Spikeout Battle Street

2 Comments

1. Feb18

   Sherlock

   pros: online multplayer is fun if you can find anyone to play
   
   cons: everything else is horrible

   holy retro batman sega has never been shy about converting any and all of its arcade games for the home consoles some like monkey ball not only come off stunningly well but benefit from the edditional tweeking and good extras modes they cram into the game and then there’s spikeout battlestreet a severly dated game that’s based on a severely dated acrade game that was in turn based on gameplay that’s you guessed it severely dated the concep is harmless enough heck its even kind of quaint spikeout is a throwback to those acrade brawlers like double dragon and final fight you take your guy or girl or whatever the hell else you play in the game and beat the crap out of the every ne’erdo well you happen to come across and that’s about it no serious that’s all there is to this game the fact that spikeout follows the conventions of the genre so clocely dosen’t make it a bad game the trouble is with the execution starting with the controls like all brawlers the basic controls are very simple in concept you’ve got an attack a jump and a sidestep move there a number of fancy moves you can pull of by executing certain button combinations they are mostly useless since pounding on the attack button will serve you well 90% of the time however certain moves like picking up a wepond on the ground for instance ars incredibly counter-intuitive you need to press down on the left analog stick and press two punch buttons at the same time to pick weponds up what the hell? and your superduper attack is done by pressing the B,X,and Y buttons at the same time you can remap the buttons to your likeing and even assign your special attack to something like one of the triggers i found that for some reason your special attack wouldn’t always work when remapped to one button haveing saved up all your special attacks for the big boss battle at the end of a level only to have it not work on command will make you want to love the game less the graphics are noteworthy the game looke like a first-generation dreamcast game and i heasite to even say that because it sounds vaguely like an insult to the poor under-appreciated dreamcast all the characters animate adequately while an combat but there’s nothing going on here to liven up to the fighting it’s all about as soulless and uninspired as the 2D brawlers its tryin to emulate it was all good back in the late ’80s but now it’s just so tierd so beside the brutally short unfun and poorly scripted single-player mode what dose spikeout have to offer this game has multiplayer better yet it has multiplayer via xbox live as i come to end of my review i would just like to add do yourself a favor take that money and go buy an old sega genesis and a copy of streets of rage you’ll spend less money and have a much better time honest
   Rating: 3 / 5

2. Feb18

   A. Llamas

   By reading the diffrent reviews about Spikeout around the net, it seems that very few people knew about this Sega classic. I was fortunate enough to enjoy this game back in 1999 when I was living in Japan. Spikeout: Digital Battle and the updated Spikeout: Final Edition was such a huge hit there, that Sega arcades in Akihabra and Shinjuku have more then half of their basement floor area dedicated to Spikeout machines (and it is rare to find an empty machine to boot.)

   Although the home port is several years late, I’m a happy camper that this game is finally made it to my living room. Although I do agree with all the diffrent reviews about this game (such as bad ai, outdated graphics and its difficulty level.) the fun factor, especially when playing with 3 other people is possibly the best in its genre.

   Many people who dislike the game say that the gameplay is not deep and it is a pure botton masher. The reality is, you wont get very far in the game if you just mash bottons because this game has loads of combos, team combos and juggles. There is nothing more funny and satisfying to pull out 100 plus team combos on one poor boss together with your spikeout buddies.

   Though I have to admit that despite of all the great new characters and content, the graphics seems to be watered down compared to the original arcade version. Also playing solo is a brutal and painful experience unless your a hardcore fan (then again, even in the arcade version, going solo is not a good idea). So solitary players might get fustrated going through the game in story mode.

   All I can say is although the port lacks polish and somewhat flawed in its execution, the extras, the diffrent game paths, the great multiplayer support makes this one a good title to pick up especially for those who want oldschool Street of Rage/ Final Fight action.
   Rating: 4 / 5