Category: Reviews

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Retro Monday: Streets of Rage

Released in 1991 for the Sega Mega Drive, Streets of Rage is a classic and fondly-remembered retro franchise which spawned two direct sequels and retained its staying power through a steady series of compilations/re-releases over the years, the most recent being for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013.

Streets of Rage is a side-scrolling beat ‘em up in the same vein as Golden Axe or Double Dragon. Players fight their way through waves of bad guys and end-of-level bosses until the end or they run out of lives. Players choose one (or in co-op, two) stereotypical tough guy ex-cop characters from a selection of 3 to take down the crime syndicate of the unimaginatively-named ‘Mister X’. Axel is the all-rounder, Adam is strong but slow and Blaze is fast but the weakest of the group. The simple fighting mechanics are solid and fun and its arcade heritage is clear through mechanics like weapon pick-ups and the powerful police support abilities replacing the screen-clearing magic spells of Golden Axe.

Streets of Rage lays the foundation of the series’ great visual style which would be later refined in Streets of Rage 2. The sprites and backgrounds really convey the game’s sleazy urban atmosphere, both in their quality and in additional touches such as the wind blowing posters in the background. The game’s soundtrack is equally brilliant; a mixture of dance and R’n’B chip tunes that fit with the mood and aesthetic and, like the graphics, would be developed even further in Streets of Rage 2.

Streets of Rage’s art and style became an inspiration for other games at the time and have become pop-culture tropes in their own right. Streets of Rage came out at a time when console hardware was becoming sufficiently powerful to offer arcade-quality games and experiences in the home, overcoming the limitations of the Master System and NES. It’s a shame Sega aren’t willing to develop a new Streets of Rage, their only interaction with the brand being to file a cease and desist action on a fan-made game that was near to release.

Maybe Sega’s current approach to letting external developers work on Sonic Mania means this attitude is changing, however the poorly-received Double Dragon 4 shows that making a new instalment of a retro beat ‘em up is not as straightforward as it seems. Along with Daytona USA, Sega’s output in this period through games like Streets of Rage helped defined the cultural memory of gaming, and even if it is a short experience when removed from its coin-guzzling arcade origins, it is still well worth experiencing today.

Verdict: Highly Recommended.

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Experimental Two-in-One Review – Gone Home and Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Until recently I had not paid much attention to the Mass Effect series, however after the realisation that I was years late to the party and Mass Effect Andromeda coming out soon, I thought it would be worth blasting through the previous trilogy to get up to speed. After that mammoth undertaking I wanted to play some smaller palette-cleanser games with the added bonus of clearing more of my backlog. As part of this process I played Gone Home and Octodad: Dadliest Catch one after the other and found myself thinking about how the two are very similar in a lot of interesting ways. Rather than repeat myself across two reviews I thought I would combine them into a single review. Throughout it I will clearly delineate between the two in bracketed sentences or paragraphs labelled GH for Gone Home and OD for Octodad. It is entirely possible this will be a one-off feature so don’t worry too much if it doesn’t entirely work.

Games don’t need to tell grandiose stories of world or universe-saving gravitas and scope to be personally affecting. The sometimes misguided plot beats of Mass Effect manage to weave personal stories into a fantastical setting with the intention of impacting the emotional bits of the player’s brain while impressing them with awe, spectacle and space shooty-bang-bang.

These stories can be just as, if not more affecting by making them more personally relatable; pulling on our personal real-life memories and emotions as a clever way to connect us to the polygonal marionettes pulled by invisible strings in front of our eyes and suspend our disbelief.

This game manages all of these objectives by doing just that; placing us in situations that we may not have directly experienced ourselves, but that cross enough circles on the Venn diagram of our own lives to make sufficient connections to tether us to the narrative and characters. I have never been (GH: a 90s teenage lesbian)(OD: a literal cephalopod trying to pass itself off as human being) however I have been (GH: a young person trying to grapple with who I am, what the world is and where I fit in it)(OD: aware of my own ‘imposter syndrome’ regarding personal achievement and trying to fit in or trying to do difficult or stressful things without making them worse in the process), and as such elements of the story did resonate with me on a personal level.

I am not a universal fan of the (GH: ‘Walking Simulator’)(OD: ‘Aren’t physics/difficult controls funny!’) genre, however to me this game is perhaps the best example of such a genre due to the way the mechanics are utilised to reinforce the narrative or experience of the character, either (GH: wandering around your parents’ large house to picture together where they and your sister are and what happened to them through puzzles and interacting with objects which tangentially build the story)(OD: trying to do everyday things without drawing attention to your externally obvious octopoid nature). This, coupled with the use of non-linear narrative to build the story around the gameplay adds more than (GH: wandering about and doing very little while having story vomited at you until the credits roll)(OD: flailing around until the joke quickly wears off), a trait which put me off other supposedly excellent titles such as (GH: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture)(OD: Surgeon Simulator) which I thought were really not very good at all.

To me the biggest problem for the genre of game this sits in is that they typically overstay their welcome; dragging out narrative or mechanics beyond what is (GH: interesting and engaging)(OD: funny). This game avoids that by saying what it has to say and wrapping up before this happens. The only major criticism comes from the price-to-time ratio this game offers. It costs at least £10 on Steam and PS4 when not on sale and while I am not normally averse to buying well-made shorter games like Inside, I would perhaps recommend caution on this one in particular (GH: because there is very little replay value)(OD: however there are plenty of achievements and some collectables if that kind of thing matters to you) and game length is a major purchasing factor.

Finally, whether you like or dislike this game/genre, the house in Gone Home also makes an interesting Counterstrike map:

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pR3AokUCQo[/embedyt]

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Retro Monday: Mega Man II

Released in 1988, Mega Man 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System is widely regarded as the best in the series as well as one of the best games ever made in general. In it, Mega Man returns to save the world by defeating the evil Dr Wily and his 8 Robot Masters by battling through tough-but-fair 2D action-platforming levels.

The core gameplay loop of blasting and jumping your way through each themed stage is a lot of fun, even though they present a solid challenge. Despite the difficulty it doesn’t feel too unfair, dying is generally down to player error however respawning enemies can make it feel more like luck and can ruin precision movement and jumping. As with previous and successive Mega Man games, defeating each Robot Master unlocks their particular weapon for use in other levels. These range from conventional weapons like metal saw blades to bubbles, yes bubbles, which are more effective against certain bosses, however weapons like the Metal Blade are a bit overpowered. Despite the breadth of these weapons they are all effective and don’t feel like they’re included for padding out game time or content.

Each level has a clear and crisp visual style and is themed around its respective Robot Master, giving the game a rich and varied visual palette without having to have a convoluted plot to justify the changes in scenery. For example the Wood Man stage is in a forest and the Heat Man stage is in a furnace/industrial factory. This variety is reflected in the soundtrack too, continuing the series’ reputation for catchy and memorable chiptunes. There is some sprite flicker, however Mega Man 2 doesn’t have the awful framerate drops present in Mega Man 3.

I have a long personal history with Mega Man 2; I played it a lot when I was young and played it through to completion about a year ago and keep an eye on speed run events to see it being done as quickly as possible. It really is action platforming at its best, a template which has seen a resurgence in recent years through games like Super Meat Boy and Shovel Knight, retro de-makes/direct sequels like Mega Man 9 and 10 as well as spiritual successors like Might No.9 with varying levels of quality and appeal.