[7/5/08] Urban Reign

[Devia Eleven]

 

Published by: Namco

Developed by: Namco

Release Date: September 13, 2005

Genre: Action

Players: 4 (With Multi-Tap)

Emulators: PSCX2

 

Urban Reign is a 3 dimensional beat-em-up fighter for the PS2. The game was both published and developed by Namco. If you've played the single player adventure modes on Tekken 3 and 4, you will be familiar with this game, because the fighter's animations look similar to that of Tekken characters. In the story, you star as Brad Hawk, a street fighter that has been hired to find a kidnapper. You will be scavenging the streets to find some information on the person's whereabouts, and you will be unrealistically combating against millions of different fighters.

 

 

In this game, you have the attack button, which only does one combo if you tap the button continuously; the grab buttons, then you have the reverse button. This button is made for you to reverse mostly any attack from an enemy; if you press this button at the correct time you can reverse an enemy attack, or grapple. You can even evade weapon attacks. There is a run button, and press two buttons at once unleashes a special attack, depending on your character, you will have different specials of course. With every attack, your special meter rises, you need more special juice to emit a larger special attack. Then of course you have your weapons, which range from Axes to Baseball bats. Grappling people with weapons in hand unleashes a special weapon attack grapple that does more damage than a regular grapple.

 

 

You can permanently damage different parts of a person's body with regional attacks. Regional attacks injure different parts of the body, and when that certain part is hurt a few times, the body above the person's health bar will flash on that body part, similar to a wrestling game. The more you damage the part, the longer an enemy will stay dizzy, (that person will have stars orbiting around his cranium). When someone emits a special attack, it can only be reversed with a special attack. When in special attack mode you are temporarily invincible. This can be very annoying, especially when dealing with bosses. This game takes the air juggle system from Tekken, and it comes in handy when you cannot defeat a person fairly.

 

In story mode, there are 100 missions, each consist of fighting people. I don't think that a person could even muster getting to the 30th mission let alone the 100th. The story mode lacks depth, and before each mission there will be a picture of the area where you will be fighting, along with a large useless paragraph of information that will not assist you at all with the fight. Expect to fight people, over and over, repetitively, without rest. You have to fight, 100 matches to complete the story mode, the process is undoubtedly tedious, it gets so repetitive, and not to mention the game is extremely arduous. I haven't played a game so high in difficulty. There are 5 difficulty modes, Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Ultra Hard. I had trouble playing on Very Easy, I found myself repeating the same mission, 10 or 15 times before I completed it. I can't imagine how hard the game would be on Ultra Hard, good god.

 

 

The matches seem so randomly generated, the one on one matches are the hardest of all. Your opponent will come to the battleground, as if he just got done doing seven hours of weight lifting, and he juiced himself twice before the battle. These men are irresistibly crucial, their combos are endless, and when they are hit with a weapon, they show no sign of pain. So, throughout the story line, you will be bombarded with numerous missions, where you will have to fight against seven men, all wielding swords in tuxedos, and you have nothing at all. You will get beat down so devastatingly, that they will make you seem as if you have been living your life a lie. This game makes no sense whatsoever, and the story mode is so hard, that you will be bashing your head against the game case. This entire rant is realistic, once again I have to mention, the story mode consists of 100 missions, meaning, you will have a chance to get your face smashed into the concrete by 4,000 street fighters, who just so happen to know kung fu.

 

 

The entire game is a flaw in itself, what where they thinking? It's very unbelievable, but with this, there has to be something good to redeem itself. The Multi-Player actually isn't bad, and with multi-tap and 3 friends, this game can be quite enjoyable. You can fight against each other, or the computer, (which consist of mutant karate senseis, with twenty years of fighting experience). The game can be mind flowingly fun with friends, but after awhile, the fun dies down. The game still has its hit detection flaws, and it's difficultly ridiculousness. The story is completely cliche, and one man fighting millions of other men in the process of finding a kidnapper is unimaginable.

 

This game does have decent graphics, the environments are sub-par, along with well fleshed out looking models, similar to Tekken. The sound is average, and it consists of boring rock songs, and other hard rock songs that fit into action movies. Don't ever buy this game, this signifies that Namco completely sucks at making a stand alone beat-em-up, please promise me that you will stay away from this game, trust me, stay away, and save yourself hours of tarnish.

 

Gameplay - 6.5

Story - 1

Graphics - 7

Presentation - 7

Sound - 5

Overall: 5.3 (EFFF)

[Agozer]

I've read equally scathing reviews elsewhere. God Hand is the absolute culmination of the 3D beat-'em-up genre, hands down. I'll play that (despite the absolutely unforgiving difficulty later in the game) any day over Urban Reign.

[Fatal Rose]

I really enjoyed this game. Not sure if it's really fair to rate the storyline in a VIDEO GAME, especially in a game like this.

I think people need to follow the original review criteria, I'd rather someone spend more time rating/talking about how the game handles/controls then the story.

 

I think people will enjoy this game less the more serious they take it.