Here is a somewhat surprising thing I have to tell you. I fucking HATE streets of rage. Hate, hate hate it. But I love it. I loves it I loves it. This is somewhat schizophrenic I admit, but playing Streets of Rage is somewhat like being in an abusive relationship in that rarely do two conflicting emotions struggle for expression like they do here. The trilogy of games, originally mega drive classics but now released on iPhone, are really old-school Sega side scrollers. The first game doesn't even bother with a story it's so basic, the second involves kidnap (they always do) and the third involves killer robots. But of course. The joy of these games is the simplicity of play, the feeling of kicking arse in a morally and ethically dubious fashion not epic tales of blood and villainy. The titular streets of rage are in an unnamed city in the 'future' in which a 'syndicate' has infiltrated all levels of government and now the city is a corrupt, unsafe place that needs cleaning up. I always wondered what it must be like to live in these cities. How on earth does its economy survive? Every street is a bloody warzone; want to get onions for that stir fry? If you can dodge the bat wielding motorcyclists and the electric-whip wielding dominatrixes, then good luck because I'm ordering in. Sheesh, and there was me thinking the cities in Just Cause 2 had it bad.
'Seriously dude, I'm just trying to get to the frigging Chinese!'
So yeah, you beat up a huge range of bad guys and take down a shit ton of aggravating bosses. Each game is slightly different, the best and most possible one being number two. This is because the designers thought that maybe it would be quite nice for it to be possible in single-player, which is more than can be said for the first or third instalments.
The first game is bastard tough; your character being unable to move with any celerity makes boss battles less of a battle of skill and more a test of how quickly you can reverse your character's lazy butt out of the way of a debilitating special attack. Unfortunately because this game was quite an early generation Mega Drive game (screw you, it's the Mega Drive, not the Genesis) the controls are stickier than a stick insect's treacle factory on Sticky street. The purpose of bosses in SOR1 was to make you feel inadequate as a human being, and make you wonder why you didn't just bring a fecking gun to fight men who can breathe fire at you.
Like this image? You will see it a hell of a lot.
There is also the niggling fact that the common enemies in SOR1 often have attacks or defences that your character has no real way of countering. A particularly ludicrous version of this is the whip wielding harpies who can dodge any attack you throw at them by crouching. Fucking crouching. The worst part is you can't inflict a single blow on them when they're in a crouch, and the moment your back is turned they quite literally whip your arse. Although the challenge of the game is reduced in two player mode, you will spend the majority of your time accidentally kicking your co-op partner in the face thanks in no part to extremely strange collision detection, which goes numb when you're trying to make a hit connect, and sensitive as a toothache when you happen to be in spitting distance of the guy you're trying to save the city with but, gosh, he just really wants a hug. While special moves become the preserve of instalments two and three, the first had none. What it did have was a special attack which, when you hit the A button, summoned a police car from offscreen to rain explosive death upon your enemies. Ignoring the fact it was annoyingly easy to unleash this attack totally by accident courtesy of a slipped thumb, it was immensely useful for thinning down the crowd. So of course it never appeared in any Streets of Rage game ever again.
Pictured: A useful feature.
Well, obviously. Streets of Rage 2 really varied the level design, with more interesting sub bosses and a greater variety of characters and moves. The only unwelcome addition is Skate, a gobby skating child who is the cousin of Adam from game number one. He is the the Jar Jar Binks of the Streets of Rage franchise.
FUCK YOU KID, FUCK YOOOOOOUUU!!!!
This more imaginative instalment is possibly my favourite of the games. Whatever SOR1 lacked it improved on, and lacks the deliberately mean-spirited toughness of SOR3. Its balance is perfect really, and thus suffers a bare minimum of my wrath. Well, some weird character names aside - bad guys called Donovan and Bono for example.
Or Slag. Um. Yeah.
It is a hard game but in an enjoyable way, and calls on you to kick phenomenal quantities of arse. It may sound as if I have nothing to say about it, and to be honest, I don't really. No it's not what you'd call revolutionary, but if it ain't broke then you don't fix it. And talking of messing with a perfect formula, this brings me with some reluctance to Streets of Rage 3. It is not a bad game, don't get me wrong, but it is utterly evil. Sega's development team hated your guts in the third game. Oh sure, they brought in the ability to run and the forward roll but SOR3 suffers from the same problem Golden Axe 3 had, in that the game is so ludicrously difficult that it quite takes the pleasure out of playing it. SOR3 pelts you with rancid shit from minute one - your enemies have projectiles, one of the first games bosses is a regular enemy here (the fire breathing fat man) and the first boss is utterly hateful. Oh sure, I love the first damned boss to have every advantage over you imaginable - the ability to fly and twice the health bar you have to name only two. Did I also mention he is able to counter most of your standard moves? This is the first boss, mind. The FIRST BOSS.
Welcome to the third screen of Streets of Rage 3.
It suffers from a problem of quantity over quality; you are simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of obstacles and bad guys thrown at you and there are no extra lives in the early levels.
It is also the first of the trilogy to include cutscenes, with predictably laughable results. Here is a verbatim conversation from one of the game's cutscenes.
Skate: 'I can't believe it. No one told me a thing.' |
| Dr Zen: 'We're wasting time fighting these punks.' |
| Blaze: 'I think I have an idea of where to go now. |
| Dr Zen: 'I hope you're right.' |
You wouldn't believe these characters were having conversations on the same planet let alone in the same room. I know it's only text, but if you do insist on unskippable cut scenes then the least you could do is write dialogue that sounds like humans would actually speak it. Oh and Skate now plays an even bigger role in this game. Joyful. Ironically, on a technical level it is definitely the best game. The controls are smooth and responsive, hit detection is crisp and the levels are gorgeous to look at - well for 16 bit graphics anyway. It's just too damn hard. I'm sure some of the more hardcore nerds out there could beat this game using only their penises, but to them I say only this: If your idea of fun is getting your genitalia skewered by a kangaroo in denim shorts and fetish jewellery, then be my guest and enjoy - but don't think that waving your amazing *snort* skill will impress me much.
You thought I was kidding about the kangaroo, didn't you?
Streets of Rage was pretty much the high point of the side scroller beat 'em up, though Final Fight and others were other contenders for its crown. The genre pretty much gave out after the birth of the 32 bit era, and various attempts to resurrect the series have failed with even fan versions not really going anywhere. Taken as a whole, the Streets of Rage trilogy is rather fun. They're classics to be sure, but if you're going to play one, I'd suggest playing the second as it has the best of the other instalments in the one game. It's a damn sight better than bloody Golden Axe any which way you slice it.
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