Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance is an interesting concept. It’s an open-ended sandbox game that combines the beat-em-up gameplay of Final Fight and Double Dragon with one-on-one match-ups that are reminiscent of games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. Add on some role-playing elements for good measure, and Beatdown sounds like it should be the sleeper hit of the year. That would definitely be the case had these elements been executed better. Instead, Beatdown boils down to a game that tries to mean well and while it’s not bad by any means, it just falls short of pulling everything off.

In Beatdown, you play as one of five members of a mob run by a man named Zanetti in the city of Las Sombras. After coming across a drug deal gone awry, askew, and amiss, they’re discovered and blamed for mucking up the deal all together and labeled as traitors. The individual members split up to escape and thus begins Beatdown’s story mode. You’re one of these five members who are on the run from both the law and their former gang. After visiting a local bar and meeting up with a gossipy informant, you set out to clear your name and get revenge on your gang. While you can choose which character to play throughout the story, the story line really never deviates – only the gameplay aspects. Some characters are walking tanks that manhandle anything that gets in their way while others are quick and capable of stringing together some massive combos.

A bar called “The Hole” is your unofficial base of operations. You can go to the bartender to get side jobs, order drinks to bring back health, or learn new moves when you’re strong enough. The aforementioned informant will give you missions that will continue the plot of the game. You can also save your game with the local reporter as well.

Once you get accustomed to getting around, you can finally set out to start clearing your name. You can wander freely around Las Sombras and talk to pedestrians or pick fights with random people, if you’re not already performing a side job. There are some dangers to look out for while wandering since the cops are on the lookout for you as well as the mob and you’ll have to disguise yourself to avoid frequent run-ins. There are icons displayed at the top of the screen that show a percentage of which faction will recognize you. You can avoid frequent run-ins by visiting the local clothing store or street vendor and buying new clothes to make the percentages drop. You can also go to the hospital and get plastic surgery done for some more drastic results. There isn’t much of a clothing selection available and your character will end up looking like a thrift store junkie later in the game since combinations of your old duds won’t help to bring the percentages down. Male characters can even purchase and wear women’s clothes which is just wrong.

If you pick a fight with someone in a group, the gameplay becomes a beat-em-up where you’re free to roam and put the beatdown on any enemies you’d like. Other fights, most often fights that help to advance the story, are one-on one affair. These fights take on more of a fighting game mechanic and have a surprisingly deep set of moves. In addition to your health bar, there’s also a pride meter that will diminish anytime you or your opponent is hit or someone is taunted. Once the pride meter reaches zero, you can “negotiate” with your opponent by hitting the circle button and the negotiation menu comes up where you can recruit your opponent to your side, rob them of their cash, interrogate them for info, or simply stomp their faces into mush courtesy of a beatdown. While some fights can get pretty hairy, none of them are too challenging. You’ll eventually learn that some well times button mashing will take an enemy down with little or no effort. Oftentimes, repeatedly pressing the kick button will allow your opponent to constantly walk into your incoming foot time and time again which makes fighting pretty much a no-brainer. Once the fight is done, you’ll get experience points which will let you gain levels and give you points to increase stats in three areas, namely stamina, power, and technique. The higher the stats, the more new moves you can learn from your friends on the black list and at the bar. You can also pick up money, weapons, and health recovery items off of fallen enemies, though every time you take something your cop percentage goes up by one percent which means you’ll eventually be heading back to the clothing store and hospital for another makeover and another trip that goes out of your way.

When you recruit friends, you can call them up and summon them to fight alongside you. You can bring a maximum of two friends at a time, but you can always recruit more and leave them on call, given that you’re not doing a side job. During the beat-em-up sequences, your allies will automatically fight alongside you, though they’re not really effective and have a tendency to get beaten up easily. Their path finding is also pretty bad as you’ll frequently see them running into walls to get to an enemy on the other side. During one-on-one fights, they’ll stand on the sidelines and cheer you on unless you’re defeated. At that point, the next ally in line will step in to fight which essentially gives you three tries at taking down some particularly tough enemies. If you build a good enough relationship with them, you can earn some ineffective double team moves to perform. The problem is that it’s not really worth trying to keep your cohorts alive or happy enough to earn these moves. Especially since allies tend to cry like little babies if you dismiss them from the group because of a mission or you need to add a new member.

Each of your friends have certain abilities and skills that will help make your adventure a little easier. If you team up with a pickpocket, you can earn extra cash by going on pickpocket side missions with them and carjackers will be able to get you to destinations easier. You’ll also have different fighting styles that come into play. Grapplers can pick up and manhandle anyone in their way and are better at wielding large weapons like metal beams and tree trunks that pop up here and there. While anyone can use weapons such as boards, bats, bottles, and brass knuckles, weapon masters are more proficient with them which is great for difficult one-on-one battles since an unarmed character can’t block a shot from a weapon.

Las Sombras isn’t quite the sprawling metropolis it’s made out to be, it’s more like a bunch of small sets that you can explore. There are only six different areas to explore and wander through which are neither expansive nor really open. There’s barely enough room on the sidewalks for you and your compatriots which means that you or your friends are bound to be hit by the random cars that careen by at eighty miles per hour. Beatdown is strife with load times which you’ll encounter virtually at every turn. Not only do these load times run a little long, but they also help to break the flow of the game.

The visuals help to give Las Sombras a gritty and dark feel, given its eternal night time. Environments and textures aren’t anything impressive and are usually pretty blurry. Outdoor environments lack any kind of detail like simple traffic lights and fire hydrants and indoor environments fare worse and lack any detail at all, save for the two bars you’ll visit.

The game’s characters all look good and show signs of battle damage on their faces after tough fights, which is a plus. They are also well animated during fights while performing moves, getting knocked down, and countering with seamless animations that go with the fast paced action and help to make your button mashing a littble more stylish.

Each section of the game has its own hip-hop influenced soundtrack to go with it. While they’re pretty catchy while you’re playing, they’re hardly memorable. There is some spoken dialog in the game, but it’s mostly saved for pivotal points and cut scenes. Strong language is the order of the day with any of the spoken dialog and you’re sure to get one curse word for every three to four words spoken. A lot of it sounds like it was just thrown in for shock value and really doesn’t fit. Pedestrians and allies all speak via printed text that actually has a few misspellings and typos, which is a first for me outside of bad translation. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the tutorial for the pickpocket side mission. Your character and allies all have a couple victory lines that they say at the end of fights which can get tiring after an hour of play.

To classic gaming fans, the brawler has been a sorely missed genre and it’s good that Capcom attempted to release a game that puts a new and updated spin on it. It just falls short on just about every level, but Beatdown can turn out to be an enjoyable experience for some. You’ll just have to rent it first to see. Sure, the developers could have done a better job, but then again, NARC showed us that they could have done far worse.

- Brad Hicks (Dr. Swank), SwankWorld Media