Beating on punks since the 90’s

Streets of Rage 4 released on all consoles and PC on April 30th, published by DotEmu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games. The long awaited successor of the original SEGA trilogy see’s you take to the streets once more, this time in pursuit of Mr.X’s aptly named twin children, Mr and Ms. Y. This laughably lazy story telling is actually one of the many facets that make SoR4 such an enjoyable title, a hark back to simpler times, when games came out without pre-release DLC, and loot crates didn’t exist.

SoR doesn’t take itself seriously, it knows what it is and does just that remarkably well, it’s a retro arcade style side scrolling beat em up’ and it doesn’t pull it’s punches (I couldn’t help myself) when delivering nostalgic cheesy nineties inspired action. You assume the role of one of 4 (with further unlockable characters) vigilantes with an equal penchant for punching things until they break. Old favourites like Blaze, Axel and Adam return, but they have been lovingly rendered in to the 21st century. The graphics are one of the first things that will strike old fans of the series and new comers alike, each character is beautifully detailed, both in stasis and in action, whilst still retaining a retro feeling. The same can be said of the 12 levels in SoR4, locales are varied, you’ll find yourself brawling on a Ship, through a Police Station and even on an airplane mid flight. Each level is as gorgeous as the next, incredibly detailed and also quite interactive. You’ll need to make the most of your environment to succeed and learn how to both avoid and utilise pitfalls to avoid untimely death whilst quickly offing the numerate enemies.

The Gameplay is seemingly simple, as it’s a side scrolling game, movement is fairly limited to backwards and forwards, and up and down, with the ability to jump and dash as your only means of escape or gap closing. Combat is almost exclusively mapped to one button (Square if you are on PS4), which can be pressed multiple times in succession to pull off combos or held to charge a strong attack, jumping and dashing will open up new forms of attacks, all unique to the character you choose, for example if you choose to play as Cherry (a completely new character to SoR 4), you can actually vault off of multiple enemies using jump to create significant space for yourself or to extend combo’s deeper in to the oncoming mob. SoR’s “seemingly” simple combat system is incredibly deceiving and may cause new comers to the series to become quite frustrated initially as make no mistake about it, this game is hard, think the original Dark Souls ,ok maybe not that hard. If you go in button mashing you will die, even in the first level, but take a breath, reevaluate your somewhat frenzied approach and take the time to learn the subtle nuances of combat in SoR4 and you will soon understand just how complex it actually is and just how satisfying it can be to dispatch multiple enemies in a gargantuan, uninterrupted combo.

In fact Streets of Rage 4 introduces some (relatively) new mechanics to it’s combat. First of all you can now “juggle” enemies, this is something fighting game fans will recognise as a mandatory requirement for success, but hasn’t been exploited before in this series. As before mentioned, simply button mashing will not yield the best results, when you initially strike an enemy they will enter a small window of frames that could be considered “vulnerable”, where if you are quick enough you can chain a continued series of strikes, but if you learn to time your taps, you can keep them in this window for a sustained period of time, greatly increasing the damage you can get off. If you get your enemy airborne they will recover almost instantaneously upon hitting the ground, often repositioning themselves immediately after (making it hard for you to press the attack), but if you time it right you can interrupt their descent with further strikes, hence “juggling”.

Special moves are nothing new to SoR4, but the developers have completely renovated the way they work. Originally using a special move would guarantee losing a chunk of much needed HP (this was essentially the cost of using this move), probably a vestige of the games arcade roots, encouraging players to part with more of their precious coins as they hasten their own crash course to a game over screen. Use a special move now, however, and a chunk of your health bar will turn green, representing the portion of health you can either claw back in continued combat, or instantly lose if hit before recovered. Now using special moves becomes a deadly gambit, a test of your mettle. Lastly you will start each level with a certain amount of stars depending on various factors that will be discussed later. These stars allow you to use your “Star” move, an incredibly powerful attack often best used when surrounded and overwhelmed by enemies, to unleash huge damage and give yourself some much needed breathing room.

Speaking of breathing room, positioning is key in SoR4, if you are smart you will be able to line up multiple enemies to unleash full combos on them, offing several foes in one fell sweep, allow yourself to be surrounded and you will really struggle to pull off combos or manoeuvre yourself elsewhere. Enemies will naturally try and position themselves behind you for a cheap shot, but you can use this to your advantage and soon you will find yourself corralling herds of unwitting foes like sheep over pastures to graze.

Enemies are varied, as are there attacks, some foes will slide at you, requiring you to jump over them whilst some will punch you out of the air, others will arm themselves with weapons and run straight at you, it’s not rare to multiple types of enemies on screen attacking you in different ways, meaning prioritising those that will cause you the most trouble is of utmost importance. More over, understanding each enemies distinct pattern and tell tale signs that they are about to attack will be the difference between winning and losing. Boss fights are no different. Bosses in SoR4 are equally varied and wonderfully designed, each offering a new challenge and in a sense, a new puzzle to solve. Often bosses will enlist the help of weaker enemies, giving you the familiar challenge of having to decide whether it’s better to clear the screen a little by focusing them or all together ignoring them in the hopes of depleting the bosses health bar before you are overwhelmed.

If you find yourself dying over and over again and unable to complete a level, you have a couple of options, you could always “chicken out” (this is literally what the quit button is called) or you could retry the level with some additional resources, ranging from extra stars to several extra lives, beware though this will put a significant dent in your end of level score, not to mention your pride. Each end of level screen gives you a score, from D to S, obtaining an S is incredibly difficult, requiring you to get hit very little (if at all), whilst maximising your combo chains, you will also get a significant score boost for not using your star moves. This score system not only encourages you to keep coming back for more, but also to progress in your overall points accumulation to unlock new characters, skins and more.

If you are still struggling you can enlist the help of a stranger online, SoR4 allows co-operative play for up to two players across it’s various game modes, of course your enemies will also multiply respectively which can be a little overwhelming at times, sometimes the biggest challenge will simply be keeping track of your character amongst the hordes. As I’m sure you were taught as a child, it is unwise to rely on the kindness of strangers and this sentiment holds true for SoR4 online co-op, you will spend as much of your time fighting as you will running to pick up chickens and apples (SoR4’s health pots) across the map before your “ally” with an already full health bar scoffs them all.

If you are lucky enough to have real friends, you can invite them over for up to 4 player couch co-op, this way you can have a much more civilised, inclusive experience…

SoR4 has several game modes to tackle, you have the classic “story”, which see’s you fighting through 12 levels to ultimately take down newly crowned kingpins, Mr and Ms Y. Each level is preceded by a comic strip like cut scene depicting the journey or events that transpired which led you to your new locale. If you are playing SoR4 for a compelling narrative, rife with morally grey protagonists and villains, you really have picked the wrong game, but SoR4’s tongue in cheek nod to 90’s action movies is the perfect vehicle to drive the classic arcade gameplay with a modern twist.

Other modes like Arcade mode, will see you having one chance to get through SoR4’s 12 levels, game over means starting right from level 1. Boss Rush gives you the chance to take on all 11 bosses back to back and Battle Mode pits you in head to head combat against other players. There is endless replay value here, not just because of the wide variety of modes but also because of the plethora of unlockable content, whether it’s new characters, giving you a completely new skill set to replay the main story with or retro 16 bit skins to apply to your favourite characters.

Further driving the nostalgia train is the effervescent synth sound track, throbbing in the background. Composer Yuzo Koshiro, the musician who scored the first two Streets of Rage games, is back and so is his Streets of Rage musical collaborator, Motohiro Kawashima.

Koshiro and Kawashima are just part of the Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack, which has drawn other all-star video game musical talent. Also contributing to the score are Yoko Shimomura, who wrote music for the original Street Fighter 2 and the Kingdom Hearts series; Hideki Naganuma, known for his work on the Jet Set Radio, Sega Rally, and Super Monkey Ball games; and Keiji Yamagishi, who wrote music for Ninja Gaiden and Tecmo Bowl. The soundtrack is perfect, paying homage to SoR’s arcade roots, while still adding a fresh perspective and improvement from it’s 90’s predecessor.

DotEmu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games have taken on the incredibly daunting task of restoring a much loved, but antiquated series to modern consoles. Change too much and you run the risk of enraging a passionate community, don’t change enough and you don’t have SoR4, you just have a port of an earlier version.

Well, SoR4 has seemingly found the perfect balance. DotEmu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games pay homage to a series steeped in history, delivering a stodgy slice of nostalgia pie, but not entirely true to Grandma’s recipe. A new and improved combat system and gorgeous visuals have dragged SoR kicking in to 2020 and for the humble price of £25.99 is a must buy for fans of the series and new comers alike.

8.8/10