Streets of Rage Remake (PC) review "Being a cop has to be the most boring job on Earth. As an avid videogame player, I have to come to this conclusion, as I can think of no game that portrays this career with even the remotest sense of accuracy. I mean, c’mon. Firefighters got Roscoe McQueen. Even postmen got Cliffie, the Beer-Drinking Postman. But every cop game either has you be a Ninja Cop, cop who has a super-tricked out spor..."

Being a cop has to be the most boring job on Earth. As an avid videogame player, I have to come to this conclusion, as I can think of no game that portrays this career with even the remotest sense of accuracy. I mean, c’mon. Firefighters got Roscoe McQueen. Even postmen got Cliffie, the Beer-Drinking Postman. But every cop game either has you be a Ninja Cop, cop who has a super-tricked out sports car and samurai sword who fights evil aliens (Vice: Project Doom), or generally goes about just shooting everyone to death (Narc, True Crime).

In Narc you could even shoot dogs with rocket launchers.

Now, a lot of folks have played the old Streets of Rage games for the Genesis back in their youth, myself included. We spent hundreds—if not thousands—of hours walking to the right and beating the ever-loving crap out of anyone that got in our way with a pal. Good times were had by all, save for poor Galsia and Donovan.

For the astute fella that cares about the storyline in a beat ‘em up, it would be noted that your characters in the first game (and the two that return for the sequels) were cops. Did they look like cops? No, they looked like regular punks. Did they act like cops? No, they acted like fist-fighters who beat people to death and arrested no one or even used guns for that matter.

But they were cops! The game said so. And they could summon a squad car to blast the baddies with napalm or machine gun fire, so good enough for me. Civilians can’t do that.

Anyways, the original Sega trilogy rocked. For years I wanted a new Streets of Rage game, and what I got…was an old one.

I couldn’t be happier.

The folks over at Bomber Games have essentially taken one part SOR1, 3 parts SOR2, some SOR3, a dash of original flavor for taste, mixed for 5 minutes and cooked at 180 degrees of Rad. What we get in the end is a mish-mash of all of the series, with for the most part the best of all worlds.

In order to best help you Rage on the Streets like never before, all of the series’ principle heroes are at your beck and call. Even Adam, my personal fav who was sadly unplayable in 2/3 of the trilogy. Whereas the crew at BG imported the other characters from either SOR2 or 3 with some tweaking, poor ole Adam had to basically be ‘built’ from the ground up. As a result, he’s still missing a full special moveset as of this version’s release, but they’re working on that for the next one. In addition to the six you have available from the outset, two more secret characters can be obtained. Unfortunately in their cases, one is vastly overpowered and the other is little more than a novelty with a very barebones set of attacks.

The sprites have all been cleaned up rather nicely, with the SOR1 enemies being resized and touched up further. There are a few misses in this, such as the SOR1 whip girl’s face, which is the same color as her hair (thus making it gray depending on the color palette she has), and a thick black border around the Mona/Lisa sprite, making them almost appear cel-shaded. Minor quibbles on that, though.

Tunes are all familiar remixes of the classic Rage beats (get it?), and there’s an option to use the original tracks as well. In fact, there are a lot of neat little customization options, from the way you jump and attack to the presence of a timer to the ability to use guns (like y’know, a cop might).

Nearly every enemy from the series’ history can be found and beaten senseless through a vast number of branching stages that were also lifted from the series’ history. These stages typically mesh well with one another, but there is again the occasional bump-in-the-road one would expect from a work-in-progress. Others bumps come in the form of the occasional snaggy glitch or oversight, which I haven’t noticed too many, but some such as enemies getting hit by weapons after I’ve swung them or sometimes getting hit like a bajillion times by Blaze’s running knife attack do stand out.

The biggest gripe would probably be in the optional CPU second player you can have assist you, who depending on the AI you give it is as dumb as a box of rocks and doesn’t help you hardly at all, or can end up walking into a wall forever and thus screw you from getting any further. Don’t use the CPU-helper unless you hate getting past the first level.

Still, despite some rather minor hang-ups, that game has incredible amounts of Fun tucked away, and a crazy level of replay value with the different routes and endings you can get.

Streets of Rage Remake can stand proudly with its ‘parents’ as it’s one of the best beat ‘em ups I’ve ever played. And as a still-incomplete game, that means the final version can only get better.

Community review by turducken (May 05, 2007) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.