When Streets of Rage 4 got revealed I was apprehensive. This is a series I love. I've gushed about it on Backloggd on other reviews of the Megadrive games (well two of them anyway...). My first thoughts on seeing 4's reveal trailer though was simply "that's not Streets of Rage". Where is the pixel art? Why is everything so bright and clean? What is with Blaze's walk animation? To be honest I wrote the game off without giving it a chance.

The reviews came in extremely positive to my surprise and piqued my interest. People I knew started playing it. Apparently it had tight controls, unlockable pixel art characters from the original game as bonus content. Was I wrong? Still I harboured doubts. What really turned my head though was hearing the soundtrack. It's a huge part of the franchise. The original and legendary composer Yuzo Kashiro was adding some music to the Soundtrack but hearing On fire by Oliver Deriviere on youtube absolutely drew my attention in a way more than any other news took. I had to buy it. When a friend of mine bought it we finally got into it playing co-op along with the Mr. x Nightmare DLC and have been playing every night now for several weeks. I happily admit I was wrong because Streets of Rage 4 is a Streets of Rage game, it is a fantastic beat 'em up and right now I am thoroughly addicted to it like I'm 12 years old all over again. You'd think someone of my age would know better by now not to judge something so effortlessly.

It's wonderful, it's everything Streets of Rage 4 should be. It brings new things to the table whilst still paying homage to the series roots. The game starts 10 years after Streets of Rage 3 with Mr. X's children having taken over what must be the world's most easily corruptible city. Original characters Blaze and Axel take to the streets along with newcomers Cherry and Floyd to take them back. As the game progresses you earn points which unlock more characters from the older games until there is quite an ensemble of choice of 18 with their own move sets though many of them are different versions of each other from older titles.

The game has the standard punch, kick, jump, and back attack as well as grapples allowing for throws, floor slams and extra damage. On top of this characters have forward dash blitz moves and specials. The specials use health but leave the chunk of your health bar you lost in green allowing you to get it back whilst doing regular blows. If you are hit however you lose it all on top of that blows damage. It's a great reward system and the special attacks can use invincibility frames to avoid damage or used in part of a combo with normal attacks and blitz moves to devastating combo effect in practice. Lastly in the character's arsenal are the star moves characters can use, these are limited and generally used to try and screen clear or at least give you some room.

Each character plays differently. The Streets of Rage 1 characters are more limited in their move sets but hit extremely hard and fast. The Streets of Rage 3 characters can all run and roll vertically making them quite manoeuvrable with the streets of Rage 2 and 4 cast as a mix somewhere in the middle. There is enough variety here you can find a character you are comfortable with to make it through to the credits and it's easy to change midway if you aren't grooving with who you have or you unlock someone new. For me though the joy has been playing through as every character aiming for S ranks and higher scores and combos for every level. Even characters I initially haven't enjoyed have turned out to be brilliant with some practice and understanding how their move sets all work.

The art style I initially hated at the game's reveal I came to love very quickly. I love the animations and character designs. It feels fresh and retro all at once with great usage of colour. If you don't like the look or feel of it thinking this isn't the game you wanted, please try it. In motion with the feeling of the controls and music it all clicks together. The aforementioned music really is perfect for the game, I mean check out the main theme. It could fit in with any of the game's in the series. Really perfect.

That's it in a quick review, Streets of Rage 4. I love how it plays, looks, sounds and feels. It's got great character and move variety, looks and sounds the part and is simply fun to play. My hat off to the dev team and I apologise for doubting you. Adding the Mr X's Nightmare DLC with extra characters and modes really seals the deal for those who want more. As my friend I play this co-op said to me the other day that all he could think about was "I really just wanted to play Streets of Rage 4".

Yeah, me too my friend, me too. What a first game to review for the start of the year.

+ Feels great to play with a large cast of characters and moves.
+ Hits the right notes for both new and old.
+ Great art and music.
+ Surprisingly addictive.

Holy crap I finally beat this incredible game! That last stage took months! It had become a sort of ritual; once or twice a week I’d fire up Streets of Rage 4 and make another ill-fated attempt at stage 12 before bed. I knew I had it in me to do it without handicaps so I just kept poking at it over and over until I finally broke through with Shiva of all characters; literally my first time playing him. All the other stages I beat with Cherry; I loved jumping on guys’ shoulders and punching them in the face.

Coming off of Shredder’s Revenge, which had a lot more mobility options, Streets of Rage characters can feel a little stiff and heavy, but I found this eventually grew on me. It gave the combat a more methodical, deliberate feel that I grew to appreciate. Once I started using the back attack regularly, I felt like I was finally in the Streets of Rage zone again.

The tight controls, bright colors and faithfulness to the series style and gameplay make this an amazing sequel and just what I want out of a modern beat ‘em up. I’m definitely going to keep coming back to this one.

Action games are getting bigger, but they're also getting smaller. Titanic bosses and dizzyingly intricate movesets are the natural residue of progressing technology, but their weight isn't fully felt if spamming air dashes becomes a dominant strategy or a well-timed dodge roll is your best option in every scenario. Although Streets of Rage 4 is an old-school throwback, it represents to me what the wider genre would be better off evolving towards. Constantly deciding when to end a combo, when to shift your focus, when to pick up an item may not seem like much when compared to the spectacle of other modern titles, but the complexity created by the layering of these minutiae locked me in a flow state to a degree that really doesn't happen all that much these days. The health bar/special move system adds fuel to the fire- effectively asking if you think you can combo off a certain move, and then rewarding you if you end up being correct either way in a straight-up palpable elevation of the skill ceiling. Ultimate, precise, calculated knowledge of your own limited moveset is the big goal here, which makes the learning experience so, so fulfilling when compared to the alternative of primarily remembering and reacting to specific patterns. It'd be a sin if I didn't also mention the graphics. A comic book in motion is such an elegant fit for a modern beat-em-up, which is a pretty apt way to describe the entire game. While other retro revivals have found some decent success in revitalizing interest in their specific series, the newest Streets of Rage entry feels like it has the potential to do so for beat-em-ups as a whole. It's not compact enough to reach that arcade sweetspot of replayability, but that's the only real misfire that came from adapting the series' staples for a modern audience. The demand for golden age beat-em-ups has been dead and buried for decades at this point, and who knows if an EXTRA LIFE IN 2020 is really in the cards for the genre, but I do know that I might very well be a convert. First game of the roaring 20s that gets a "you gotta play this one" from me.

Streets of Rage 4 is a fantastic beat ‘em up. I am still relatively new to this genre, at least the more traditional entries, but I can tell this is all quality.

If I were to say the game's combat excelled at something in particular, it would be how enemies control space, and how you have to deal with it. As simple as that sounds, this is very very difficult to get right. I believe it’s generally one of the largest shortcomings to action games and I’m sure it’s a huge one to traditional beat ‘em ups as well.

Before I can talk about how each enemy in SoR4 has a defined purpose, I must talk about the players moveset. Each character has differences but ultimately it can be described pretty simply.
Every character has a simple string of attacks, offensive and defensive special, jumping attacks and a set of grab moves.

The thing I want to emphasize now is that you are able to walk OR attack. Some attacks can “move” you but that doesn’t mean you are in the state of “walking”, at least in terms of how the game defines it.

In a game where the enemies are primarily about controlling space, this is a really big deal. If you could run around slashing like a ninja slashing your sword everywhere, it would be a very different type of game. This design decision creates one of the most seemingly basic yet intriguing value judgements in action games to me. It sounds a little silly but I think the only way to really show what this is to use the statement as a question, “should I walk or attack?” If that’s hard to really think of the implications of, you can simplify it a little further and say it’s almost like “should I play defensively or offensively?” There is a catch there, you can have offensive movements and defensive attacks, but that’s the idea.

This game only excels at this and I very rarely see games that do it better. It’s all down to the enemies, which to me are some of the best in the genre.

It’s too much to cover all the potential value judgements in this game, but even with the most basic goons there is a shockingly good amount just due to the speed of the attacks and the damage they do. Most attacks are fast and pretty damaging, they are all a threat in some way or another. That actually imposing threat is what makes this really click.

At a very basic level, a lot of this game is baiting out attacks and punishing them. There are value judgments in that alone I think but those are pretty whatever, the juicy stuff is when you implement another enemy. What if he’s close enough to hit you out of your attack that was supposed to be a punish? What if he has more range than you and his attacks are harder to punish? What if you try to get out of the way of an attack but it’s less advantageous because ANOTHER enemy is nearby, in your way. You can keep asking questions that don’t have completely solid answers, and that to me is the cool part.

You not only have choice, but they mean very different things in a game as system focused as this. Your problem solving has to be top notch because even a correct decision can still lead to something more negative later, just because you didn’t choose the most correct option, which may not have even existed.

That isn’t to say there aren’t strong options, hell I know there are. Doing the back grab slam thing is generally really strong due to the i-frames. The only thing you have to consider after you get it there is the crowd control, making sure you have a way out of that attack without being piled on by enemies. It’s impossible to make a game of this complexity without strong tools and I don’t think they need to. Strong tools let you devise a plan early on, and as you get accustomed to the way enemies work and the game is played, you can get better options for more situations.

Basically meaning, the tools in the game are not strong enough to be used for every situation, just strong enough to give you a good starting point past button mashing.

There’s just so much depth squeezed out of such relatively simple systems created by enemy design that’s just so genius I can’t wrap my head around it. The encounters are good too! They always have enemies that compliment each other. Pair an enemy that controls horizontal space with one that controls vertical space and you have a pretty good encounter already! They do this obvious one a couple times, if I recall. That’s not a bad thing though, in fact I really like it.

The enemies that uppercut you out of the air control your jump-ins, which is a really easy way to get combos. The enemies that run at you horizontally control horizontal space really well. Enemies who control the ground with poison are literally making some areas just bad places to be in. Some enemies have really long attacks and move fast, making it hard to whiff punish. Even with that roster alone, you can make really interesting encounters. Yet there’s so much more, and I can’t particularly think of a bad example.

The whole game is about pushing space control based judgement values to as far as the games systems allow and it does one hell of a job. If you even just like action games, this one is a great pick.

Just to get it out of the way, the game sounds and feels great. Top notch there too.

Completion Criteria: Story Mode (Normal)

I've played a couple of 2D Beat'em ups. Nothing has really stood out to me outside of Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. Whilst I've enjoyed bits from others, overall I've treated them as, harsh but, brainless.

I want this to be clear because this is the first 2D beat'em up to break my expectations. Maybe this is purely just by the addition of a "trials" mode but the complexity of skill and utility felt immeasurably higher then others of the same standard. Whilst playing the idea of how to attack were more clear. And the risk Vs reward of special skills makes each move feel more engaging. The variation across the cast had me interested in playing many members of the cast and more importantly interested in replaying the games which is something I don't usually have.

Considering the amazing soundtrack, great artwork and great gameplay. It's hard to really find any faults in the game. From a design perspective, it does exactly what it intends to the only reasonable flaw I can throw at it is theres a difficulty spike in the final levels, which may be due to it being designed for a 2 player experience.

I look forward to going back and trying other characters and bumping up the difficulty

I played it close to release on Gamepass, enjoyed it, and wasn't impressed. I bought it this year and now I consider it an impeccable game.

Beat 'em ups always had something that bothered me, hitting the enemy, him leaving the screen, waiting for him to come back and repeating it. SOR4 fixed this by implementing juggle mechanics. Enemy bounces off the corner of the wall, enable to do some really nice combos.
I love that special moves consume life, but that can be recovered by hitting enemies, creating incredible risk-reward situations. The game rewards aggressive style.
At first I only did jab and blitz attack combos (forward, forward and jab), but after looking at the robust tutorial and training mode I was able to extract much more from the game.
I love the artwork. The colors. How you can throw a weapon and pick it back in the air. I love how Axl looks like Simba in the concept arts, I love the retro levels and the mechanics in general...

It's a celebration of the series. It has several unlockable characters from the entire franchise, with specific mechanics for each game.

The DLC includes new weapons, survival mode and 3 new playable characters. In survival mode, new moves are unlocked for the characters, greatly improving customization.

I finished with all characters, my favorites were Estel and Blaze. because reasons

so great. Wasnt expecting to replay the whole game but it just happened and wow just this game is so smooth it's so good and so awesome, the first time I played it I struggled a lot and yes, I will admit even though I am ashamed I used an assist on the last level to give me one extra life. But this playthrough nope, no way Jose. None of that baby crap just pure awesomeness and the steel nerves of a gamer grizzled by the fires of combat. And guess what? I won. Hell. FUCKING. yes. I played the TMNT beatemup recently, which was decent fun, but I had a problem: there was basically no cooperation. All the co-op stuff was in these gimmicky useless moves like, dive bomb into me and I can throw you forward. It did basically nothing. But this game EVERY SINGLE THING is built around co op... like it's so easy to throw an enemy to your friend and have your friend finish it off and just doing combos even when the guy you're beating up is dead. It's really cool. #awesome #great #streetsofrage #oneofthebestgamesofalltime #GOAT

I’m not sure what witchcraft the trio of DotEmu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games have been practicing, but they’ve worked some real magic with Streets of Rage 4. They could have slapped a lick of paint on a classic, beloved title and done some decent numbers. It would’ve been fine. I would’ve bought it. Instead, Streets of Rage 4 feels fresh, like a real evolution of the scrolling beat ‘em up and yet, it plays exactly how you’d expect. It doesn’t feel like they’ve changed much at all! I'm telling you, there's something going on here.

Lots of other games within this genre have felt the need to bolt extra bits on, with varying degrees of success. It’s usually some arbitrary RPG elements, allowing you to make the numbers go up as you fight tougher enemies over learning patterns and the skills needed to take them out. There’s been some belters over the years, but the purity of the beat ‘em up seemed to be a thing of the past and with good reason.

Removed from the arcades, via home release, emulation or on a compilation (like the Capcom Beat ‘em Up Bundle) these ‘belt-scrollers’ lose something. They’re all relentlessly difficult, to an almost unfair degree, designed to milk you for coins and when you’ve got unlimited credits some of the later stages become mindless button mashing until the credits roll. There’s a base level fun there, sure, but nothing really, truly engaging. Don't get me wrong, I love some of these games, but try telling me Alien vs Predator isn't an absolute chore to play RIGHT TO THE VERY END with a straight face.

Streets of Rage 4 boots the fucking door in, informing you all of its arrival. Instead of adding additional elements, it focuses on the things that made Streets of Rage the very pinnacle of the genre. The banging soundtrack, varied characters and combat that feels so, so satisfying and then just cranks every one of them right up.

There’s a whole load of unlockable characters here, not one a palette swap, each offering a really fun and unique means of dishing out street justice. Axel is your all-rounder, Cherry spends almost all the time bouncing between enemies throwing out aerial attacks, while Floyd is a walking tank of a man who can pick up two enemies at once. Four player mode on this is going to be so much fun, because everyone is contributing to the violence in their own unique way.

There’s also a pinch of actual fighting game execution, too. The amount of juggles you can get away with is very generous and if you think you can squeeze in another attack, you probably can, if you time it right. Chaining someone into a wall bounce and then catching them into another combo to delete their health bar feels so fucking good. Big, crunchy strikes that shake the screen and are accompanied by sound effects that make you feel every hit. It’s going to be really interesting to see how players combine character abilities to do some really fancy combos in the weeks after release. There's so many cool tricks - I flung a bottle at a lad's head and as it bounced off I tapped the 'pick up' button, grabbing the thing out of the air and used it to shank another guy creeping up on me. Action movie shit, and not part of some cutscene or tutorial sequence, I simply experimented with the tools I had and the game rewarded me.

Like the best games in this genre, the stages are constantly throwing cool set pieces and combat challenges at you, then quickly moving you onto the next one. Every enemy poses a new puzzle for you to figure out, with combinations of them requiring some really fast thinking to avoid taking massive damage. All the boss fights are excellent challenges (with the exception of a slightly underwhelming final one) and, crucially, seem fair, rather than just trying to get you off an arcade cabinet as quickly as possible, testing your skills in the way a good boss fight should.

The smartest addition to the game is how they have modified the ‘get off me move’. I rarely used these in the original games because they depleted your health, probably causing a few otherwise avoidable deaths. Here, they cause fighting game style ‘grey’ damage, which can be recovered by pummelling enemies, a bit like in that Bloodborne. It not only encourages aggressive gameplay, but simply encourages you to actually use these when needed. One is a damaging combo ender, one an aerial attack and one the usual invincible 360 degree attack to clear a crowd. It’s a brilliant bit of risk/reward and once mastered, changes your mindset from “I wonder if I can do this level without dying” to “I reckon I can do this level without getting HIT.”

Of course, the music is excellent, with the handful of tracks by the big man Yuzo Koshiro himself being standouts. Streets of Rage has always had a huge following because of its music and this game acknowledges this important part of its legacy by having the soundtrack feel more connected to the visuals and the combat, with the stage themes changing up as enemies appear and other visual elements happening in time to the beat. It’s not quite as good as the classics, but hey, you can switch on the original soundtracks if you want!

Perhaps controversially, I love the new art style too. Even more so than the classic 2D sprites. I understand you don’t believe me right now, but please, let me know if you change your mind after you’ve played it! They’re so full of character, every important, memorable part of these classic sprites is emphasised, bringing them up to date but without losing any of the nostalgia - which is a pretty good analogy for the entire game, to be honest.

Streets of Rage 4 is a real love letter to not only the series, but the belt-scroller in general, moving the genre forward without actually changing much at all, just pushing the strengths to the forefront and using more powerful tech than a fucking Mega Drive to throw new ideas into the already excellent mix of punching lads in the head, rather than half-baked RPG elements or anything else that distracts from the fact that these games are about beating the hell out of waves of enemies.

The best belt-scroller ever made? Christ it might be.

Franchise revivals have become big business across pretty much all forms of media, but rarely are they as good or as boldly willing to fly in the face of modern design trends as Streets of Rage 4, a short but sweet concoction that invites replays not just through brilliantly varied characters, the high of chasing better ranks or funky beats, but for how intrinsically rewarding it is to master its fighting game-esque systems. Look no further than this for proof that bringing back something old can have as much value as making something brand new.

I detest it when "modern" is used as if it automatically means "better," so be sure that when I call SOR old I mean it in the best way possible, i.e. that it’s cleverly designed around its limitations. SOR4 largely refrains from perceived-as-modern features like running not because the devs were too silly to consider it – they did – but because deliberately not including them makes things more interesting. If you want to quickly get from one end of the screen to the other, you have to consider whether to risk losing some health through a special move that lurches you forward, to use a different move that might leave you vulnerable or pick a character who has extra movement options like Adam or Shiva’s dashes (which also bolsters the variety between the cast). One of the best parts of SOR4 is that it’s an exercise in constant problem solving, which isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be if your movement was less limited, but that aspect of it is enhanced because it's the way it is.

Risk taking in general is something that SOR4 excels at encouraging. Being able to regain health after using a special move just seems less punishing on the surface, but it feels absolutely crushing when you get lose it all by getting hit after, and equally as relieving when you manage to get it all back. Using special moves has more layers to it than in its predecessors thanks to this balance of risk and reward. That, plus nothing sends your dopamine tubes on a rollercoaster ride quite like getting all the way up to the highest tier of the new combo system only to have it broken by a sneaky Galsia. It helps that it goes up much quicker if you vary your moves, a bit like DMC’s style meter.

There’s not much else to be said for other areas of SOR4 that hasn’t already been said to death. The hand drawn art’s nothing short of inspiring and the clarity of enemies’ animations means that occasions where you feel like you shouldn’t have gotten hit are impressively rare. The music lives up to the series’ legendary standards and then some. Smart difficulty design and the randomised nature of the survival mode means that it’ll take a long, long time before fatigue sets in. The only reason I don’t rate SOR4 higher is because of a persistent feeling that something’s missing.

It feels almost rude to say so, given that Mr. X Nightmare makes this one of the most feature-complete beat ‘em ups ever made right next to Fight ‘N Rage, but I find it hard not to wish that there was an alternate route through the story or something. While not every beat ‘em up needs Fight ‘N Rage’s 200 gorillion endings, I don’t find SOR4’s stages 5, 7 or 8 especially interesting compared to the rest of the game - I regularly forget stage 8 in particular exists despite having beaten the story six times - and they’d probably be more digestible if they weren’t mandatory. There’s even precedents for this within its own series. SOR3 has alternate stages, and SOR1 has really creative alternate endings where you and another player have to fight each other if at least one of you chooses to join Mr. X at the end. Just a little bit of extra flavour along those lines could’ve made what’s already quite easily one of the very best games of the 2020s even better, and maybe have prevented the occasional labelling of it as Streets of Rage 2: 2.

Let this be a reminder of why numerical scores are so arbitrary, that not every 8/10 is the same, and also that John Backloggd should steal Letterboxd’s like feature at some point. Regardless of a couple of small faults here and there, Streets of Rage 4 is exemplary and everybody with even a passing interest in beat 'em ups or action games should play it. Pop it in and be mesmerised as the system of your choosing becomes a souped up Mega Drive on command.

Does to SOR what Mania did for Classic Sonic - a nearly-perfect retranslation of the original's invisible magic. They could've taken the easy way out and turned this into an anime button masher, but SOR2's delicate spacing and timing are present with just the perfect additional seasoning of QOL changes and additional moves.

So why not 5 stars? Cause I have two really cynical pet peeves about this game - the soundtrack and the length. The music's perfectly listenable, but in trying to capture modern EDM influences, it trades the memorability of the original trilogy's sound. I can't hum a single new track from here, let alone recall what they sounded like. And as for length, 12 stages for an arcade beat-em-up is just too fucking long. SOR already had a problem with being a bit too long for such a replay-intensive genre, and this game goes even further overboard. Just starting a run is difficult because the first level is so long and draining.

out of the 4 beat em ups ive played in my life (sor1 through sor3 yesterday + this one now lmao) this is possibly the most deeply satisfying and exhilaratingly fun but also skill drenching one I've ever played and its just great great stuff

as for a direct sequel to the OG series and also a reboot of a trilogy of games dead since 1993 its basically every beat em up junkie wet dreams and also mine since there's so much meat on the grill did you see axel ? or blaze pls don't get me started already

playing these 4 games back to back to back made it clear how the next game in the series incorporated the previous ones battle system polishing on it and adding some qol and new stuff so since this happened for 3 times you will expect that this is a cumfest of action packed moves and it sure is

the gameplay is more or less the same . sure they added some special moves and some more weapons and stuff but the core elements of the game are still here you can see the skeleton that brought it all here

you go through stages (a lot of them but I didnt mind) and beat the shit out of people like there's no tomorrow . they know what you came here for and they're gonna give it to you right away

axel blaze and the other guys tag along for this journey to banish Mr X offspring cleverly named Mr y and Ms y and thats BASICALLY IT no complex stuff no excursus no intrigues there's literally none of that the plotline is linear crystal clear super fluid and kept to the minimum because again this is a beat em up not a VN what did you expect bitch

there's some new characters that I have yet to try but I made a playthough with my 2 loves who are also the reason for my bi panic

now that's basically the whole gameplay aspect there's actually other modes and stuff to do but I just did the story mode and thoroughly enjoyed it so yeah good soup you go through the stages beat the bosses beat the final boss boom ending credits easy as that

sure it's a lot less punishing than sor 1-3 but that's also because it's expected to be full of newcomers here (aka me) so they made it more accessible for the latest generation of human beings who didn't grow up with extra difficult arcade games that expected you to actually GIT GUD (also me) so you can like restart a chapter if you die and not the entire story as a whole and thats a cute little detail that I appreciated because I suck + played it in normal mode imagine the fucking embarrassment

now to the good good

the art direction is phenomenal this is gorgeous this is absolutely phenomenal work it's UGHHHH did you see how hot axel and blaze look in this style thats something only god could make and im atheist so that's a testament for how good this is

every single ingame animation is full of character and detail the redesigns are bomb and really accentuate the great great character design that was lying under (rightly) sloppy pixels and its great to see these hot peeps get rejuvenated in a modern eye its wow . stunning stunning did you just see the illustrations during the story bits ? guys I need to check the artist out they're literally so fucking talented I can only aspire to something like this

umh . I liked it a bit hahahahaha ok google search axel rule34 . umh what why did you type it umh anyway

and the ost . oof the whole single reason why I even went through this marathon on a whim is because I listened to this . like legit BOMB track and its actually as a whole a great great ost that I was bopping my head every single new track came up its lush af and I wouldn't want it any other day FYI its heavily EDM so you HAVE to feel the rave or else this is not the game for you

and I mean yeah thats it end of the marathon I guess

it's a nice series and made me realise that I never touched a beat em up I should really fix that forreal

alex can you like smash my skull im . please pleek pleek

PS the chief police boss or whoever that is ? maaaaan do i want a piece of that

As someone who's not like, really huge on beat em ups, as someone who tends to suck at them, and mentally fought with myself to make sure I went through Normal mode with zero assists used, this is a fucking amazing game to play.

It's crazy how much fun it just becomes on top of the excellent enemy design when you have situational specials to use, creating an elegant dance between going for maximum damage and dodging attacks. From taking care of overwhelming damage coming your way by sweetly timing your defensive super, to charging at an enemy's startup attack with an aerial, it's ridiculous fun to give and avoid receiving hits. There's even a training mode (or well, a battle mode that can figuratively act as one) and 4+unlockable different characters to play, each with their own attacks and specials that differentiate them. The toolset you have is so versatile that it's honestly a no brainer to the devs that they put in a battle mode.

The bosses are mostly all fantastic too, forcing you to go for proper whiffs and proper micromanagement, with some of the better ones throwing multiple enemies on screen you have to manage while going for these combos. There's a couple stinkers but it feels like it never missed.

By the end of it I was boiling with high praise to give it, even despite a few subliminal issues like star powers being basic shmup bombs, it was an excellent short and sweet experience. I'll probably go back to it at some point to play it on higher difficulties, or go for higher rankings by going for more optimal combos.

Bonus: You also get to kick the shit out of a lot of blue pigs in this game.

i was not expecting to sink 40+ hours into this as someone who isn't crazy about beat-em-ups (yet somehow has played a ton of them) except being a minor streets of rage fan. but after a year's worth of replaying and a spectacular expansion i can safely say this is THE pinnacle of the genre.

i remember the first week of release and discussions and forums were blown up by the the game's supposed "broken" combat and unyielding difficulty, and yet as time went on nothing was ever patched or balanced. even dedicated streamers were breaking their controllers on launch and getting continuous game overs not even halfway through the game (if you know you know) and yet, as time went on, the complaining stopped, and the playerbase evolved.

the devs were confident in their game design and simply waited. what happened was the collective realization that the game's combat simply needed to be seen from a different perspective. streets of rage was initially influential in it's AI design for the genre at the time; where most beat-em-up's were about simply mashing buttons and clearing screens, streets of rage required patience and careful positioning. enemies didn't run up to attack you at random, they moved in groups and waited to swarm and overwhelm you, and it was up to the player to sort of "herd" them into strategic positions and then utilize their character's movesets correctly to wipe them most efficiently. streets of rage 4 simply took that approach and evolved it. i have massive respect for the developers for not caving to player aggregation and stayed confident in the game they created.

enemies are smart. they move in circles around you, they keep their distance, they punish and anti-air you, and know how to position themselves to simply knock you into another enemy and keep you juggled. you aren't a typical beat-em-up brute, you're prey in enemy territory. your only chance of survival is to play on their level. you have to use their herd mentality to your advantage. it was
simply a different mindset that allowed you to win.

scoring is also a vital part of the game, moreso than it ever was in the first 3 games that preceded it. in my own terms, it's like a risk/reward cash-out system. you can keep the heat on, land more fists and tally your hit counter higher and higher at the risk of getting hit and returning to 0. raising that hit counter can reward you with massive cash-outs in points. sometimes it might be even safer to hold off your punches in the middle of a brawl and cash-out what you have lest your chances of a slipup rise and you lose the chance to gain ANYTHING. the ranking system is even more daunting, as gaining S ranks requires peerless play, and minimal (sometimes ZERO) usage of screen-clearing specials, incentivizing you to better learn and utilize each player's moveset. this, i think, is the main gameloop for me and it's that simple score deposit system that keeps me playing over and over again. 40+ hours and i still have not gotten a 100hit combo despite earning S ranks in every stage just through cleverly cashing out my combos. it's this gameloop and score deposit system that makes the game addictive and replayable for me.

on the topic of movesets, streets of rage always held the tradition of radically different playstyles per character and this game not only continues that tradition but further increases that playstyle differentiation. every character feels like you're playing a completely different game, and this game has a full roster unlike any i've seen in a beat-em-up. it is impressively diverse.

dotemu has made a MONSTER of a game and it feels much more than the sum of its parts. this isn't a hapless uninspired cashgrab, this is a clear-cut sequel of an iconic franchise that not only gets its acquainted stylings right, but throws a countless number of new mechanics in that just click. this isn't a "love letter" or "celebration," of a genre, it's a complete massive evolution forward and has changed the way i view beat-em-ups.

Given that a full 17 years passed between the release of Streets of Rage 3 and the superb fan-made Streets of Rage Remake, and another 9 years between Remake and 4, I still can't fully believe they announced this, never mind released it - it feels like a fever dream. It would be like if they suddenly announced Phantasy Star 5, or Megaman Legends 3, or SatAM Sonic season 3!

The updated hand-drawn art style is really slick, but the core beat-em-up gameplay remains intact - with a new element that adds an extra layer of depth. I'm referring, of course, to the big flashy combo counter which increases in number whenever you land a hit on anything (an enemy, a destroyable item, a falling KO-ed enemy) and awards you points based on the length of combo you can build. These points can be used to get extra lives (which you absolutely will need on the higher difficulties)... and thanks to the addition of wall-bounce and air-juggle mechanics, combos are relatively intuitive to learn and satisfying to perform. SOR4 is a game that not only rewards you mechanically for mastering its core gameplay gimmick - it ensures that gimmick actually feels good to do. Few things beat the visceral satisfaction of grabbing an enemy and wailing on them, then throwing them into a wall and hitting them with a blitz as they bounce off.

In this way, this new and evolved iteration of Streets of Rage kind of feels like a shmup! It rewards points not on progression but on skill - your main source of points is no longer stage completion or item pickups, but the abovementioned combos as well as picking up health items with full health (i.e. not getting hit). The fact that you get ranked on your performance after each level on story mode and can eventually unlock a stage select to try and improve on those scores really pushes you to get better at the core gameplay - and makes it feel more like a 'score attack' game than any of the previous entries.

That said, one of the biggest virtues of SOR4 is that it has something for everyone to enjoy, whatever your skill or experience level is. Because of the addition of charged attacks and a more robust move-cancelling system, some of the more fanciful combos available require finger dexterity and timing not unlike what you would need in a modern fighting game! But you can also stick to basic beat-em-up stuff (start a combo and then switch to a more damaging move/throw before you knock them down) and the game still feels like a lot of fun. The basic story mode (where your lives are reset every level and you can restart from the beginning of the level if you get a game over) is simple enough for casual players to get through, but the game also has an Arcade Mode for players looking to get that 'original hardware' experience.

Streets of Rage 4 looks great, feels fantastic to play, and has that new combo counter that appeals to the dopamine addict in all of us - ordinarily that would be the end of the review, but being the overthinker I am I also do want to add in some thoughts on how this could have been better.

- A relative lack of content especially compared to Streets of Rage Remake. You can unlock the 'classic' pixelated versions of the characters from earlier SOR games, but that's it really. It has 12 levels and no branching paths, which means you know exactly what to expect after going through them once. A bit like death by snu-snu, it's possible to have a bit too much of a good thing.

- Shadows. In previous games, the characters' shadows were a useful way of lining yourself up with enemies, as well as knowing their position when they jumped. SOR4 handles shadows more realistically - we don't have round black blobs underneath our feet at all times - but not having a clear way to tell exact character placement affected the game feel a little. I found myself whiffing a lot more often, and not being able to easily tell if we were aligned horizontally or not does get annoying in some sequences (for example when fighting enemies that jump offscreen, or those Galsias that walk diagonally across the screen holding a knife in front of them).

- For as much praise as I give it, the combo system in the game could have been better executed. While the game doesn't tell you this, if you get hit in the middle of a combo, you lose all your combo points. And I get that this is a risk-vs-reward, mechanic, but if you want to get the points (which you need for extra lives, remember), how it plays out is that you will rack up a big combo, and then just walk around idly for a while so you can 'cash in' your combo for points, which really breaks up the momentum of the game.

I think it's cool that between SOR4 and the fanmade SOR Remake, they basically have created the perfect beat-em-up. SOR4's combo mechanics (perhaps slightly tweaked) on top of Remake's branching path structure and wider variety of unlockables, SOR4's graphical style with clearer character shadows like in previous games. Which of the two games you prefer is entirely down to personal preference - a lot like choosing your favorite character.

I think Remake still takes the edge for me in the way that its gameplay is simpler but almost as satisfying, and its greater variety in the form of branching paths and host of unlockables. Still SOR4 is an absolute triumph of a series revival. It's a great entry point into beat-em-ups and an equally great game for veterans to refine their skills, and (I foresee) an early contender for one of the best games I play for the first time this year!

(Beat story mode on hardest, arcade mode on hard. Mained Adam)

An astonishingly good revival of a series that was dormant for two decades. Streets of Rage 4 takes what was good about the 16-bit games and builds atop them. Characters notably have more offensive moves than before. The combo system is so deep it rivals some fighting games. A few questionable enemy designs and an awful boss hamper every playthrough, but that hasn't stopped every arcade run from being a fun time.
The artists took the hard route. Rather than reusing sprites from previous games, every character frame, background, and effect is hand drawn. Music has always been a strong point of the series, and Streets of Rage 4 delivers. At it's best the game feels like a playable music video. The legendary composers of the original trilogy even returned to chip in a few tracks.
Streets of Rage plays better than ever. The characters animate and control better than ever. The music rivals the best of 2020's VGM. It's a winner.

“Game feel” is a common term to see in reviews, but it’s one I try to avoid using. It’s meant to capture the undefinable sense of a game feeling nice to play, an emergent property of the controls and their feedback that makes interaction fun. With such a vague definition that encompasses all the game’s qualities, claiming a title is great because of its game feel is like saying “it’s good because it’s good”. The reason I’m breaking my rule here is that Streets of Rage 4 has such good game feel that it’s almost magnetic. I bought it on a whim, only expecting it to be fun but forgettable, like most of the other beat ‘em ups I’ve played. After beating it and doing a little postgame experimentation, I went to uninstall it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just kept wanting to play more, and ended up beating the game multiple times on the harder difficulties. The best way to explain what made it so addicting is to break down its most simple interaction: walking up to a bad guy and punching him. Firstly, the music you’re hearing in the background is uniformly great, no matter which stage this happens on. The walking and attack animations are fluid and expressive, in a beautiful hand-drawn style that gives everything a comic-book vibrancy. When the punch connects, an impact sound plays that gains bassy power in proportion to the attack’s strength, and an explosion flashes where the attack landed. The enemy’s health bar appears, with a chunk of red representing the damage you dealt, which expands until your combo ends, highlighting how well you’re doing. The enemy becomes stunned and shakes, signifying an opening for more attacks as the vibrant combo meter gets larger and changes color as you lay on more hits. If the attack caused a knockdown, they fly backwards dramatically, thudding and bouncing along the ground. That’s a ludicrous amount of satisfying feedback to be packed into the most basic combat, and it gets even better when you combine it with the joy of figuring out little combos and mastering your characters’ moves. It’s also worth noting that game feel can encompass the things that DON’T happen in the game, like the common beat ‘em up issue of trying to punch enemies the game says are slightly too high or too low to connect, leaving you unsatisfyingly swinging at the air. That didn’t happen to me a single time in all my playthroughs, and while that’s a tiny element, it combines with all those other tiny polishes to make a game that feels rad one hundred percent of the time. If you’re even slightly interested in this foundational genre of video games, or want to see the textbook definition of perfect game feel, you can’t pass this one up.

Whatever apprehensions or concerns you might have had about the resurrection of one of the most recognizable franchises of the 90's Sega canon, 26 years after the last entry in the series, those quickly dissipate the moment you take hold of Alex's strut through the familiar goon infested alleyways of Streets of Rage 4, as you pummel thugs with a led pipe and knee thrust mohawk junkies to death to the sound of Yuzo Koshiro's synth dance music. I'm emboldened enough to say that this project revitalized the series with the same assurance and resolution as DMC5 did to its dead in the water legacy a year earlier, just by playing to the strengths of its predecessors and nothing more.

While it would have been perfectly acceptable if it simply regurgitated another Streets of Rage 2 that fans would just eat up and then toss aside as a cute nostalgia throwback for a day, Streets of Rage 4 instead takes the established formula and just adds on top of it with new mechanics that reinvent this pre historic and usually devoid of complexity genre. Taking a note from our friend Dante, you are now able to juggle enemies and all pretenses of realism are thrown out the 4th wall as you bounce them off the edges of the screen, allowing the player to combo pools of mooks in a single sequence of uppercuts and sommersaults with that oh so satisfying half second freeze frame that allows you to feel every impact of their meat sack bodies being flung all around the pavement.

Characters are now much more distinct between each other than they ever were in previous entries, incentivizing different approaches and strategies on how to maximize combo potential, and added to all that a bunch of other smaller tweeks and improvements, like being able to throw weapons and catch it mid bounce off of enemies and restoring lost health from a draining special move in a Bloodborne rally inspired mechanic that adds a layer of risk and reward, and you have provided the player enough depth and expression so he not only feels commited to finishing the game, but finishing it with style.

I wouldn't call the new comicbook artstyle a homerun, as it fails to capture the grimy and gritty punk vibe juxtaposed with the colorful beatiful pixel art that characterizes the series, but it more than does the job done by adding its own flair and a touch of added personality to its classic ensemble of heroes and foes, with the new opponents being a welcomed addition to the canon. And of course, we cannot discuss Streets of Rage without discussing the singular essence that ties it all together: the music.

The music is....unfortunately a mixed bag. While not being bad per se, and much of it is gonna depend on each player's tastes, a lot of the soundtrack does not reach the highs of the magnificent soundtrack of the first two games, oddly having some tracks paying more homage to 3's much maligned experimental techno tunes instead. But when it gets going, oh boy does it get Streets of Rage-y as fuck. When everything just clicks into place and you find yourself taking that classic elevator up to the top of the starry night cityscape as the music crescends into pure megadrive magic and you fend off every single lunging fist and jump thrown at you, a single blast processed tear might just manifest in your inner 16 bit child.

Suffice to say that there might not be much here for those without this formative arcade experience. If you never played many beat em ups in your life time, you probably will not find the dopamine release you expected coming here. But for those who want a taste of those old glory days, this might be just the right detour down unapolagetic videogame violence memory lane.

And MAN, is Blaze hotter than ever in this one.

This is the best beat em up ever made. Pinnacle of the genre. The combo system is freeform, chaining special moves into regular moves back into specials into supers feels fun as hell, and pulls from a lot of fighting game combo philosophies. Using specials at the cost of health never made much sense to me in retro beat em ups but with this game allowing you to regain your lost health with follow up attacks not only adds some extra risk v reward in the combat but also encourages me to use specials WAY goddamn more. Beatemups are usally a genre that gets really stale and boring after a while, but with this game EVERY enemy encounter had me ready to throw myself at the group of bad guys, ready to see how well I can shmoove on em. Must-play game right here.

The speed at which Cherry can run left/right on the screen in contrast with how excruciatingly slow you move up and down the screen is a great analogy for the conflicting feelings of playing Street of Rage 4. At times, this game pops. The music is great, the visuals are fantastic, and getting some combos off is fun and quite satisfying. Other times, I’m reminded that I’m playing a game from the year 2020 that is a painfully accurate recreation of a 90s arcade game. And my question to that is - why?

Gaming has come far since 1991, why put so much work into making a new game that feels identical to an old game in every way? The fact that you can jump left and right but can’t jump up/down the screen kills me. Please give me some way of moving around faster. A dodge button? A roll button? Anything. Please. Also, for the life of me, I could never figure out where I was vertically on the screen with respect to enemies. A good 1/4 of my attempted attacks were either just above or just below an enemy.

At the end of this day, Streets of Rage 4 is nothing more than an old arcade beat-em-up with modern visuals and a rad soundtrack. If that’s your jam, great. Personally, if I’m playing a beat-em-up, I’d rather play a modern take on the genre like Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim.

+ Mostly fun soundtrack.
+ Incredibly good and clean visuals.

- It controls like an old arcade game and completely ignores 30 years of improvements in video games.
- Movement is so slow. Why does everyone casually walk everywhere?
- Gauging vertical screen position with respect to enemies was a struggle
- You’ve played this game already. It just didn’t look as pretty before.

I had so much fun w/ the coop this afternoon Streets 4 feels like a new favorite. Shit I even think it’s more fun than Ninja Turtles now. A startling revelation that what started this scribe!

Unlockables and Post-game really click for me. Everytime you beat a level you’re earning points to unlock more characters. I don’t have em all yet, but the roster IS. PHAT. Totally trumps turtles (DLC pending).

Btw, There’s a cheat code to play as a god damn Kangaroo. Nobody does that anymore. This game fucks

The story mode is voiceless with “motion comic” kinda cutscenes, and that Opening crawl of exposition just like the Ol’ Genesis game.

If I were old enough to be a proper SegaHead, I’d probably appreciate that reserved presentation more; it’s equal parts retro and indie. But I think they should either go even lower like everyone else or get big next time cuz all those cutscenes are quiet and empty. There’s hardly any action in em! mostly introductions and defeated bosses giving directions. Boring! A few nice drawings and neat dialogue would be faster.

This game is the craziest shit ever! Sega should’ve paid for some animated cutscenes or at least some voice acting.

But that’s all to say that this game is my shit now. I want to main all the characters and beat the bosses on hard and super hard and fuck you hard and she ain’t never had it this hard and Dante Must Dante, etc.