Final Fight: Streetwise
Final Fight? Let’s hope so.
Tags: Final Fight: Streetwise Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Christopher on Mar 22nd, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Final Fight: Streetwise (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Fighting | No | ||
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Remember the good old days of beat-‘em-ups in your favorite arcade? Throwing endless quarters into games like the original Streets of Rage and Double Dragon back in the 90’s is something a lot of older gamers can fondly remember. The genre back then was fun to play with friends just endlessly smashing goons with your fists. Game companies remember the days of yesteryear and attempt to cash in on that with the recent revival efforts of a nearly dead genre. Amid all of this, Capcom presents a sequel to its old game series with Final Fight: Streetwise.
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If there are even any fans of the old Final Fight games left, they’re probably cursing at what passes for a story here. You play as Kyle, younger brother of old school pugilist Cody who in his time since getting out of prison has managed to get deep over his head into trouble. There’s a new drug in the streets of the city called ‘glow’ that gives people super human strength and as a side effect makes their eyes, yes, you guessed it, glow. So it’s up to Kyle to beat the living daylights out of people as he searches the city looking for his brother. However bad the story sounds you won’t really pay much attention to it, you’re playing the game to beat people up and have fun, right? If only the actual gameplay made up for the weak narrative.
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While Capcom did an alright job in theory with the free roaming and open city, in execution it could have been a lot better. Side missions are critical to gain respect among the various characters you run into to advance the story. If you’re a nobody you’ll usually end up being told you aren’t getting any help, or in the case of random NPCs you’re likely to end up in a fight. It’s a neat concept but the ways you get respect such as stomping on vermin for shopkeepers. As you fight various hoodlums moving forward, you trigger cutscenes that are poorly voiced with an over abundance of pointless cursing. The world you’re in is supposed to be gritty and realistic but those sidequests and crappy dialogue destroy any hope of a gamer to take the game seriously.
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Gameplay itself has depth there with various new moves you can unlock and an Instinct mode you can enter for increased damage. You’ve got a standard assortment of light and heavy attacks and grabs here and the ability to pick up and use various weapons foes drop. The only problem is in most cases all you have to do is wail on people with an unending stream of light attacks to progress to each new area. Normal foes aren’t very smart either and basically gather around you in groups of sometimes up to 8 and take turns attacking. Since they don’t all attack at once it’s fairly easy to pick apart an entire group before you take too much damage. Boss fights require a little strategy here and there, but for the most part it’s mindless button tapping.
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Final Fight isn’t much to look at in either version of the game. The PS2 graphics look about as bland as can be with washed out characters that looked like slightly altered versions of the same couple guys over and over again. The environments are all generic rundown buildings and alleyways with blurry visuals that you practically need to be in front of to see well. The camera is about as broken as possible to boot. Either you’re getting hit by enemies you didn’t even know were there or you walk into an object only to have the camera spin around to try and catch up. It’s very annoying to play a game when you can’t even see what’s currently smacking at your life bar.
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The characters all suffer from awful dialogue and poor voice acting. Final Fight definitely earns its Mature rating as well with liberal use of the F-bomb. While it’s hardly surprising in a game that’s trying to be as edgy as possible, it just makes things feel cheap and dirty without a real reason. The localized soundtrack including rappers such as Nappy Roots or Mos Def provides a decent background for the various grunts and smacks you’ll constantly hear while pummeling fools left and right. It doesn’t seem to synch up well with the ‘action’ going on while playing, but it does beat out generic non-licensed music any day.
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Final Fight: Streetwise pretty much fails to please. A boring story greets you in the main form of gameplay, while the alternate Arcade mode focuses on the lackluster combat. There’s a co-op mode for another player to join in and throw down too, but with the three playable characters in-game, support for a third player would have made more sense. You might have fun killing endless mobs of thugs but after about an hour most gamers will get bored and move on. Gamers would do well to let the past die and move on.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + The free roaming city. | 4.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Poor voice acting - Lame sidequest - Plot tries too hard to be edgy |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Worth a rental and not much else. | |
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Tags: Final Fight: Streetwise
Posted by Christopher on Mar 22nd, 2006 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
