I'm not on the same bandwagon as many with SoR. A lot of
people would claim this the best beat 'em up ever, yet I found Maximum Carnage,
the criminally underrated SNES game based on Spderman Unlimited 1-4, to be the
best. But this is still very easily a five star game. Here's my review.
Streets of Rage stars Axel, Blaze and Adam, three cops in a city overrun by
chaos. You choose either three to go at the 8 levels with, each with their own
"cop car" special attack. Adam is a slower but more powerful fighter,
Blaze is faster but seems to do less damage with her attacks, and Axel is the
perfect blend of both.
Not unlike most games of the era, you fight waves of enemies in each level with
a boss at the end. Certain levels have mid-way bosses, and the last one asks you
to fight them all. These are merely the same enemies from past levels with a
different color palette. Usually the difficulty is raised for them in repeat
appearances.
To add a bit of variety to the game, Sega gives you weaponry and the requisite
healing items scattered along the 2/3rd walkway of every level. These range from
a steel pipe to salt and pepper shakers that can blind enemies. You can hold the
weapons for the whole level as long as you don't get hit. Of course whenever you're
attacked you can just use one of the Chicken dinners to heal up.
There's only one mode here but either one or two players can play it. The
problem with multiplayer here is that its very easy to accidentally hit the
other player. An answer to this is to take vertical positions, one fighting the
top attackers while one takes the bottom. Of course, this sounds and is
restrictive. A minor problem.
Fighting system isn't too complex. There's one attack button, a jump button and
one for specials. I haven't tried using the 6 button pad for this game so I
won't comment there, but from what I hear its basically the same thing. Anyway
going up close to an enemy causes you to grab them and do wrestling moves (suplexes,
slams) that do far more damage than any kick or punch. The best attack is one
usually done out of desperation - the special involving a police car shooting
grenade rounds and damaging every enemy on screen. You only get, at most, three
of these per level.
The graphics and sound are alright. The game details the characters well and
everything looks fairly sharp. I can't complain about the graphics here. The
sound is amazing as well, featuring the work of Yuzo Koshiro. This is probably
his best work - some of these tunes have stuck in my head for a whole decade,
like the Beach level and the final boss. Amazing work, second only to the
Phantasy Star II as the best on Genesis.
The controls are easy to pick up, like all beat 'em ups. The three buttons and
the directional pad is all SoR uses. This area of the game is flawless with the
exception of multiplayer, where, like I mentioned, its too easy to accidentally
hit the other player with a weapon or even a normal attack when you're fighting
a group of enemies or something.
While it's not the most difficult game, Streets of Rage is still extremely fun.
I even prefer this to Golden Axe in terms of Genesis beat 'em ups. If you don't
have this, what the hell are you waiting for? It's ten dollars - one of the best
deals you can make, period.
9.5
