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.

This is a game that works wonderfully as a co-op experience but as a single player, it is lacking. There are amazing characters and great combos you can do with them but when you play it as a single player, you can't do any of that. In fact, your AI enemies get to do all that cool shit, they literally brutalize you with the sickest moves when given the chance.

First of all, this game is really difficult. I played 88(out of 100 in total) levels on normal difficulty and I still don't know what the hell am I doing at all. Instead of feeling like a badass and comboing the shit out of my enemies, I had to maneuver around constantly and cheese my enemies with some of the cheap attacks. Especially low attacks can be really confusing for AI. Also, you can stun your enemies over and over when you throw them over the wall with your throws or strikes.

The problem is that you can't rely on your parries because their timing are very specific and there is no room for error in this game. Your enemies gang upon you so fast even in the slightest whiff, they constantly try to circle around you and juggle you to death if you make any mistake. You have to consider you spacing and positioning all the time and instead of going for combos and shit, you have to cheese the game unfortunately. That's why you can't stay in close range for long, you always have to run around, take some cheap shots and run back.

Staying in close quarters is not viable not just for group of enemies though, sometimes fighting against a single powerful enemy can be problematic. One of the most annoying parts of the combat is the throws. I finished the damn game and I still couldn't figure out the timing to break the freaking throws. That's why fighting against Jake and Golem was the biggest challenges of the game. After I beat Golem in 1v1 after many many tries, I decided to change the difficulty to easy instead of normal and beat the game that way, so that I can unlock the other modes.

Looks like I'm bitching a lot but the foundation of the game is actually really solid. Animations and movesets are really badass when you manage to pull them off, even though they are straight up ripped off from Tekken. Also, even though AI is ruthless, almost unfair sometimes, it is really impressive. I've never played against such a smart AI in any action game. When you beat a level with your own tactics, you feel the accomplishment.

Also, as I said, this game looks awesome as a local multiplayer beat-em up. Namco really focused on making a diverse and fun as hell local multiplayer experience with all the characters and their cool moves. You can even make a bunch of tag moves given the situation. Just look at this, it looks fun as hell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaA8cUXcDh0&ab_channel=MaximilianDood

In short, Urban Reign is for the maniacs that are into tough as nails action games. People say God Hand is difficult, nah dude, this is the real shit right here. If you're one of those psychos, check this one out.

PS: The moves and the animations of the main character feels dull compared the rest of the cast. That's why, it feels really cool to play with characters like Park and Chris in Free Mode after you beat the game.

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

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.

Play any combo-focused fighting game or beat ‘em up for an extended period of time and you’re bound to catch yourself thinking “Damn, I wish I had a second wall bounce!”. There’s nothing more frustrating than developing a theoretically strong combo in the lab and then discovering in practice that you already used up your OTG allowance 16 hits back. Sure, it might break the game if you could loop that EX move a third time, but it would look so cool, right? You deserve that shit, man! This combo is built different! If only you had unlimited ground-bounds, things would be different…

Urban Reign is the furled monkey paw’s fulfilment of this wish. Namco’s spirited attempt at a standalone Tekken Force game is wholly defined by its disrespect for the laws of the known fighting game universe, allowing you to wallsplat, sweep and breaker to your heart’s content - no idea is off-limits here if you have a demented mind that's capable of dreaming in the language of juggling. Lemme tell ya, it feels GOOD to football kick grounded opponents into the wall over and over again until their little polygonal souls leave their body!! Remember when your little brother threw down his PSX pad in a fit of rage because your King combos weren't "letting him play" in Tekken 3? This is a dark resurrection of that feeling writ large and legitimate.

The first dozen or so stages are borderline pornographic in their allowances to smokin’ sick style, making an aggressive argument for why doing damage with a super should allow you to build enough meter for another super than can be cancelled into from the first super. “Why can’t fighting games be like this all the time?” is something you’re bound to ask yourself when the second boss battle against the helpless sap Sick Rick ends with you infinitely hammer-tossing him into a pool table; you can practically imagine the little computer inside your PS2 throwing down its proverbial controller because you made it watch your mastubatory Brad Hawk combo video, packing up its shit and telling its mother you cheated at the game by "spamming too many moves".

But the law of equivalent exchange is alive and well here, and every player-positive design decision requires a reactionary advocate for the equality of CPU rights. Ever commented on EventHubs that “the best way to balance a game is to make all the low tiers as strong as the S-rank characters?” - well, here’s a look at what you could have won. Once the ten tutorials are done and the goons’ gloves come off, this becomes another game entirely. You thought you were safe from all these cheap hands you were throwing out? You’re built different, right? Pure skill? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhit. Sit down. PT-22 is gonna show you how truly broken this game is.

The mid-game of Urban Reign is a fascinating experiment in fighting game design, built almost entirely around how you think up a combo (both in sequence and circumstance) and how far ahead you can take it - given that some enemies can start chain-killing you with their first flick of their wrist, you’re forced to constantly plot random bullshit infinites out of sheer self-preservation instinct, the desire to "style on em" put aside in favour of hiding behind a shelf with dodgy collision-detection in the supermarket stage.

Strings that involve trash bins, jukeboxes, couches, lampposts and a whole lot of running up/suplexing into walls are only the tip of the iceberg here; you will have to go to the deepest, most depraved depths of your fighting gamer's mind in order to out-cheap the cheapest of the cheap shit. Let up for even a split second and it could all be over, and don’t forget that the CPU has the same rights as you do to do Guilty Gear-style bursts mid-combo - meaning no victory in this street war is ever guaranteed for even a second… Did I mention that while you’re being thrown by one enemy, other enemies can still kick you in the head? Damn! And there's no wakeup invincibility or reversal options? God DAMN!

Don't Stop until you reach the top and you'll be rewarded with the only language this game knows - more sadistic pain and suffering. After 99 stages of maverick midtown Marvel 2 madness, what could a final boss possibly look like? Well, the answer's hilariously simple - it's a dude with a gun who can kill you in one shot. Another one of gaming's greatest punchlines. Was it worth it? Hard to say, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime game that's worth checking out for a hot sec, even if you never make it past the karate guy in the 7-Eleven parking lot who can kara-cancel off a sneeze.

N.B. Really sad that this game's rough lil excuse-plot was written by the same guy who directed and scripted the Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War story. I refused to skip all the cutscenes and intro text because I was expecting Something Clever would happen at some point but no, this is just the narrative equivalent of a Final Fight game where you munch turkeys and beat up guys called Golem and Mr. Motor who say stuff like "Ow! That hurt!" lol

Urban Reign is a extremely fun 3D brawler that takes quite a learning curve to get used to and feels like it overstayed its welcome a bit. Namco really took a lot of Tekken influences along with other 3D fighters I can't really put my finger on to make a weird but extremely gratifying brawler.

The premise of the plot is barely here but it's not really the reason you're gonna be playing. You literally play as a dude called Brad Hawk as you beat the crap out of everyone in town. The gameplay is where things get a bit crazy. You got basic inputs like striking, grappling, dodging and parrying and so forth but you pick the sections of the body to attack at and pick the direction where you're gonna parry as well. All of this combined with some of the most aggressive enemies I've played in the few beat em ups I've played makes this a hell of a learning experience and you will get walled unless you learn how to handle specific situations. The notion of actually doing this is pretty fun but it's also extremely difficult to the point that it might seem like the enemy itself is cheesing you sometimes but it's also extremely satisfying to pull off perfect play too. The soundtrack is great here as you can hear the guitarist shredding the hell out while you're probably getting beaten the hell out by three enemies since they can legit tag team and combo you in the air.

Namco managed to make a really good and challenging beat em up here that makes doing some flashy shit really fun. Just be ready to get your ass handed to because this game is not forgiving even on the normal difficulty and there's two more difficulties above that.