Dear Streets of Rage 2,
It’s good to finally meet you! Wow, I remember seeing you around while I was growing up. You seemed so trendy with your pop culture protagonists such as the wrestler suffering from a bad case of roid-rage and Gary Coleman-look-alike on rollerblades. Rad, yo. How many games can say that they have enemies that look like they come straight out of a bad "urban" movie with their mohawks and yellow sleeveless coats? Not many, I don’t think… To your credit, you didn’t stop there on your quest for cool, oh no, you also decided to include Muay Thai fighters and lovely little baddies that are likely to be confused for bastard children from Shredder and antagonist B from a Mad Max movie. I applaud you on your efforts to date yourself. You succeeded brilliantly. Yet, despite your dated look, you somehow manage to entertain me years after your release.
At the character select screen I noticed that you have four unique characters for me to choose between, each having their own individual strengths and weaknesses. Max may dish out the most damage but he’s slower than a Buick with no engine driving down a dirt road. Depending on who I chose, I had to alter my tactics ever so slightly, but don’t worry; it didn’t come to the point where I had to rethink my outlook on life itself.
There were various times while playing that I became bored with your tried-and-true beat-em-up gameplay but you tried your best to surprise me with random pipes, knives and katanas. It worked, for awhile. Then, all of a sudden you bring out miniboss after miniboss and end each level with fairly unique boss fights. To answer the obvious question, "yes, I have always wanted to fight an Ultimate Warrior look-alike in a gladiatorial arena."
Much has been said of the sweet sweet music that you play while I am delivering a tubular butt kicking to my enemies, but you’re from the 16 bit era, more specifically, you’re from the inferior console when it comes to audio. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you still drive me batty.
I’m sorry I’m a little late to the party on seeing what you have to offer. Better late than never, right?
Sincerely, Kyle Stallock
P.S. You’re neat.
Streets of Rage is 400 Microsoft Points and is definitely worth a purchase even if you’re only going to play it once. After all, do you really need that iced cappuccino every morning? Wouldn’t you rather spend the money on a video game?
