Title: Tokyo Beat Down
Release: March 31, 2009
Genre: side-scroll beat-‘em-up
Developer: Success
Publisher: Atlus
Platform: DS
Rating: T (Teen)
Product Link: http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Beat-Down-Nintendo-DS/dp/B001PDINV4/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1240282339&sr=8-1
Website: http://www.atlus.com/tokyobeatdown/
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The side-scrolling beat-‘em-up genre reached its peak during the early nineties. Titles such as Final Fight, Sunset Riders and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were well worth the tokens and created wonderful memories of plowing through wave after wave of enemies with one to three of your friends. Unfortunately, in the United States, the Arcade is no longer relevant much like the side-scrolling beat-‘em-up genre itself. Tokyo Beat Down attempts to revive the genre without knowing what made those games so fun to play in the first place.
The presentation is clever with a gritty, over-the-top cop noir aesthetic that channels hardboiled cop dramas from the eighties. Before you make assumptions about the content, let it be known that this game is meant to be a comedy. The humor is written with a Naked Gun movie tone that mixes word play and bizarre observations better than most current spoof movies. The cut scenes are long but witty and are the best reasons to play through the game.
The biggest misstep with the game was rendering it in 3-D on a handheld system that doesn’t render 3-D characters well at all. People look like boxy stick figures while the backgrounds are pixilated garbage. A hand drawn, 2-D art style would have appeared brilliantly while keeping in step with past classics of the genre. The sound effects are weird popping sounds meant to mimic gunfire and punches. The music is delightfully cheesy and fits nicely with the overall feel of the game.
The game play presents the basics—punch, kick and throw your enemies until they disappear and the game allows you to continue moving right. Tokyo Beat Down adds guns to the mix along with picking up ammunition along the way. The main problem stems from the fact that shooting enemies and punching enemies do roughly the same amount of damage. You can vary how you attack, but your options are limited. As long as you keep from being surrounded the game is pretty much a cake walk. The buttons have a tendency to be irresponsive which hamper the enjoyment more so especially when trying to pick up food while being attacked.
The classic side-scrolling beat-‘em-up games never relied on story or writing. They relied on accurate controls to fight and manuevre through a non-stop flood of bad guys. They relied on colorful, well drawn animations that were considered impressive all those years ago. But most importantly, they thrived on multiplayer—the ability to talk to your friends all huddled in front of the arcade cabinet laughing and joking together as you jam on the buttons and render them useless for future players. Tokyo Beat Down is a single player experience that, given the online functionality of the DS, should have really taken advantage of multiplayer. Instead we have a game so boring that if by chance you do stay focused enough to play to completion, you will never want to pick up and play again for any reason.
Overall Rating: * ½ / 5
M. Michael Chwedyk "The Gamekok"- MuzikReviews.com Sr. Video Game Reviewer
April 21, 2009
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