Streets of Rage 4 review: This beat-’em-up revival beats them all

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  A perfectly acceptable location to start brawling anew. Welcome back to Streets of Rage.

Of all the beloved "retro" game genres, few benefit more from rose-tinted nostalgia than the side-scrolling beat-'em-up. In a typical early-'90s arcade, you'd see this genre everywhere, usually with familiar licensed characters, beautifully animated sprites, and waves of bad guys to pummel.

Decades later, however, these arcade classics can feel clunky and repetitive. After the pre-teen thrill of faking like Michelangelo or a mayor wears off, you're left mashing a single attack button through an eternity of repetitive foes. We haven't seen many modern games take up that throne, and the best exceptions are either RPG-like juggles (Castle Crashers) or combo-loaded 3D smorgasbords (Devil May Cry). For years, I've yearned for a modern beat-'em-up that splits the difference: simple and accessible to start, with layers of satisfying nuance to uncover the more I play.

Streets of Rage 4 is exactly that game. Everything that made the series stand out in the early '90s returns as a selling point once again, and new ideas have been added in careful, tasteful fashion.

It's also another example of Sega handing a classic series to Western retro-crazed developers, giving them the freedom to go nuts, and getting a great game as a result. We've seen this with mascots like Sonic and Wonder Boy, and, now, the biggest beat-'em-up from the Sega Genesis has been reborn.

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