Urban Reign is fast, furious and holds no punches. Being able to hit 2 enemies at the same time while double kicking the air is sick. This game uses the Tekken engine so comboing off juggles is essential along with grappling your opponents. There are 100 Missions, and the fighting is done in an arena style fashion instead of a belt scrolling affair. Most of the conditions for completing them is to simply defeat all opponents but sometimes they do vary such as dealing damage to a certain body part on an enemy. 1/3 of the game in and you'll get partners for certain missions. If your partner is defeated, you can still complete the mission which is neat but what is even neater is being able to take control of them at any point! Pretty cool! You can also give them basic commands such as zeroing in on an enemy you yourself need help with.

The story is decent. You play as some dude who beats the hell out of people for hire (known as ‘Brawlers’ in the game’s lore) trying to sort out the city from chaos. You are aided by a woman who represents a Chinese organization trying to get piece of the pie. The mayor of this city also tries to tackle this issue by installing security cameras all over. It’s a bit of a conspiracy and the last mission is awesome because it’s a play on the genre’s trope, specifically the 2D era of beat em’ ups. Ironic stuff. Sound and music is sooo good. Lots of ass kicking tracks. Plus, the sounds of bones breaking is bliss. No issues there.

You will not get far into Urban Reign if you are a button masher. The AI is insane, and I beat it on the normal difficulty. You are expected to know all your moves because trust me you will use them. There are moments where the AI can get cheap and an example of this is when they chain grab you with unbreakable throws (this applies only to the tank/grappler characters). The parry counter or 'reflect' as they call it is essential to master. If you don't get good at this, you will die a lot. My advice is to learn to chain your bread-and-butter combo into an SPA art finisher for massive damage.

Urban Reign is not for everyone, and most people probably won't have the patience to finish it. Not trying to make this game sound like it’s the most special piece of software, but it’s just diabolically true to itself.

Also, prepare yourself for Golem.

Very mixed feelings. On one hand, I felt compelled to play through all one hundred missions, even after getting pretty frustrated at points. On the other hand, it can be pretty damn difficult. The first thirty missions feel like an uphill battle in getting your full move set compared to the remaining seventy. Once everything clicks, though, I had an incredibly fun time. It's one of the few brawlers/fighting games I feel genuinely competent at, though I do wish weapons weren't as prominent as they are towards the end of the story.

If you get discouraged from playing it, at least try to get your first partner at around mission thirty. That's when things really start to come together and the fun really ramps up.

One of the best 4 Player Local Multiplayer games of all time. If youre doing a home party and this game isnt spinnin' in your ps2 already, im not coming!

Unlock all characters and press L1 to balance the Stats. Oh what? Your new friend never played this game before? Man dont worry. This game balances itself since everybody will attack the best player.

One of the best local multiplayer games you can ever have