Game: Streets of Rage 4
Streets of Rage 4 is a game that hates you (spoilers below). I do not mean the general “you”, the one that keeps your defences down because of how impersonal it is. No! I mean you in particular who is reading this. I know your name, where you live, and have already talked to your parents about this. But before I explain why this game treats you scornfully, let me give you some context to better appreciate what the fuss is about.
Before gaming at home became the norm, and before 1GB of RAM had the price of a heart transplant, video games were played at arcades on machines that were operated with coins. You would insert a coin and get a go at the game. When you would lose or complete the game, the machine would ask for another coin. Simple and super effective! At the end of your session, you had the chance to input three characters, representing your name, which would be displayed on a leaderboard screen alongside your total points. Those waiting in line could thus learn who holds the high score.
Inputting those characters was an adventure unto itself. Unlike our fancy modern gadgets with full-sized keyboards, key chords timed in milliseconds, and layered combos, the arcade machines expected you to cycle from A to Z by tapping a button that was already hard to press. Picking a letter would lock it in and move you to the next selection. A mistake could not be undone. In a civilised world, that would not be a problem. You would take your sweet time to cycle all the way back from, say, R to P and then ever so carefully repeat the steps to inscribe “PRT” or something. But ours is a barbaric world, my friend!
The arcade is a social place. You are there together with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells . There are no gaming chairs to make you feel comfortable nor hidden lights distracting you from your solitude. You are typically standing close to the machine you intend you use, playing mind games on the guy whose turn it is to make an attempt at reaching the top of the leaderboard.
If your friend gets the high score, you do what besties are there for: punch the bastard ever so gently to make him mistype his name, of course. We do not want him to become overconfident, do we now? The Greeks have warned us of hubris and all that. But we also do not need to be savages, so we let him have it sometimes, i.e., if he is below our score.
Many of the games at the arcade were in the fighting or beat-em-up genres. Streets of Rage 4 pays homage to the latter. In terms of gameplay, it does an excellent job. For a while I felt that Capcom’s Cadillacs and Dinosaurs got a remake. Though playing the game at home will never give you the same vibes as what you would experience at the arcade. Which is why this game hates you, amigo.
Streets of Rage 4 reminds you that you are at home. That is already a terrible fate. Then, you realise that you cannot punch your friend anymore. What a sad world we live in! It also features prominently a four-player co-op mode. No, not to make you invite people over for a game or two. Don’t be silly! It does it to highlight the fact that you have no friends.
Beside that, you will soon notice that everybody on the titular streets is maxed out in all possible ways. They have more muscles than those known to anatomists and more curves than those anticipated by that whole “curvature of spacetime” mumbo-jumbo that physicists dabble in.
Not only are they all cooler than you, they also have more free time than you ever will. You expend your vitality doing some unfulfilling job while they get to chill on the streets—and they even have coin-ops there to recreate the arcade experience!
Okay, I am not being serious. This is a fine game. I had a good time. As for the plot, it is a generic cartoon villain story of the bad guys wanting to control the world. The good guys are unmemorable vigilantes. I already forgot how they even look, which is fantastic.
For me, this is a strength of gaming. I do not want profound characterisation and interwoven backstories when the premise is that I run around kicking people in the stomach. This is the same point I made about Borderlands 3, namely, I like it when games do not take themselves too seriously. It makes for a fun and easygoing life.