We take advantage of the Meripodcast to talk about Street of Rage 4 and the entire history of the saga
During the recent PAX East, we had the opportunity to play for a few days the same demo that ran in the conference and get acquainted with the unexpected return of the classic of street fighting. The joint work of Lizardcube (Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap), Guard Crush (Streets of Fury) and Dotemu, with the supervision of Sega, is a project that raises not a little expectation among those who grew up with the soundtrack of Yuzo Koshiro as a reference vital while cleaning the streets of the host of Mr X.
The most obvious thing to start with is clearly the graphics. Although we are talking about a franchise that has not officially progressed since the times of Mega Drive, which could be considered as an invitation to bet on something closer to the pixels of yesteryear, the chosen path goes through a style similar to from The Dragon's Trap, using cel shaded to create an identifiable cartoon-like game. The elaborate animation and the detail of the backgrounds finish to form a game with a visual personality that is obvious, but without losing its essence of classic brawler.
The designs of the characters are curious and recognizable, although when retouching old icons there will surely be some raised eyebrow. Blaze's is very eye-catching for example, and appropriate for one of those iconic female characters who is usually done a lot of justice even if there is a permanent and cover protagonist in an important series like this. Axel Stone, the other character who has been in all the installments and has been the visible face of it, appears with a somewhat more scruffy appearance, without that particular figure with a white shirt that has characterized him since his first confrontations with Mr. X. His scruffy figure and broad clothing could point to a complicated past years, although the truth is that his great rival at Capcom, Cody, has never appeared so changed (and that was in jail).
An essential aspect for the future of the game and its place in history will be in music. Emulating a legend like Yuzo Koshiro -who will collaborate in the game- is not easy, but the little we have heard points to something more similar to the second part, which is the most balanced of the three traditional with acid techno and industrial sound that differentiated the saga. It does not sound bad, but we save the opinion for the final set.
Videogame history
As far as the game is concerned, we find four characters, two old acquaintances and two new ones. It is, in structure, a traditional old school brawler: move forward, finish off the bad guys that are coming, keep walking until you finish them all and overcome the phase. Within that, Streets of Rage 4 looks for its innovations and leave its mark with its own ideas and flavors. On the one hand, the series has always been characterized by having a greater range of movements and options than that of other alternatives from the same period, something that is reflected here. We have chains of normal shots, different aerial shots, various special movements according to the orientation of the joystick and a special super movement with limited loads for the most pressing occasions, in addition to classic movements such as grips and change of position by jumping to change the key, quite a discovery in its time.
The game looks very interesting in its use of special moves. Normally, when using special movements we lose life, it is something very typical of the genre, but in Streets of Rage 4 we will lose life momentarily, since we can recover it by chaining normal blows, but knowing that if in that process we receive the slightest blow, We will lose the entire "bet" bar. This generates an attractive risk-reward balance: on the one hand it encourages us to spend more special movements by giving us some security in being able to recover what is consumed, but on the other hand we will do it with the fear that the play will go wrong and we will lose more life than the one we could afford.
In general, Streets of Rage 4 leaves us with good feelings. We see a brawler with a foundation, with ideas, wanting to offer more than a simple revival and also with a very striking visual style. Perhaps many lovers of the saga would have preferred something like Sonic Mania, a super-vitaminized version of our memories -with 100% BSO of Koshiro-, but what we have on the table has value and passion, and we really want to try it from start to finish. , at some point in this 2020. Meanwhile, do not miss our review of this project and the entire saga in the podcast, almost an hour and a half of talk between friends talking about a series that was an important part of a precious time in the world of videogame.
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