ANALYSIS: Streets of Rage 4

We’ve been seeing a ton of classic video game sagas return for years. Some pass without pain or glory, others do well and others like Sonic Mania are a demonstration that with love and hard work you can do a great job.

Talking about the Streets of Rage saga is talking about one of the references of an entire genre: the beat’em up (the “me against the neighborhood” of all life. This franchise saga was born on Mega Drive and with its personality, graphics and soundtrack it won the hearts of many generations of players. Now 26 years later we receive this fourth part. Tremendous responsibility for a three-way development between Dotemu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games. In terms of sound, we are lucky to have the return of two greats like Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima, that next to Oliver I will derive They have created a soundtrack to match. Even each boss has their own soundtrack that has been created by a guest artist. A luxury.

We start with the characters. 10 years have passed at the plot level and the greatest exponent is the appearance of Axel who appears disheveled and with a beard that marks the passage of time. The Blaze redesign is a blast and a visit to the gallery of designs and sketches which is unlocked by completing the main story. In those sketches we see discarded ideas, comparisons to the original sprites, and all the work behind the protagonists and villains. One last.

The game consists of 12 hilarious phases in which we visit all kinds of detailed scenarios. It’s easy to get blown away by the textures and changing lighting filled with neon lights, reflections, and details that make you fall in love.. There are details that will dazzle fans of the saga as a nod to the kangaroo Roo.

At the playable level we have three buttons for punch, jump, items / throw them. A fourth button is reserved for the use of a attack special It can also be used in the air. Now we have a novelty: sIf we hit our enemy after using it, we will recover part of our life. What is amazing is the new bouncing physics. It is simply spectacular to launch our enemies against objects and take advantage of the bounce to continue hitting him while he falls. It also works wonders to throw objects like daggers, use the rebound to catch it again in the air and continue linking combos. Finally we have a super special move It consumes a star and is used by pressing the special button and the item button at the same time. These hits cause the game to freeze for a second to unleash a show of fire, lights and cause tremendous damage to our enemy.

Finishing the game is not complicated. Don’t worry if you are not particularly skilled at games of the genre because there are continuations (which penalize the score). Every time we pass a phase it will appear as completed and we can close and start with the next one. Yes, if they kill us we will have to start the level from the beginning, as the canons mandate.

Precisely the game “really starts” when we finish the 12 screens of story mode. It will be then when we unlock a new character, a boss fight mode, the duel mode, the Mania Difficulty Mode and the Arcade Mode that offers us the challenge of finishing the game with a single character and without continuations.

As we complete screens and play better, we receive scores with which we unlock new characters, classic pixelated versions and the original soundtrack of the original games. Where the game shines the most is in the local co-op for up to 4 players. It also has an online mode but is limited to 3 players.

I tell you a couple of tricks that are quite hidden. From the first moment if we fumble through the sound options we can change the band sonorous of the game for one retro that feels great. Of course, we recommend playing the game at least once with the new remix because it is amazing. By the way, you can listen to it on Spotify by entering the following link.

The game also has some options graphics that recreate the image of a tube TV of the time and several phases retro secret. How do we access these retro phases? Too easy. On some screens you will see machines Arcadian hidden. If we hit them they will simply break but if we take one of the taser that some enemies carry and we use them against the arcades we will enter these retro phases that recreate some of the most mythical levels of the franchise.

Streets of Rage 4 can proudly wear that number at the end of the name because it has managed to live up to the franchise. It respects all the bases of the trilogy and of the genre, but it has managed to give it the right news with a good graphic system and a graphic section to which it is impossible to put a but. The soundtrack lives up to expectations. Its 12 phases may seem short but there is a lot of content to unlock and doing it is tremendous fun in company with the cooperative modes.

When the quarantine is over, one of the best options will be to get together with three friends, buy pizza, drink and enjoy this great game which has been one of the surprises so far this year. Be careful, it is important to wash your hands when you finish the pizza.