Streets of Rage 4 Review [Nintendo Switch]

After 26 years, Streets of Rage is back with its official 4^th entry. Sega hands the baton over to developers Dotemu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games to resurrect the long-dormant franchise with Streets of Rage 4. Let us see if the triple-jointed effort can bring the series back to beat em’ up prominence.

The story takes place 10 years after the events of Streets of Rage 3. Paraphrasing the iconic screen crawl: Mr. X and his syndicate have fallen, peace bestows Wood Oak City but now his children – The Y Twins, are growing their own corrupt syndicate. Axel, Blaze, Cherry and Floyd heed the call to deliver bare knuckle street justice. Streets of Rage 4 stays faithful to the famous formula; tight 2D brawling action, good character/level designs and dope music. As with previous games, your goal is to fight waves of street punks in each section until you reach the boss.

It is simple, it is old school and I love it.

Foundational mechanics are reminiscent of Streets of Rage 2, so gone are the vertical rolls, blitz attack upgrades and running ability for all characters introduced in Streets of Rage 3, although the ability to throw weapons is retained. But Streets of Rage 4 does bring new to the table.

The most prominent shift is the hand-drawn animated style. This artistic choice, a far cry from the 16-bit pixels of yore, manages to still capture the atmosphere of past entries while establishing a new visual identity for this revival. The character models are vibrantly detailed with slick animation. The environments are also chock full of little details such as light sources bouncing off characters models and ripples caused by movement. All this works in conjunction to bring the game’s world to life

In terms of gameplay, new to the franchise is the combo system. You can now rack up combos for successively attacking enemies. Holding down the attack button releases a charged knock back move. An innovative aspect to combat is enemies bouncing off the edge of screen via knock back; this creates plenty of opportunities for cool juggles and combo chains. Although you can play it straight without all the fancy combos, these new elements enrich the experience and deepen the gameplay. Maintaining combo strings can be fun; challenging your offense and defense, as you lose earned points if the chain is broken by a single hit.

A new maneuver - the Star Move, allows your character to a unleash a powerful move which comes in handy during large swarms or greatly reducing the health of tougher characters. Players are initially equipped with one and can find one or two throughout the level.

Lastly the special attack system has been tweaked. In previous games, executing a special attack would cost of health, now you have a chance to rebuild the lost amount via attacking the enemy uninterruptedly. If you are hit in the interim, you lose all unrecovered health.

Your performance is ranked at end of the main levels factoring combo chains, damage received and clear time, into the overall score. Points earned after level completion are added to your lifetime score which unlocks new characters at specific thresholds.

The game comes packaged with Story, Stage Select, Arcade, Boss Rush, Battle and Online Games. The Story mode links all the stages through a narrative told by static cut scenes, Stage Select allows you to playthrough beaten stages – great opportunity to practice on your stage rankings, Arcade is story mode with no continues, Boss Rush has you fight every boss in the game and Battle is player vs player in a fixed arena. Battle mode is limited to 2 players online but up to four players locally. As you heard that right!

For the first time in the series you can play four-player couch co-op and it enhances the experience and replay value. Online mode works fine too as you can join or host another player through any of the modes. Although multiplayer online is limited to two-player co-op, on the PC you can four players online.

Of course, what’s a beat ‘em up game without cool characters?

Boasting the most playable characters in the series yet, the roster starts off with four characters; The ex-cop stalwarts: Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding with newcomers, Cherry Hunter, and Floyd Iria. Axel Stone, looking less like a blonde Cody Travers and more blond & bearded Ryu, is great character to start with as always. The first lady of brawling, Blaze Fielding, dons a leather jacket and moves faster than Axel. Newcomer Cherry Hunter undoubtedly fills Skate’s SoR2 role; being the only character with the running ability and she even borrows a move or two from him. Her punk rocker motif surprisingly fits well. Floyd is a hybrid of Max and Dr. Zan; super heavy character with cybernetic prosthetic arms who can perform amazing moves such as grabbing enemies from distance and executing the world’s deadliest pogo jump. Interesting decision to make him of Maori descent. I am sure there was no influence by a muscle-studded action star. One of my personal favorite characters to play with is Adam Hunter. Returning to playable status since Streets of Rage 1 and finally ditching the uber-80s shoulder-padded tank top and now looks more. The rest of the unlockable characters are all playable characters from previous entries (except for Roo). The brawlers return in all their pixelated glory and retain their original sound effects from the good old Genesis days.

Now what sets the Streets of Rage franchise from other genre games is the music. Aside from SoR3, the music in the first two Streets of Rage games are some of the best in video games. How does Streets of Rage 4 stack up? The music is good. Definitely better than SoR3’s soundtrack but doesn’t quite reach the heights of 1 & 2. Judged on its own merits, there are three tracks I enjoy listening to –shout out to Rising up – but the rest is okay. There are very faint hints to prior songs, or at least to my ears but the rest of the soundtrack does not fill me with that hype I felt from the first two soundtracks. The music fills a bit more chilled this go around. The developers thoughtfully added the retro soundtrack option, for those like me, who revel in nostalgia. The inclusion is welcome as the tempo of the older music matches more with the action. The Retro option plays an assortment of music from Streets of Rage 1+2, the only misstep was adding some Game Gear tracks in the mix.

I have been mostly positive about Streets of Rage 4 but also believe some opportunities have been missed. With the beautiful graphics, it is a shame the developers could not provide more animated cutscenes in the same vein as the opening credits to convey the main story. With the animated style and some voices showcased during the character select screen, it feels like the pieces were there but not connected completely. This would have improved the presentation immensely. And while the retro characters are a cool inclusion, I much rather have new characters in line with the current roster. Some of the game’s bosses are well designed and it would be a treat to play as some of them.

Street of Rage 4 is a great game for fans of the franchise and newcomers alike. While I feel it's worthy of a grander presentation, it does not tarnish the old school fun to be had. The new elements such as online play and rankings can extend the value for time to come. Streets of Rage 4 does not go out of the way to be revolutionary, yet it finds success in keeping with tradition.