Urban Reign
Stay away. Stay far, far away.
Published: September 23, 2005
The fray, sadly, is a handful of levels that are repeated so many times, you'll start to think you actually see subtle differences in them. The combat system is indeed modestly deep; Brad (and any of the other characters you unlock as you play through the game) can unleash a simple punch or kick attack and a grapple move, both of which can be easily modified by pressing up, down or just leaving the left analog stick neutral for a middle strike. Charging/running moves are also a nice tweak to the normal attacks, and they allow you to run up walls and eventually attack off walls after you've unlocked the moves.
The grapple system is also rather flexible, reversible and melds nicely into combos, making for a fast, fluid combat system. It also means levels are over incredibly fast, leading to an overabundance of loading screens. It's not uncommon to watch a loading screen, get into an early match and then pop back out a minute later to watch another loading screen. But if you can attack quickly, your enemies are even worse.
This is where the game derails into a complete disaster; while early on (say the first three or four levels), you struggle to get used to the controls and develop your own fighting style, the AI just sits there, taking punches and generally staying out of the way. You're never really given a chance to work in some of the more advanced moves before you have to take on multiple fighters and the one-on-one dynamic more or less gets tossed out, but hey, it's early, right?
Then, inexplicably, the game shifts gears and begins playing dirty. Suddenly, bosses can combo endlessly and block or dodge all your attacks, they'll reverse into moves that pop you up into the air and then juggle you for massive cuts of damage from your life bar, with no way to block or reverse out save for a super move (they're also incredibly good at interrupting a combo this way too). It's bad enough when it's a boss fight, but later on, nearly all enemies can do this, and often three or four of them will attack, popping you up into the air and killing you in a matter of seconds.
When a fighting game won't let you fight, it ceases to be fun. Hell, it ceases to be a game, and the wild swings in difficulty (it's not uncommon to retry a mission a dozen or so times for three or four missions and then plow through another in a second) mean there's no steady rise in the difficulty, no chance to learn your character's moveset or build on some basic techniques, and it negates any of the work that went into the combos.
There's also the issue of repetition. Excusing the fact that the game offers 100 missions that really feel like about 10 used over and over again, you'll venture into the same arenas and kill the same gangsters seemingly forever, but it's the arenas themselves that are part of the problem. There's not enough variety and too little interaction (sure, weapons are nice, and health refills are fun, but later on you'll never get a chance to use them before you're beaten senseless).
The graphics are certainly solid for a beat-em-up, and possibly the best we've seen so far, models-wise. A lot of the game feels like one of those extra modes Namco includes in their fighting games, so the characters move and look great. The environments feel static, but they do have a fair amount of decent texture work and the rare puddle of nicely reflective water. It's just that like the rest of the game, there isn't enough depth to anything. It's pretty on the outside, but there's nothing underneath.
There's nothing pretty about the audio, though. The voice acting is passable at best, and at times unintentionally hilarious. The slaps and smacks that come from hits have that creamy sort of roundness that Namco's fighting games always seem to boast, so they're solid, but they aren't anything particularly remarkable. The music, on the other hand, is remarkable only for being horrendous. It's seriously so bad that you may end up getting pissed at the looping pseudo-rock tracks before the cheap AI gets to you.
Don't think that I'm trashing the game needlessly; there's a fair amount of potential, and given some very, very heavy tweaks to the AI, the difficulty curve and perhaps a bit more in the way of a convincing storyline or a city that could be explored, and this could have been a decent beat-em-up. I really want to love these games, but this is a perfect example of how to take all the hard work a development team put into a game, and throw it all away with just a few simple mistakes.
Please, for the sake of your sanity, blood pressure and potentially broken controllers, avoid Urban Reign at all costs. It's just a frustrating experiment that punishes you for trying to like it.
