Xbox Review: Breakdown (2004)

Breakdown is a neat idea. It's mostly a first-person beat-'em-up, but also a first-person shooter, and even occasionally a first-person burger-eating and puking simulator. Everything unfolds for you through the eyes of Derrick, who wakes up in a lab just in time for war to break out between humans and some strangely buff aliens. There you meet Alex, your emo girl companion for the bulk of the game. The two of you then set off to unravel the mystery of these aliens, and your identity a la Jackie Chan's Who Am I? (1998), through some incredibly elliptical writing and absolutely maddening combat sequences.

Everything in Breakdown takes place in first-person view. At first blush, this is novel; you shoot, fight hand-to-hand, platform, fall out of windows, backflip, eat, puke, read, and more from Derrick's POV. This novelty quickly subsides, however, and the first-person perspective becomes alternatively disorienting, distracting, or downright difficult to handle. It's often impossible to keep track of your enemies, due partially to the game's inadequate lock-on targeting system, as well as larger problems with the first-person perspective itself. Since everything takes place in first-person, including when you get knocked down (and this happens often), recovering a proper perspective to launch a counterattack is frequently impossible when confronted with multiple enemies. Similarly, later stages in the game require a great deal of platforming, always a fun proposition from a first-person perspective. Other stages consist largely of empty hallways punctuated by frustrating enemy encounters.

The fun of recovering health by consuming stray sodas and hamburgers in a Streets of Rage fashion, or driving jeeps over caverns in first-person view, is largely overwhelmed by later levels in the game. In particular, there are two combat sequences near the conclusion of the game that are among the most aggravating I've ever played. You simply can't see the attacks coming your way, so instead you're treated to a kaleidoscope of images as your character is knocked around by mutants. Sure, perhaps this is a realistic representation of being beaten up by a crew of obscenely swoll alienmans, but it is emphatically not an enjoyable experience. I wanted to like Breakdown, and to its credit, there's very few games like it. And as it turns out, there's a pretty good reason why. Breakdown is a failed experiment; fascinating and educational in its own way, but deeply flawed.

PS2 Review: The Bouncer (2001)

It's difficult to make sense of The Bouncer. It looks like an ordinary 3D beat-'em-up, which is commendable enough given that the genre has been rendered practically obsolete since the SNES and Genesis generation. I like having games like this around, mostly because I like pulverizing proper nouns on the streets, even when the games themselves are at their most mediocre. However, in many ways The Bouncer isn't much of a beat-'em-up at all. In fact, according to the marketing this is more of a "playable action movie" than a straightforward brawler. It may be a cliche, but The Bouncer is truly neither fish nor fowl: far too vapid to be an action movie (think about that for a moment), and far too complex and involved with storytelling to be a satisfyingly mindless beat-'em-up. Simply put, The Bouncer tries to do too much and succeeds at very little.

The Bouncer has one of the most insipid "stories" I have ever played. Most beat-'em-ups, like Streets of Rage or Fighting Force, have the good taste and common decency to save you the trouble of worrying about characters and their relationships. Instead, they essentially tell you, "Some hoodlums have taken over the streets of our fair city, and they're evil, so please, go out there and beat the dog crap out of them and don't come back until you do." It does the job for me. That's all the motivation I need. But The Bouncer tries to impress you with the cinematic. From a technical standpoint, it actually succeeds. Given its age, it still looks and sounds pretty good. In terms of narrative, however, it stinks. Without looking it up, I can only recall a girl being kidnapped by oddly-dressed thugs, and our equally oddly-dressed bar bouncer heroes going out to save her from being turned into a cyborg kind of thing by some bozo running the evil Mikado corporation. There's also something in there about satellites and solar energy, I think. You spend the rest of the game getting acquainted with others who have also made numerous fashion faux pas. An idiotic premise, for sure, but that's not what gets to me.

The Fashion of The Bouncer. Good gracious.

What gets to me is the laborious way in which that story is presented. My first trip through the game took approximately an hour and a half, about an hour of which was seemingly spent on watching the cinematics. They either go on forever or they are pointlessly short, like the numerous three second clips of the characters running through doorways. Every utterance, every development in the narrative is just, like, So What? Who Cares? and also, You Left the House Dressed Like That, Do You Not Have Friends or Mirrors? The Bouncer has multiple pathways through the story depending on which character you choose and when, but none of them are exciting, even though one of them is a thoroughly bizarre "stealth" mission.

This interminable story ruins what is otherwise a decent beat-'em-up engine: deep enough to keep most fights interesting, but easy to learn (though a counter button would have been nice). Basically, you watch and then you briefly fight, level up your characters, watch then briefly fight, level up your characters, and so on. Luckily, you have the option of using characters unlocked in the Story mode to play either Survival or Versus. Survival isn't much better than Story, mostly because it quickly becomes alternatively tedious and cheap. Versus is your typical multiplayer mode, and it supports up to four players, human or CPU. It redeems the game somewhat, but not enough to recommend it for anyone other than the most starved beat-'em-up fans.

Dreamcast Review: Fighting Force 2 (1999)

See the crates. Feel the excitement.

I love the original Fighting Force. I hate this one. Fighting Force 2 is a perfect example of subtraction by addition: it's longer, has more of a story, has more weapons, has more keycards, and it most certainly has more destructible crates. Really, the only things removed from the original are the multiplayer option, the other three characters, and just about all the fun (or, hell, just about all the functionality). Instead, you play as mercenary Hawk Manson, sent by some agency clowns to investigate human cloning experiments being conducted by a shady Japanese corporation. You bounce around the globe trying to stop all this cloning from going on, gleaning most of this story from a few poorly animated cutscenes and a whole lot of pre-mission menu briefings. Though the original barely had cutscenes, let alone text to explain why you had to pummel some fools on an aircraft carrier, I'm not sure the extra plot in 2 was worth the effort. It's nowhere near interesting, nor is it even comprehensible, so why bother?

Playing Fighting Force 2 is alternatively curiously amusing and, way more often, incredibly frustrating. If you love crushing boxes underfoot, and if you love replenishing your health with soda, 2 may be just the thing you need. If neither of those two things appeals to you, I'd avoid this one. 2 plays a lot like the original, only with more of an arsenal. That's doubly true for your plentiful adversaries. Here's the general idea of each level: proceed through drab room after drab room, get shot immediately upon entering each room, get the keycard from somebody, probably backtrack for a long time in search of the right door, unlock that door, and do this all over again. This gets old. This is compounded by the difficulty of the later levels. One level in particular, an assassination assignment on the renovated "Alcatraz 2", nearly ended it for me. It's one of the most poorly designed levels I have ever suffered through. The levels after that aren't much better.

Screw this level.

Moreover, Fighting Force 2 has almost zero in-game music. It's an odd, uncomfortable experience gunning through the tedious halls of this game without a soundtrack, and it makes your encounters with the idiotic AI even weirder. Sometimes you can jump over their heads without them noticing, sometimes you can run around a group of goons until the moron in the middle with a gun shoots all his friends, and sometimes you cannot for the life of you get through a door without being blasted. You can bet, though, that each new room will have a keycard or three to pick up, maybe a few boxes to jump on, and you can also bet that there'll be approximately 3,000 rooms to get through before the level is over. Stay away from this one. Despite the name, it's more like a mediocre Tomb Raider than a true sequel to Fighting Force.

Give These PS1 Games Some PS3 Love

At Code Redd Net, we don't like to forget about the classics. That's why we're particularly fond of hardware that supports backwards compatibility, because we tend to favor games that last. Though current models of the PS3 do not play PS2 games, unfortunately, they nevertheless play PS1 discs. Something is better than nothing, I suppose. While there's certainly a score of outstanding PS3 games worth your time out there, you should always keep in mind the cavernous catalogue of excellent PS1 games waiting for you just in case there's a little downtime on the system's core software market (and they're almost always cheap, unless you really groove on RPGs). You don't even need a memory card to save your progress because the system creates a virtual one for you, not to mention an option to smooth out the pixel-heavy graphics. Bearing all this in mind, here's a short list of five phenomenal PS1 games not only worth your time, but worthy of your piggy bank as well.

Spider-Man (2000)

This is the first Spider-Man game to get it right, not only in all three wonderful dimensions, but in tone as well. In terms of capturing the feel of the comic book and cartoon character I remember, nothing else comes close to this 13-year-old. Despite lacking name value in the voice cast, or perhaps because of it, Spider-Man has aged very well: every character and every note sounds right. It's a bit short, say, about four hours, but what it lacks in breadth it more than makes up for in density. There's also a tremendous amount of extras to make bonus plays worthwhile if the nostalgia factor isn't enough for you. Controlling the webhead can be cumbersome at times, and the camera occasionally goes haywire, but it's no big deal. Future games in the series may have perfected the webswinging and combat, but that was only possible because the foundation that this game built was so solid. Featuring one of my favorite last levels, which I may or may not have actually spoiled in the screen grab above.

Thrasher Presents: Skate and Destroy (1999)

That oncoming train you see there is no doubt the best way to win a multiplayer game of Sick Fix: Chicken Man and I used to have a ball trying to produce the most spectacular wreck in that subway level. Multiplayer included, for the longest time Skate and Destroy was the premiere skateboarding simulation for those looking for an alternative to the zaniness of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. That position was taken over by the skate. franchise, and deservedly so, and as a result the "realism" of Skate and Destroy now seems dubious at best. Still, though, I love the rhythm of this game: there's much more emphasis on precision and angle than in its button-mashing brothers in the genre. Conceptually, too, there's a lot of interesting ideas no other skate game has tried to emulate, either before or since. For instance, after a two-minute session expires, security guards try to catch in the act, and you can use this extra time to earn bonus points before you escape, or you can be given the taser. Finally, Skate and Destroy has unquestionably the freshest soundtrack of old school beats on the system, a soundtrack we even honored with a Code Redd Net Award.

The World is Not Enough (2000)

N64 TWINE is a better game, but its PS1 brother has enough unique features to recommend it for fans of the franchise. As I mentioned in my review, the best part of PS1 TWINE is the "Russian Roulette" level, where you can gamble like a true addict, much to the consternation and cell phone distress of MI6. Plus, there's a significant number of film clips that set up the levels nicely. For whatever reason PS1 always lagged behind its Nintendo competitor in the first-person shooter department, so TWINE is the probably the best of an admittedly limited bunch.

Smasher regains his strength by having a soda and a sandwich
he found on the ground. This makes sense in a beat-'em-up.

Fighting Force (1997)

Here's another PS1 game with a superior N64 relative, though in this case the disparity in quality is much more minute. Fighting Force in its original PS1 incarnation may have a plethora of loading screens in addition to being more difficult than the N64 version, but for the sake of convenience this one is a completely satisfactory substitute. Furthermore, Fighting Force is one of the last true beat-'em-ups ever released, without a doubt the best one in the post-Streets of Rage, 3D era. It's not perfect, but I have a hard time imaging a more enjoyable co-op experience outside of PS2's Everything or Nothing. And clocking in at just under two hours to complete, Fighting Force never becomes tedious or over-long. If you want a mindless brawler for your PS3, this is your only choice.

Jet Moto (1996)

For a long time the only PS1 games I owned were a Playstation Magazine demo disc and Jet Moto. That I was content with this situation should attest to how enjoyable Jet Moto was and still is (that demo disc was beautiful too, and I miss those things). Jet Moto, it should be said, was an amazing game for 1996. I still think the graphics are decent, and I'm amazed that the tracks, intricate as they are, can support up to 20 racers at the same time. But what I remember most about Jet Moto was how fast and how difficult it was: not only were the races crowded with opponents, not only were the bikes almost uncontrollably fast, but the courses were laden with obstacles and cliffs. I still have not made it past the second round of the season without using cheats, thanks in no small part to a series of particularly brutal levels in the bayou. It's difficult, certainly, but it's not frustrating. No other game, even on PS3, can really keep up with this one.

N64 Review: Fighting Force 64 (1999)

Regrettably, Fighting Force 64 is essentially it for post-Genesis and SNES beat-'em-ups. For whatever reason, the genre perfected by Streets of Rage 2 never quite made the jump to 3D, so FF64 is as far along as things ever got. And despite its flaws, I think FF64 is an fine, faithful, and absolutely admirable entry in the unfortunately deceased lineage of the mindless brawler. In the tradition of all beat-'em-ups, story means nothing: four renegade police officers set out to take down a gang kingpin named Dr. Zeng. Why? Who cares? is more like it. You start out the game by kicking down his office door and throwing droves of his henchmen around the shiny hallways. Why and how you move on to the other locations (such as a shopping mall, subway station, aircraft carrier) is never explained, and never needs to be. You just jam on the A and B buttons (and, for a little variety, you can add in a running kick by holding down Z or you can try grappling with C-down) until all enemies in the stage have been thoroughly smackdowned. Bonus points are dished out for destroying the stages and, in the grand tradition of Streets of Rage, health is inexplicably replenished by consuming stray subs and sodas found on the ground. Controls can be a bit sluggish at times and the game can get fairly bogged down when too many characters clog up the screen. Furthermore, FF64 is really short; with a bit of diligence, you're likely to knock it out in just under a few hours. But who really wants to play these kind of games for long? FF64 is fun precisely because by the time you start to get sick of it, the credits are rolling and you can move on to something else. But unlike many other games, you can come back to FF64 often, simply to revel in the immense madness, and especially if you have a buddy beside you for some co-op play.