Streets of Rage 4 Review

When I heard the words Streets of Rage 4, it was kind of hard to imagine what that would look like. There’s also a variety of reasons to be skeptical about its quality. The last time Streets of Rage has really been relevant was the 16-bit era and we are long removed from those times.

What can they do with a new installment? How do they modernize it? If they keep true to its roots, does it then become modern retro, a term that makes me eye roll on reaction whenever I hear it?

In that context you might think I’m saying that all retro inspired games are bad when in reality the situation is worse. They’re just fine. They exist. They are there and I acknowledge their presence.

Seeing the game in motion wiped away some of those initial worries. The art style somehow finds a way to capture both the grunge and filth of fighting down city streets overrun with hooligans while still remaining beautifully drawn and vibrant. Everything just moves so smoothly, which makes the fact that so much of it is hand drawn even that more impressive.

The question remains: what is a modern day Streets of Rage? It’s still a 2D, side-scrolling beat-em-up that has you going straight through Wood Oak City, trying your best to rid the streets of crime and figure out why it all went to shit once again.

You still find a ridiculous arsenal of weapons at your disposal throughout, many of which are found in various breakable objects in the environment. Yes, you even still eat entire turkeys off the ground because how else are you going to stay fueled to break some faces?

They didn’t stray too far away from the formula but they did make enough small tweaks to make things interesting. The most impactful tweak is the addition of a wall bounce, which occurs when you’ve knocked an enemy back towards the wall, propelling them against the side and back towards you. This allows you to continue your combo before they even touch the ground so it becomes a bit of an exercise in seeing how much damage you can really pile on before the fight resets. It’s small yet allows this entry to really feel like its own.

Besides the actual gameplay, another thing synonymous with Streets of Rage is a bumping soundtrack and that’s where this one falls short. It isn’t explicitly terrible, but there’s a very specific early 90s techno/club sound the series is known for and this fails to capture that spirit. The good news is the developers seemed to realize how important the soundtrack is because they did include the option to play with the music from the original. That’s a good compromise that doesn’t end with the game fully relying on series classics.

What I also appreciated about this game is that it respects the original material as far as game length is concerned. The beat-em-up genre by its very nature is limited. There are only so many characters and fighting styles you can introduce before you realize you’re just beating up the same crowds over and over again and it’s very easy for this type of game to overstay its welcome. That’s not the case at all here. In fact, what they’ve done to incentivize continued playthroughs is include unlockable versions of characters from previous entries, complete with their actual retro sprites. This makes me want to come back to it to unlock what I can without artificially increasing the length of the main story.

Should you buy it, wait for a sale, or skip it?

I would buy it. Streets of Rage 4 evokes the right feeling of the earlier entries in the series while revamping it to make it look and feel like its own. The beat-em-up genre has been sorely lacking for quite some time and this definitely knows and respects its roots.