Streets of Rage II

"Side-scrolling brawling action at its best"

Before beginning the review, I must first say that I am a huge fan of the Streets of Rage series. I LOVED the first game in the series, and SoR2 (Streets of Rage 2) improves upon it in every way imaginable. Anyway, on with the review!

Graphics: 9/10
The visuals have improved a lot since the first game, with smoother animations and brighter, more detailed environments and characters. Not only that, but enemies also now have a life bar that appears under your life bar when you attack them in some fashion (and believe me, there are a lot of ways you can go about defeating your enemies), which helps out especially during boss fights. The graphics are nice and colorful and improve nicely on the previous game.

Sound track: 9.5/10
Streets of Rage 2 has some really awesome tunes. What I liked most is that each song fits quite well with the mood of the situation. During the elevator scene on the next to last level, a hard, intense song plays to go with the tension of reaching the end of the game and defeating Mr.X. When you're busting your way through a night club, a relaxing, disco-like song plays. And the music for the first stage is just awesome.

Story: 7.9/10
The plot is: A year has passed since Axel, Blaze, and Adam defeated Mr.X and brought peace and order to the city that had been overrun with crime and violence. Now, Mr.X has returned, and kidnapped Adam to lure Axel and Blaze into a trap and defeat them for good. After the two realize that Adam has been kidnapped, they team up with Axel's friend Max, a former wrestler, and Adam's younger brother, Skate, to take down Mr.X and rescue Adam. The plot isn't as deep as its predecessor, but who cares about the plot anyway, right?

Game play: 9.8/10
Before beginning your journey to put the criminal syndicate out of business, you have the choice between four characters: Axel, Blaze, Max, and Skate, with Blaze and Axel being the most balanced, Skate being the fastest, and Max being the slowest but also the strongest. The character selection has good variety. There's a character to suit just about any play-style. The basic concept of SoR2 is to battle your way through each stage, and at the end of each stage is a boss. You have a wide variety of moves to take on your opponents; everything from upper-cuts to combo attacks and body slams is at your disposal to take care of your adversaries. By simply pressing the attack button repeatedly, you can do a basic 4-5 hit combo. By moving close enough to an enemy, you will grab them and be able to throw them across the screen, body slam them, or do knee jabs. The A button will execute a special move, which can do a lot of damage, but at the cost of a little bit of your life bar. On top of that, a friend can join you at any time in the game, or by selecting the 2 player option at the main menu. Aside from the main game, you also have a duel mode, in which you and a friend can battle each other. The game play is very smooth, very fluid, and a lot of fun. My only complaint is that if you're playing co-op mode, you can hit and cause damage to your ally, or even grab them by accident if you get too close! Which can get kind of annoying during boss fights. Oh, I forgot to mention that you can grab weapons along the way, such as pipes, knives, and all sorts of fun stuff to pummel your foes with.

Replay value: 9/10
Being that you can team up with a friend, go head-to-head with a friend in duel mode, and play the game on (I think) 5 difficulty settings, there's a ton of stuff to do in this gem of a game before being completely done with it. Very nice replay value.

Secrets
This is the section of the review where I tell you about a few in-game secrets that may help you along. Here's one you can try out.
Extra options: Hold A+B on the second controller while selecting the options menu. By doing this, a stage select option becomes available as well as allowing you to set the number of lives you start the game with up to 9. The very easy and mania difficulty settings also become available after activating this little cheat.

Overall: 9/10
In conclusion, Streets of Rage 2 is an excellent game, one of the best games in its respective genre. There are some things I don't like about it, such as being able to damage your ally during co-op mode, and a few bosses that are pretty hard, but other than that, SoR2 is a great game, and well worth downloading onto your Wii virtual console or on Xbox Live Market Place.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/09/09

Game Release: Streets of Rage 2 (US, 1992)