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Platform: PS2,
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Final
Fight: Streetwise
Recently,
game publishers have started to put the feelers out and see if gamers
are ready to embrace the beat ‘em up once more.
The genre, which revolved around wandering cityscapes, punching
punks in the teeth, and whacking thugs on the head with bats, had its hay
day back in the side-scrolling 16-bit era with series like Streets of
Rage, Double Dragon, and Bad Dudes.
Since then, the genre has languished, and attempts to bring it
into the 3D world have been everything from out-and-out failures like
Fighting Force, or horribly misguided attempts steeped in good
intentions like Urban Reign. Now,
Capcom is going to try and give the beat ‘em up another shot by
bringing back one of the most popular series in the genre: Final Fight.
While
it would be nice to take control of Cody, Haggar, and the gang again in
Streetwise, Capcom has chosen to bring a new hero into the fold as the
game’s main character, as players follow Kyle Travers, the brother of
Cody from the old Final Fights. It
would seem that Kyle’s sibling has mysteriously gone missing, and now
the search of Metro City begins to find out who took him, and why.
With all of the experience that Capcom has gained in the world of fighting games during the decade or so since we last saw a new Final Fight, it looks like the company is trying to put a lot of what they’ve learned into Streetwise in an attempt to help further flesh out the beat ‘em up genre. Firstly, while players will have standard punching and kicking moves that they can use will fighting close-range, they will also be able to unload combos on assailants. However, taking things a step further is the use of tension during fights, which will directly impact how quickly players will be able to knock enemies on their backsides. Tension is determined by how intense a fight is, and how well players perform while in combat. If one |
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does
slow, boring attacks all day, they shouldn’t expect to take down
enemies very fast. If players kick things up a notch, and throw combos around,
nail their attacks, and dodge the bad guys well, the tension will go up,
allowing players to do even more special attacks, and really do a number
on the thugs unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of Kyle’s
fists.
Players will also be awarded for finesse through Counter-Time and Instinct Mode in Streetwise, both of which can be manually activated by players. As one can probably guess, Instinct mode increases Kyle’s accuracy and |
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attack
speed, allowing players to do especially powerful combos.
While in this mode, combat can be enhanced even more by
activating Counter-Time mode, which allows Kyle to better counterattack
enemies by slowing down time through the use of specific parries during
a fight.
One
thing that will remain quite true to the Final Fight series in this game
is that players will find themselves wandering some pretty mean streets
as they mosey down dark alleys, and various other urban areas in Metro
City. Not only will players
be able to wander them, though, they’ll also be able to revisit past
stages and see how they’ve changed from all of the carnage in the game.
What
remains to be seen are who the NPCs that join Kyle on his journey will
be.
Capcom has said that there will be some new faces, while coyly
implying the return of familiar faces from the Final Fight series.
On top of this, we don’t yet know the extent of the arsenal for
hand-to-hand weapons in the game, nor the details as to how multiplayer
will work.
Nonetheless,
it really does seem that a number of publishers want to try and bring
back the beat ‘em up. To
this point the results have been far from flattering, but maybe, just
maybe Capcom can be the ones to turn this trend around.
Final Fight was top notch back during its glory years, and it
would nice to see the series become one of those that gets itself a
nice, heart-warming comeback story.
Mr. Nash September 29, 2005 |
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