Title: Fight’N Rage
Genre: Beat’em-up
Players: 1 – 3
Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC (Reviewed)
Developer: SebaGamesDev, BlitWorks
Release Date: September 19th, 2017
I like some of what LizardCube, Guard Crush and DotEmu did with Streets of Rage 4. The art is mostly well done, and the basic fighting system can be generally enjoyable, with some decent’ish stages. But my biggest gripe with the game is that outside of the Streets of Rage 3 characters, none of the other default characters have the basic means to get out of the way, properly parry, or dodge attacks – with the exception of Cherry being able to run and Adam being able to do a light hop left or right. This creates quite the conundrum on the harder difficulty settings where you just can’t get out of the way in time or you have no way of defending yourself against incoming attacks.
One would have thought that coming off of Streets of Rage 3 – where every character could run, roll up and down the Z-plane, and perform dash attacks – all of the basic features from that game (and more) would have been included in Streets of Rage 4, but they weren’t. Worse yet is that all of these features (and then some) were already included in Bomber Team’s Streets of Rage Remake years before. So the big question is: why weren’t they in Streets of Rage 4?
Uruguayan developer SebaGamesDev managed to address this issue without having to parade it around. Everything that evolved the beat-’em-up genre over the last several decades were just all standard features in Fight’N Rage… and it preceded Streets of Rage 4’s release by three years.
The game originally came out for PC back in 2017, and then later it was released for the home consoles in late 2019.
The core of the game features 1-3 players in cooperative action or you can duke it out in the Battle Mode, or unlock a Score Attack mode, a Survival Mode, a Training mode, and a Time Attack mode. In every mode other than the Arcade and Training modes, you can not only play as the three main protagonists, Gal, F. Norris, and Ricardo, but you can also play as enemy characters you can unlock by earning coins via completing the Arcade mode on various difficulty settings.
Multiple Endings And CPU Teammates
The Arcade mode also has a huge variety of different endings classified from ‘A’ to ‘H’, with slight variances to each ending depending on which character(s) you play, or the combination of the team from single-player up to three players. The endings also vary depending on the routes and choices you make throughout the game, giving you plenty of reason to play through the game more than a handful of times.
Alternatively, if you don’t have friends you can play with locally, the game allows you to play with CPU teammates that you can utilize by unlocking the feature in the Extras menu, which also has tons of other content in there such as unlockable costumes, modes, characters, music, tips, and more.
But the real meat and potatoes of Fight’N Rage is in the depth of the fighting mechanics.
As a beat-’em-up game it contains a lot of fresh concepts that we don’t oftentimes see in beat-’em-up titles, save for maybe Treasure’s Advance Guardian Heroes.
Each character has their own basic combos, special attacks, grab moves, dash moves, and signature moves.
The special moves can be performed without any loss of life so long as the meter glows blue, just like Streets of Rage 3. If you perform a special attack while the meter is still recharging, it will drain your HP. Personally, I preferred Streets of Rage 4’s meter where there’s a remit on your HP so that if you use your special attack a green bar will drain your life, but you can fill the green meter if you perform enough combos to compensate for your special. So this means you can keep spamming your special attacks and not lose any life so long as you can execute enough combos to keep the green meter full, which makes it more skill-based rather than relying on the SP timer to recharge. It’s one of the few features I thought they did right and advanced well with Streets of Rage 4.
Advanced Combat Mechanics
Otherwise, all of the above combat mechanics are standard fare for a beat-’em-up in Fight’N Rage, and you can absolutely play through the game just doing the basics. But then things get really layered when you get into the nitty-gritty of the combat mechanics.
For instance, in addition to the Z-plane rolling, where you can roll up and down the screen to avoid lateral attacks, you also parry. Parries are very difficult to pull off, but Seba mirrored them after the time-based parry maneuver in Streets of Rage 3. Specifically, it allows you to do infinite parries so long as you time the button press correctly, either tapping forward or backward at just the right time to allow the character to block/parry the attack. The benefit of this is that while your character is partially locked in the parry-pose during the initial attack, each successful parry will quickly recharge your special meter so that you can then execute a special to get out of a hairy situation.
Parries, Dodging, And Cancels
You can tell the parry was designed to replicate that classic EVO moment where Daigo “The Beast” managed to parry each of Chun-Li’s kicks that Justin Wong executed during their match while only having a smidgen of life left. You can actually replicate that kind of scenario in Fight’N Rage if you’re good enough, since parries don’t take any of your life. The trade-off is that they are extremely arduous to pull off during the heat of battle, especially when the screen is flooded with enemies on the harder difficulty settings.
However, I like that Seba took the time to actually include this feature, even if very few people will be skilled enough to make efficient use of it. It’s more-so the fact that they give you this option for those willing to invest in mastering the higher skills required to conquer the game on the Insane difficulty.
But that’s not all.
The game also features complex cancels, too.
Unlike other games where the training/practice mode is completely useless, the training in Fight’N Rage actually teaches you how to perform some of the more complex maneuvers and combos in the game, including cancel attacks.
So basically, you’re able to perform a series of attacks and string them into other attacks, but you can also cancel those attacks to change what move you execute next. Grab-canceling, for instance, can be performed by executing a combo and then canceling the forward or backwards throw into a jump-throw, which not only does more damage but can also be directed across the screen, damaging any other enemies in the area where the attack lands.
You can also perform combo-cancels into dash-grabs, jump-cancels into bouncing air-techs, and even air-juggles off of wall-jumps. As I said, the game gets layered, and Seba went the extra mile to not only just provide yet another beat-’em-up experience that pays deep homage to Streets of Rage, Street Fighter, Final Fight, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown and King of Fighters, but it also attempts to innovate on the genre by requiring gamers to focus on skill and technique the more involved they get with the game.
This is the sort of depth I wish was present in Streets of Rage 4, which echoes rather shallowly in comparison as far as the combat is concerned.
Now this isn’t to say that Fight’N Rage is perfect when it comes to its combat mechanics. On the harder difficulty settings there’s the problem where enemies will stunlock players in place by crowding them on either side, or in the case of the whip girls several of them will stand in a row and just keep whipping you until you die and there’s no real way out unless you use your special.
Stunlocks And Cheap Enemies
The same thing applies to some of the bosses as well, especially the one with the claws who will get you trapped in a seemingly infinite wake-up counter-combo that will kill you instantly unless you use a special to break free.
The doberman guards are also especially egregious of getting you locked in a never ending knockdown barrage as they take turns feinting and power-punching you. If you attempt to jump out of the way you run the risk of getting caught in an air juggle, where if there’s more than two doberman you’re basically dead meat.
Brazilian beat-’em-up 99 Vidas also had a similar problem, where you would get trapped in a stunlock and basically there wasn’t much you could do to get out. The upside here in Fight ‘N Rage is that they at least give gamers the tools to avoid crowding situations.
Also, there’s a bit of a balance issue in Fight ‘N Rage when it comes to the multiplayer. On two-player it sometimes seems to be as hard on “Easy” as it is on “Normal” with three-players. Basically, unless the second player is really good, it’s usually more effective to either play single-player or three-player. I will admit that the player-to-difficult ratio in Streets of Rage 4 is handled better, and the amount of enemies and the challenge of the enemies scale properly for each difficulty setting and the amount of players playing.
As for Fight ‘N Rage, the length of time it takes to complete the game will vary per the setting, the route, and – once again – the amount of players. For instance, the game can be a breeze for the most part with three players, and if you’re good (and fast) enough you can conquer the Arcade mode in about 35 minutes. On “Easy” you can complete the game on single-player mode in about 45 minutes. And it took around 55 minutes with two players, and maybe around an hour and 25 minutes on “Normal” with three players. Expect to sit there for several hours trying and trying again on the “Hardest” difficulty. The final boss will kill you instantly once he fires on you, so you either have to parry constantly or just steer clear of him.
Innovative Multiplayer Features
One of the things I like most about Fight ‘N Rage’s multiplayer modes is that if a player runs out of lives they’re not booted from the experience or given a “Game Over” screen. Instead, the player who runs out of lives and HP will go into a “Recovery” mode where they’ll lay on the ground and their HP meter will slowly recharge so long as one other player is still alive and fighting. This means that if two players drop dead and have no more lives left, one player can still keep at it while the other two are in recovery. Once the recovery period is finished, the deceased player will get back up with a small inkling of HP, giving them an opportunity to fight on, and even keep their score.
This adds a whole new flavor to the game, and keeps all three players in the mix, even if one or two people keep dying.
In other multiplayer beat-’em-up games usually when the second (or third, or fourth) person runs out of lives and their HP hits zero, they just die and stay dead for the rest of the game (or in Streets of Rage 4 case, dead for the rest of the level). Here, I like that they give everybody a chance at recovery and to gain a second wind so long as someone else is alive. It’s another one of the features that evolves the beat-’em-up genre instead of just recycling old concepts from the yesteryears of the arcade genre.
Dark Themes
As far as the story is concerned, it’s definitely an intriguing one but also a little too dark for my tastes. Basically there’s a human/mutant war going on led by a shadow organization fronted by a mutant lion going only by the name of the “Boss”. He leads a genocidal attack against humans, slaughtering them across the land, or taking hot chicks as slaves. The dark part comes in with the fact that many of the captured humans are butchered and turned into food, or mutilated for sport by other mutants. Obviously players take on the role of resistance fighters attempting to bring down the “Boss”.
There are some gruesome sequences in Fight ‘N Rage that took me by surprise. It’s nowhere near as dark or as violent as say Mother Russia Bleeds, which had an entire level dedicated to sadomasochistic torture and rape, but I suppose the big difference between the two is that I expected as much from Mother Russia Bleeds, which advertised itself as a grindhouse beat-’em-up. The chibi-style of Fight ‘N Rage, featuring mostly animal fighters, led me to believe it was going to be more lighthearted, but it definitely gets a lot darker than what I was expecting. The guro levels aren’t high – again, this isn’t Mother Russia Bleeds or BloodStorm – but they are present in some places, so that’s something to take into account.
However, I will say that due to the multiple story routes and the cliffhanger ending, I’m certainly curious to see what a sequel for Fight ‘N Rage looks like.
A lot of the game is based on existing beat-’em-up and fighting games, such as a cat that mimics M. Bison’s special attacks from Street Fighter and is even wearing his dictator outfit; or the kickboxing birds that work as expies of the kickboxers from Streets of Rage; or a tiger wrestler who is a cross between King from Tekken and Abadede from Streets of Rage; or the fact that the “Boss” is pretty much a lion version of the Mr. X battle from Streets of Rage 2.
Stage Designs
A lot of the stage designs are also structured around Sega’s popular beat-’em-up series, with the final battle taking place on an island that you have to battle through to get to the castle where the “Boss” resides, complete with an elevator ride up to the top.
However, there’s enough originality in the way the stages are structured and the multiple routes that keep it from being an exact carbon copy of past beat-’em-up titles. Some of the areas also remind me a lot of Little Fighters, where there’s just a long stretch of enemies you have to fight through almost non-stop.
I would have preferred if there was a bit more variety in the way some of the stages were constructed, though. For instance, most of the time you’re just moving in a lateral, straight line with little else going on. It would have been nice if there were a few more interactive elements or more stage dressing to spruce up the environments, especially in the wrecked city stage, and the first part of the dark forest.
However, some of the stages were definitely expertly done, such as the raft stage leading to the bat boss, or the truck stage, or the motorcycle segment, or one of my personal favorites, the bar stage with the arcade machines, tables, and the dancers on the stage. It felt like a really realized and finely crafted area that showed sparks of its own identity apart from past beat-’em-up titles, despite being similar to the bar stage from Streets of Rage 2.
Unlockable Content
But if you get bored with the arcade mode and unlocking new endings, there’s also the Time Attack, Score Mode, Survival, and Battle Modes to partake in as well. As mentioned, you can unlock enemy characters to play in all the other modes, giving you a lot to play around with and new ways to master different characters.
There’s also benefits to playing through the extra modes, as reaching certain ranks as the three main characters will also unlock new outfits for them. For instance F. Norris has an outfit based on Ninja Gaiden, while some of Gal’s outfits are themed around Street Fighter and Darkstalkers.
It’s unfortunate there’s no online multiplayer mode, but the to compensate for a lack of human players with the CPU assistance mode is certainly a welcome addition.
There’s certainly a ton of more content to unlock in Fight ‘N Rage compared to Streets of Rage 4, which caught me by surprise. What’s more is that even though there’s more to unlock, you can actually unlock most of the content a lot quicker than LizardCube’s title, especially as you play on the harder difficulty settings, which in turn nets you more coins to unlock more content.
Hot Chicks, Big Boobs And Lots Of Fan-Service
I definitely prefer the art-style of Streets of Rage 4, but Seba Games went the extra mile with fan-service and that’s definitely worth noting. All of the chicks in the game are smoking hot and barely wearing anything. Most are sporting loin cloths and strapless bras, including the main character Gal, who is extra-bouncy in the bosom area. Also, every time she kicks you get a full view of her bare, thong-clad cheeks.
You can tell the developers are real men who enjoy sexy women, which is – as many of you already know – a complete rarity in today’s gaming industry. I will give props where props are due, though, and note that Streets of Rage 4 does have its fair share of sexy women.
Even still, if you’re looking for a beat-’em-up game that isn’t just another ho-hum regurgitation of the same ‘ole concepts rehashed for the umpteenth time, Fight ‘N Rage certainly brings a lot to the table in terms of mechanical innovation and just giving gamers the tools to properly defend themselves and crowd-control based on skill.
I would love to see more games adopt those kind of mechanics in future beat-’em-up titles, especially everyone being able to run, dash-attack, roll-up and down, or parry. Many of these were present in the old Super Double Dragon for the SNES, but sadly that game never quite became the trendsetter it should have been. As for Fight ‘N Rage?
Verdict:
