A friend of mine on here Cowboyjosh sometime ago asked in a comment in another review if I find it hard to write about games I love in comparison with mediocre or bad games. This question has been rumbling around in the back of my head ever since and the fact is it's absolutely true. Criticizing something is pretty easy but trying to explain why something is good can be harder. I can throw out adjectives that something is great, fantastic etc. but that doesn't actually explain how it feels to me which is the part of the gaming experience I truly care about. Take Streets of Rage 2, this is one of my favorite games of all time. It's a game I play at least once a year every year for the last 30 years. I've played it on original hardware, emulation, Mega Drive collections, PC, Console etc. If there is a version of this I've bought it and played it yet on backloggd I have tactically reviewed Streets of Rage (A game I like), Streets of Rage 3 ( A game I hate) yet swerved 2 like the plague, so here goes, my poorly articulated attempt to explain why I love this game so much.
This was the first beat 'em up I'd ever played as a kid. When it released though I didn't own it initially. I used to run to a friends house after school so we could play it co-op, I sacrificed dinner on several occasions so I could keep playing as much as I could before I eventually got the game for myself. I couldn't get enough of it.
The atmosphere to Streets of Rage 2 is sublime. It oozes this 80's street vibe that many games have tried to copy to various degrees but never reached the same level. The neon lights, the punk hair cuts, denim jackets and mini skirts. It's a feeling, one that is just consistent throughout thanks to Ancient's wonderful use of colour and art design. The visuals are pretty simple in a lot of ways with fairly small character models allowing for more screen space when moving around and fighting. This is something I hate in it's contemporaries with huge models and little options for positioning. The bosses are all larger than life though and stand out in a striking way. For example the giant bald guy bare foot with huge boxing gloves, a massive oiled wrestler who looks like the ultimate warrior, a guy in a jetpack and a boss that looks like Street Fighter's Blanca mixed with the Predator. The boss that comes to mind every time though when I think of this game is the first boss, Barbon. He isn't visually impressive or all that striking but the lead up, the build to him in a short time just sets the tone for the fight. You fight through a bar and the barman escapes out into the back courtyard. The music stops except the patter of rain on the streets, there's no where else to run. He shouts "c'mon" before ripping his waistcoat off revealing his muscled torso previously hidden before the dropping of this insane boss music. It just gives me chills every time.
Interestingly bouncing off that last thought, I think streets of Rage 2 is actually the first game I noticed music, like really noticed it as a media on it's own rather than background noise to the game as a whole. I used to put Streets of Rage 2 in my Sega Mega Drive and go into the sound test in the options just to listen to it by plugging my cheap 90's overhead headphones with the orange foam ear covers and just listen to it. The thing is, literally every song for this soundtrack is an absolute slam. It's easily my favorite gaming soundtrack of all time. And the soundtrack just doesn't leave my Walkman's rotation.
And that's the core of this review, Streets of Rage 2 for me is a feeling invoked though a mixture of childhood nostalgia as well as consistent enjoyment year after year. From a gameplay point of view it's great if simple and easy but that doesn't matter. The emotional impact this game gives off for me every time I play it isn't something I can quantify and nor do I feel games should be broken down as rigidly as that and is something I'm trying to distance from more and more.
Streets of Rage 2 isn't a game, it's a vibe.
+ Amazing atmosphere.
+ My favorite game soundtrack of all time.
+ Wonderful art, colours and bosses.
+ Timeless.
This was the first beat 'em up I'd ever played as a kid. When it released though I didn't own it initially. I used to run to a friends house after school so we could play it co-op, I sacrificed dinner on several occasions so I could keep playing as much as I could before I eventually got the game for myself. I couldn't get enough of it.
The atmosphere to Streets of Rage 2 is sublime. It oozes this 80's street vibe that many games have tried to copy to various degrees but never reached the same level. The neon lights, the punk hair cuts, denim jackets and mini skirts. It's a feeling, one that is just consistent throughout thanks to Ancient's wonderful use of colour and art design. The visuals are pretty simple in a lot of ways with fairly small character models allowing for more screen space when moving around and fighting. This is something I hate in it's contemporaries with huge models and little options for positioning. The bosses are all larger than life though and stand out in a striking way. For example the giant bald guy bare foot with huge boxing gloves, a massive oiled wrestler who looks like the ultimate warrior, a guy in a jetpack and a boss that looks like Street Fighter's Blanca mixed with the Predator. The boss that comes to mind every time though when I think of this game is the first boss, Barbon. He isn't visually impressive or all that striking but the lead up, the build to him in a short time just sets the tone for the fight. You fight through a bar and the barman escapes out into the back courtyard. The music stops except the patter of rain on the streets, there's no where else to run. He shouts "c'mon" before ripping his waistcoat off revealing his muscled torso previously hidden before the dropping of this insane boss music. It just gives me chills every time.
Interestingly bouncing off that last thought, I think streets of Rage 2 is actually the first game I noticed music, like really noticed it as a media on it's own rather than background noise to the game as a whole. I used to put Streets of Rage 2 in my Sega Mega Drive and go into the sound test in the options just to listen to it by plugging my cheap 90's overhead headphones with the orange foam ear covers and just listen to it. The thing is, literally every song for this soundtrack is an absolute slam. It's easily my favorite gaming soundtrack of all time. And the soundtrack just doesn't leave my Walkman's rotation.
And that's the core of this review, Streets of Rage 2 for me is a feeling invoked though a mixture of childhood nostalgia as well as consistent enjoyment year after year. From a gameplay point of view it's great if simple and easy but that doesn't matter. The emotional impact this game gives off for me every time I play it isn't something I can quantify and nor do I feel games should be broken down as rigidly as that and is something I'm trying to distance from more and more.
Streets of Rage 2 isn't a game, it's a vibe.
+ Amazing atmosphere.
+ My favorite game soundtrack of all time.
+ Wonderful art, colours and bosses.
+ Timeless.
2 Comments
@cowboyjosh - Thanks! I actually feel the same. The more clinical reviews or critiques are too sterile for me. I want to see more people's personality as to why the game was enjoyed by them, doesn't matter if the review is long or short but shot more from the heart. Framerate, bugs, graphics are all important things but should only be mentioned if there is a stand out reason. Did they enhance or detract in the enjoyment of the game? Did they stand out either positively or negatively? Otherwise why mention it in a tick box exercise? I'm not much of a writer, I neither have the skill, time or patience so writing these really is for me so my personal feelings on it are what matter as I don't believe in an objective analysis anyway.
cowboyjosh
6 months ago
And yes that soundtrack is amazing.