The short version: Streets of Rage is back, baby! And it's got a combo/scoring system that's completely terrible, but the gameplay itself is so, so satisfying!

Streets of Rage was a trilogy of side-scrolling beat-em-up games by Sega for the Genesis/Mega Drive. Here, a couple decades later, Axel and Blaze reunite, alongside newcomers Cherry and Floyd, to stop the children of the villain from the original games from taking over the world with mind control. It's a fairly barebones plot, and you don't even get an ending beyond the final boss exploding and screaming and falling to their death...but in a game like this, that's all you really need.

But Axel and co. haven't been sitting on their laurels between games. SOR4 introduces a free-form combo system and some rudimentary fighting game aspects. (Don't worry, the most complex input is forward, forward + attack.) Now you can juggle, special cancel, and wall bounce the enemy into submission. Since the entirety of the game boils down to "go right, beat up bad guys, repeat", it's nice to have such an involved and satisfying system for said beatings-up. It feels a little more Guardian Heroes than Streets of Rage, but Guardian Heroes was an all-time great, so I'm alright with it.

The music is also intensely satisfying. Yuzo Koshiro returns from the original games, alongside a couple more folks, to deliver the same banging house and techno beats you've come to expect. Personally, I don't think anything here dethrones "Go Straight" from SOR2 as my favorite song in the series, but then again, nothing could, and it's a hell of an attempt. The boss themes are a little flat, but the stage music is fantastic, and it even proceeds through multiple "parts" as you proceed through the levels.

Speaking of the levels, there aren't a ton of them, though there's at least more than the old games. Locales are fairly varied as you traverse the city, giving some levels additional gimmicks. Enemies can be bounced off of walls to extend your combos, or thrown into pits or off of buildings for an instant KO. One stage takes place atop a moving train, and forces you to jump occasionally to dodge signs. The real replay value comes from trying the levels again as different characters, seeing how their strengths and weaknesses lend themselves to the given encounters, or not.

The city has more problems than just Mr. and Ms. Y, though. The game grades your performance in the various levels. That's always a terrible game design idea, but the real problem is the scoring. High grades require high scores, and high scores require high combos. But it's not the combo count that matters, it's the total damage dealt to enemies during the combo. After every hit you land (including on destructible objects) you have 5 seconds or so to land the next hit, or the combo ends, and your bonus is calculated and awarded. If you're hit while the combo indicator is onscreen, though, it counts as a "Break" and you lose all those extra points. Um, sometimes. The game never actually explains this part, and I can see why: it's utterly indefensible. The scoring system is the most poorly-designed aspect of Streets of Rage 4, easily. Sometimes you do keep your earned points if you're struck during a combo, but that should really be true all the time.

Another problem lies in some of the enemies, especially the bosses. In order to keep them from getting overwhelmed too easily by such a combo-friendly system, the game has to let high-ranking enemies tank your attacks without flinching. They're nice enough to flash white in this state, but it happens so often that it slows things way down. There's nothing more obnoxious than using the right move in a situation, only for the boss to tank it and counter. This would happen sometimes in the original trilogy, with no visual indicator, and it sucked there too, but it was a rarer occurrence.

The last thing I should at least warn you about is defense. There is no block button. The only ways to avoid damage are to either jump, throw an enemy, or use your neutral special move, and use their invincibility frames to spot-dodge. Well, that, or simply walking out of the way. I am already the sort of gamer to use iframes as my primary form of defense, so this doesn't bother me too much, except for the attacks that can't be spot-dodged or avoided. Floyd suffers greatly here, being big and slow and having a small jump, so there are lots of attacks that are too wide-ranged for him, or their hitboxes linger for too long, or maybe the boss just does another spin kick in a row and maintains their no-flinch status.

Aside from those few issues, though, Streets of Rage 4 is a dazzling spectacle that'll hook you right away, especially if you are a returning fan of the originals. SOR veterans may not like every change to the formula, but SOR4 is extremely fun on its own merits. Scoring and grading are fundamentally broken, but they also don't unlock anything beyond a "lifetime score" that'll probably earn you everything after one or two trips through story mode anyway. If you're looking to feel the unbridled joy of punching the light out of a man's eyes a couple hundred times in an hour, you've come to the right game.

The short version: Streets of Rage is back, baby! And it's got a combo/scoring system that's completely terrible, but the gameplay itself is so, so satisfying! Streets of Rage was a trilogy of side-scrolling beat-em-up games by Sega for the Genesis/Mega Drive. Here, a couple decades later, Axel and Blaze reunite, alongside newcomers Cherry and Floyd, to stop the children of the villain from the original games from taking over the world with mind control. It's a fairly barebones plot, and you don't even get an ending beyond the final boss exploding and screaming and falling to their death...but in a game like this, that's all you really need. But Axel and co. haven't been sitting on their laurels between games. SOR4 introduces a free-form combo system and some rudimentary fighting game aspects. (Don't worry, the most complex input is forward, forward + attack.) Now you can juggle, special cancel, and wall bounce the enemy into submission. Since the entirety of the game boils down to "go right, beat up bad guys, repeat", it's nice to have such an involved and satisfying system for said beatings-up. It feels a little more Guardian Heroes than Streets of Rage, but Guardian Heroes was an all-time great, so I'm alright with it. The music is also intensely satisfying. Yuzo Koshiro returns from the original games, alongside a couple more folks, to deliver the same banging house and techno beats you've come to expect. Personally, I don't think anything here dethrones "Go Straight" from SOR2 as my favorite song in the series, but then again, nothing could, and it's a hell of an attempt. The boss themes are a little flat, but the stage music is fantastic, and it even proceeds through multiple "parts" as you proceed through the levels. Speaking of the levels, there aren't a ton of them, though there's at least more than the old games. Locales are fairly varied as you traverse the city, giving some levels additional gimmicks. Enemies can be bounced off of walls to extend your combos, or thrown into pits or off of buildings for an instant KO. One stage takes place atop a moving train, and forces you to jump occasionally to dodge signs. The real replay value comes from trying the levels again as different characters, seeing how their strengths and weaknesses lend themselves to the given encounters, or not. The city has more problems than just Mr. and Ms. Y, though. The game grades your performance in the various levels. That's always a terrible game design idea, but the real problem is the scoring. High grades require high scores, and high scores require high combos. But it's not the combo count that matters, it's the total damage dealt to enemies during the combo. After every hit you land (including on destructible objects) you have 5 seconds or so to land the next hit, or the combo ends, and your bonus is calculated and awarded. If you're hit while the combo indicator is onscreen, though, it counts as a "Break" and you lose all those extra points. Um, sometimes. The game never actually explains this part, and I can see why: it's utterly indefensible. The scoring system is the most poorly-designed aspect of Streets of Rage 4, easily. Sometimes you do keep your earned points if you're struck during a combo, but that should really be true all the time. Another problem lies in some of the enemies, especially the bosses. In order to keep them from getting overwhelmed too easily by such a combo-friendly system, the game has to let high-ranking enemies tank your attacks without flinching. They're nice enough to flash white in this state, but it happens so often that it slows things way down. There's nothing more obnoxious than using the right move in a situation, only for the boss to tank it and counter. This would happen sometimes in the original trilogy, with no visual indicator, and it sucked there too, but it was a rarer occurrence. The last thing I should at least warn you about is defense. There is no block button. The only ways to avoid damage are to either jump, throw an enemy, or use your neutral special move, and use their invincibility frames to spot-dodge. Well, that, or simply walking out of the way. I am already the sort of gamer to use iframes as my primary form of defense, so this doesn't bother me too much, except for the attacks that can't be spot-dodged or avoided. Floyd suffers greatly here, being big and slow and having a small jump, so there are lots of attacks that are too wide-ranged for him, or their hitboxes linger for too long, or maybe the boss just does another spin kick in a row and maintains their no-flinch status. Aside from those few issues, though, Streets of Rage 4 is a dazzling spectacle that'll hook you right away, especially if you are a returning fan of the originals. SOR veterans may not like every change to the formula, but SOR4 is extremely fun on its own merits. Scoring and grading are fundamentally broken, but they also don't unlock anything beyond a "lifetime score" that'll probably earn you everything after one or two trips through story mode anyway. If you're looking to feel the unbridled joy of punching the light out of a man's eyes a couple hundred times in an hour, you've come to the right game.