robots!


Before we start the game we are treated to a little cinematic outlining the events of the previous game and telling us that Mr. X is back and has kidnapped our friend Adam, so it's time for our remaining two vigilantes to get some new allies, rescue Adam and to take back the Streets...Of Rage! Joining Axel and Blaze we have Max Hatchet (Max Thunder in the US and Japan), a friend of Axel who is a wrestler and a huge power house and Eddie (or Sammy in Japan) "Skate" Hunter, the younger brother of our kidnapped comrade.

Our 2 new heroes.

                                           

Each character, like the previous game, has different stats and new moves so that now our fighters don't all feel the same. In the first Streets Of Rage special attacks were done by pressing the A button, the same is true  here but instead of having back up come and shoot our enemies our chosen character instead unleashes a new attack, pressing the A button on it's own activates a "GET THE HELL OFF OF ME!" attack like Max's spinning axe-handle or Skate's break dancing sweep, while pressing forward and A gives a more focussed attack such as Axel's punch flurry or even a Chun-Li style energy wave by Blaze. But, each one of those attacks comes with a price, it takes a little bit of your health away so don't use them to often or you'll end up in danger.

 In addition to the special attacks each character has three different jumping attacks and a "semi-special move". By jumping straight up and pressing B you do short ranged Anti-Air type attack, jumping forward and pressing B gives you a drop kick or dragon kick to knock your foes away with or you can press down and B while in the air to do a jumping attack that doesn't knock the enemy down so you can continue your combos. When grounded you can press forward twice and B to do your characters semi-special like a slide kick or a fiery uppercut depending on your chosen hero.

GRAND UPPAH!

                                                   

Another new addition to Streets Of Rage, giving a nod to Final Fight, is the inclusion of enemy life meters, they're not just for bosses this time but for your standard enemy too. Also (just like in Final Fight) we get to see the names of our victims so now instead of shouting "Take that you punk!" you can now shout "Take that Donovan, you punk!". Weapons still play a part of the game with a few new ones a kunai and a katana but as a result we lost the beer bottle, baseball bat and pepper pot. An upside to weapons is that every weapon can be thrown by pressing Jump and B simultaneously, which also means knives aren't thrown at random any more but as a downside weapons are dropped upon grabbing an enemy.

TAKE THAT DONOVAN...YOU PUNK! (see I told you)

Stages are a lot longer than in the previous game and are broken up in to different sections such as in Round 1 we battle our way down a street then through a bar and finally into a dingy back ally before taking on the boss. The stages, though a little familiar, are varied and look great and there are some pretty neat weather effects like rain and mist. All the enemies have different characteristics and attacks Kick boxers will use their long legs to keep you away and anti-air your jump ins with high kicks, street punks will rush you with knives and pipes and the bikers will even try to run over and lob grenades. Some of the bosses should also be tackled with a different approach as most of them can block your combos or attack through them.

                             
The soundtrack of the game by Yuzo Koshiro, who also did the first games soundtrack, has done a fantastic job on the music again. Keeping to the techno-pop sound of the first game it makes the game feel warmly familiar and brand new at the same time, there are also a couple of remixes of the first games Rounds 4, 8 and Final Boss theme that sound amazing. There are quite a few "nods" to other franchises too like one of the fat bad guys being named Heart an obvious reference to Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star character of the same name and stature. If you end up getting bored of the main game, which is highly unlikely, you can challenge a friend in "Duel" mode which pits you one on one against each other. This game is mad fun and even better than the original so go get a mate and give it a play, you will not be disappointed.

• GAMEPLAY: All the new additions to the game make this left-to-right fighting experience all the much sweeter and the new duel mode is great fun.
  9/10
• CONTROL: Characters handle great and everything comes out smoothly.
  9/10
• SOUND: The funky electronic sounds by Yuzo Koshiro are among some of the best game soundtracks ever, even today. Lot's of new sound effects and screams make all the hard hitting impact come alive.
  9/10
• GRAPHICS: A huge overhaul on graphics and animations make this one of the best looking games of 1992 and the whole 16-bit era.
  9/10
• OVERALL: A great sequel to a great game, one of my all time favourites and a game that everyone still plays to this day. Included in the Sega Mega Drive Collection, along with it's prequel and sequel, and also as a downloadable game on PSN/XBLA just goes to show that this game has still got what it takes.
  10/10

CURRENT GEN REVIEW 1: DUKE NUKEM FOREVER (XBOX360/PS3/PC, 3D Realms 2011)

Our steroid filled, foul mouthed, misogynistic ass hole is finally back after 15 years of development but has Duke still got what it takes to survive in the modern era of games? As a huge Duke Nukem 3D fan it came as a massive shock to me, and whole lot of others, that Duke Nukem Forever was finally going to get released, no one ever expected this to happen. 3D Realms had been working on this game since 1996 and had officially announced it in 1997 for a release in the following year, using the Quake II engine. But then in 1998 Epic Games released the Unreal Engine so 3D Realms decided to scrap the work they had done with the Quake II engine and begin anew with a more realistic and a generally more powerful engine. Now this changing of engine and scrapping work went on for years, everything was getting out dated, so in came the new and out went all the hard work. Fast forward to around 2008 and 3D Realms were going bust and in 2009 the Duke team was fired, well so much for Duke then. After a lot of bitching between companies Take 2 acquired the rights to Duke and in late 2010 Randy Pitchford, a Gearbox CEO, brought news that Gearbox will be polishing up all the hard work that 3D Realms had done and be shipping out the Duke in 2011. This was a joyous occasion for Duke fans around the world, people were in shock and awe, for 14 years we were right to bet on Duke, or were we?

                                                   Hail to the king, baby!

The day finally came, 15 years of wait, it was here. Duke Nukem Forever was finally here. I smashed it into my Xbox, pressed start and I was away...well actually no I wasn't, I had to sit through a very long loading screen, but I shrugged it off because you know it's got to load all the massive areas of gameplay right? So the first level starts, and I'm peeing, yep peeing into a urinal. After finishing my whizz, oh and by the way this is in game not random moments that occur in my life, I was given the option to pick up a piece of poo, oh how my heart melted as I chucked around a log getting the achievement of "Turd Burglar." Anyway enough of this crap (puts on shades) after talking to some pretty wooden NPC's and drawing a cock on a white board, I run down some corridors watching destruction and death as the alien hordes approach. Finally I come across a weapon, The Devastator, a rapid fire rocket launcher, up a lift I go to meet my first alien scum.

                                            What a huge one-eyed monster!

After shooting the crap out of the cycloptic monstrosity, it's revealed that it was all a game that the real Duke was playing it all along, while getting fellated by twins I might add, one of the twins ask "Was the game any good?" To which the star remarks "After twelve fucking years, it should be." Well he's got that right. Afterwards you're given control of the real Duke and you can walk around and do, well, a whole lot of nothing. You go down a lift, talk to some people, the president tells you not to kill the aliens that came back because they might be nice this time, you get attacked by the nice aliens blah blah everything unravels. Now in regular FPS games you usually have a lot on screen to shoot, but not here, at first I thought that it was because it was early on in the game and it'll flesh itself out eventually but no. You can run around for nearly twenty minutes at a time and not bump into anything, and that's not to say the levels are massive and open ended because they really aren't.

When you eventually find some aliens to shoot at, the actual first person shooting experience seems so weak and unimpressive. For some reason when shooting an enemy they just kinda stand there shooting back, being unresponsive like your bullets are made out of fluff, it's that kind of thing that makes you look at your weapons and think that they are making no impact what so ever which leaves the game with no impact either. Another thing that irks me is that you take a hell of a lot of damage, so you die a lot. Now the dying isn't the actually irk it's the long frigging load times that follow, they take at least 40 seconds which doesn't seem like a long time, but when you're just sat looking at a loading screen so you can get back into the frantic fire fight to die again, it really is.

                                         You'll see this kind of thing a lot.

When you're not shooting (which is 70% of the game) you'll be either driving, platforming or solving a pretty bad puzzle. The driving is really monotonous, you drive down a road, hit a ramp, run out of fuel, do a puzzle, kill two enemies and drive again. This happens on nearly every single driving section, it really should not take up this much of the core game, also the handling on the vehicles is horrendous, you touch left, off the cliff you go! The platforming parts are hard for me to judge, they're well done yet terrible at the same time and most of the platforming sections are done when you've been shrunk, which like the driving parts is too much of the game.

This game seems like it's trying to be a comedic Half-Life clone and it fails miserably, the core elements of this game are overshadowed by that of far better games out there. The shooting fails to impress, the puzzles fail to be immersive, the platforming fails to feel relevant and the driving feels like it was just tacked on. The comedy of the game also fails, massively, Duke 3D was funny because it didn't have to shove everything in your face and this game isn't funny because it does try to shove everything in your face, it's like the game is going "Duke just cursed and made fun of another game, please laugh."

              You may be an ugly alien but that's not the only reason you look like shit.

Now the graphics on this game are bloody terrible, 6 years ago they would be acceptable but today, no. I'm not one to bash a game for it's graphics but it's hard not to on a game with such an expansive development history. The textures on this game are awful, Doom 3 looks better, hell the original Duke Nukem 3D looks better and the enemies were 2D! You really have to wonder what 3D Realms were doing during the creation of this game because they were certainly not making the Duke Nukem experience everyone wanted. Once you've completed the game you get a movie gallery showing the different builds of Duke Nukem Forever through out the years and each one of them looks better than the finished product. I tried so hard to like this game, it's the sequel to my favourite classic FPS and I find myself struggling to find anything to hang on to. The boss battles are quite good and some of the shoot outs are actually quite fun, but they're just a few flashes in the 12 hour proverbial pan that is Duke Nukem Forever.

• GAMEPLAY: As I stated for an FPS game to have so few fire fights and the length that's between them, is just absurd. Everything feels flat and out dated and the clunky mechanics in the driving and shooting itself really hurt the game. Also only 2 guns at a time!?
  5/10
• CONTROL: Though the controls are responsive they do seem a bit muddled and moving Duke himself sometimes feels sluggish, also the controls on driving, albeit simple, really needed some tweaking.
  7/10
• SOUND: Dukes voice actor is as good as ever, when doing one liners, he seems to struggle somewhat when having to say more than a few words. NPC voices are pretty wooden. The music isn't very good and the sound effects are very flat and generic.
  4/10
• GRAPHICS: As I said the graphics are terrible, textures sometimes don't load, everything has sharp edges and just generally look like crap.
  4/10
• OVERALL: As bad as the game is, it does have it's moments and you will find yourself smiling a few times after one of Dukes one liners. But sadly nothing clicks, everything is dated and it just cannot live up to 15 years of hype and attention, and it pains me to score it so low.
  5/10