URBAN REIGN PS2 DISC REPLAY UPDATE
URBAN REIGN PS2 DISC REPLAY SERIES

URBAN REIGN PS2 DISC REPLAY SERIES

It feels like a series of small challenges and the game more than makes up for the lack of a complex structure with the sheer amount of these self-contained missions. Sometimes you have to take down a more challenging foe in a one-on-one scenario and sometimes there are extra conditions such as defeating opponents within a time limit but the basics are the same. The player is enclosed within a confined, limited arena-like space (be it a street, alleyway, bar etc.) with objective of simply beating all of the enemies. Instead of long, roaming stages that trap you with groups of enemies before allowing you to move forwards, Urban Reign serves up bite-sized missions that can be cleared quite quickly. It’s difficult to know for sure but what you actually get is something a bit different. Perhaps gamers made the same mistake I did and expected a modern take on the classic beat ’em up style with the same game structure. The other probable reason that Urban Reign underperformed at retail (aside from barely being marketed at all by Namco) is because the gameplay itself was likely not what punters expected. Unnecessary plot that tries to hard? Big fat ol’ check. Generic homie ‘gangsta’ enemies? Check again. The main character looks bland, the cover for the game is boring and the usual mid-2000’s videogame tropes are all correct and present: female character with huge tits and highly impractical outfit? Check.

Urban Reign didn’t sell very well by all accounts and it isn’t difficult to see why. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Hit the streets and go toe-to-toe with thugs sporting ridiculous names. Pretty soon I was skim-reading the ‘plot’ and just skipping it all. I was expecting cut-scenes perhaps but almost thirty missions in (yes, I’ll get to that in a moment), it was still just text explaining why Brad needed to go and beat up a rival gang boss or why Brad had to survive an alleyway encounter with a mob of gang members. The plot is henceforth communicated via narrated text boxes before each mission and is your standard guff about rival gangs, turf warfare and all that stuff so nothing new to see here. Brad starts working for Chinese crime boss, Shun Ying Lee, a female swordswoman equipped for the Playstation 2 generation of videogame marketing with a low-cut jumpsuit and an eye-popping B-W-H ratio that doesn’t exactly reflect a typical East Asian woman. Instead, there is a brief cinematic introduction to the main character (Brad Hawk) who is apparently the new hard-arse in a town ruled by crime and violence. Bloody hell…get with the times old man! That shit was so 1992. You would have thought I’d have learnt by now that this just isn’t enough to sell a game in the modern era but even so, I popped the disc in and was prepping myself for perhaps ten to fifteen stages of ‘scrolling’ through streets and alleyways, punching thugs and making my way towards a boss at the end of each level. I was expecting Urban Reign to be a 3D version of the old-school arcade beat ’em ups.

Like its rivals however, Urban Reign isn’t quite the game you might expect and simply expecting it to be a straightforward beat ’em up actually invites disappointment as I recently discovered. One game that frequently gets brought up when gamers are questing for a good beat ’em up from the new millenium is Namco’s Urban Reign for the PS2. The core beat ’em up objective (to smash the crap out of thugs and hoods) was still there but the purity of the arcade classics was lost. I’ve already reviewed Final Fight Streetwise here but that game – along with Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance – included semi-free roaming gameplay as well as other features such as stat upgrades, side missions and cutscenes.

When they did appear, they weren’t quite the same as their 2D forerunners.

The PS2/Xbox/GC era was a particular low point as far as beat ’em ups go and there genuinely aren’t many decent ones to speak of. After all, the likes of Fighting Force can hardly be discussed in the same breath as Final Fight…not by anybody with any taste anyway!

URBAN REIGN PS2 DISC REPLAY UPDATE

Developers attempted to take advantage of polygons and update their classic franchises but the results were a mixed bag to say the very least. The beat ’em up is one such genre that flourished in the late 80’s and early 90’s but quickly became irrelevant to the mainstream. Ever since the decline of the arcades and 16-bit home console era, there have been quests to find worthwhile modern examples of the genres that were driven close to exctinction by the arrival of cinematic, story-driven games.

Urban reign ps2 disc replay