Still, learning enemy tells and attack patterns and getting yourself out of the way promptly should see you right.Īs will learning the nuances of your own character. The vertical dodge-roll from Streets of Rage 3 has unfortunately been axed, leaving you open to a pumelling if you don’t quite line yourself up correctly. Your inability to attack vertically does make this difficult and a little bit frustrating at times. There’s some great appearances that I won’t spoil here, but you’ll have to be at your best to emerge unscathed. Fortunately, the game does continue to introduce new baddies throughout the campaign which will keep you on your toes, as will the awesome boss fights. Each hit thuds off your enemies in the most satisfying way, and when you successfully combine strong and weak attacks, aerials, backwards hits, specials and defensive moves - not to mention the litany of items, both old and new - in one flowing movement, you’ll feel like an absolute god.Įnemies come in a fairly wide variety, though the usual pallet-swap mechanic denoting tougher iterations is in effect. There’s a much greater emphasis on combo-building here though, with points rewarded for streaming together impossibly long strains of attacks.
Again, it just feels like a Streets of Rage game, and the love the developers have for the franchise shines through. Speaking of which, the fighting in Streets of Rage 4 is superb. Still, whilst what little story there is won’t win any awards, it does allow for some cool cameos and fights along the way. The plot, such that it is, is hardly enticing, but then these games have never exactly been narrative-driven affairs.
With Mr X defeated for good in Streets of Rage 3 it falls to his offspring - Mr and Ms Y - to fill the role of criminal mastermind this time around. There’s also the ability to add retro and CRT filters if you want to go the whole hog, though it is a little weird to see that wonderful hand-painted artstyle buried beneath artificial scan lines. In a nice touch you can also opt for a retro soundtrack in the game’s options menu, and this will hit you with the biggest of the game’s many nostalgia waves. Whereas the original games soundtracks were based on the club music of the 80s and 90s, here it’s modern techno, electronica and dubstep that fuel the game’s audio engine. Whilst the new soundtrack understandably doesn’t feel as immediately iconic as those that came before it, each level’s theme ebbs and flows with the action nicely. Finding a pause in the action allows you to take in the little nuances that make each of the pleasingly varied stages a delight to punch and kick your way through. It would’ve been easy to opt for some 16-bit pixel art, but the hand-drawn designs of each and every character and criminal pop spectacularly off of the wonderfully detailed surroundings. Chiefly, that’s taken care of by the fantastic new art style.ĭeveloper Lizard Cube did an exceptional job of bringing Wonder Boy up-to-date in 2017’s Dragon’s Trap remaster, and they’ve worked their magic yet again here. From the moment the opening animation shifts from the nostalgic city-scape to the frenzied Saturday-morning cartoon brawling, it’s clear that Streets of Rage 4 uses the love and admiration for its predecessors as a springboard from which to forge it’s own identity.
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