Final Fight: Streetwise – Review

In Final Fight: Streetwise, you are Kyle Travers, younger brother of the notorious Cody—an ex-convict who’s now growing a little too grey about the temples to be street fighting. In years gone by both Cody and Kyle battled gangs and various other undesirables in order to clean up Metro City. But now there’s trouble on the horizon again for the brothers as thug elements are filtering back into town while pushing a new street drug called Glow, which provides super strength to the person using it—and also causes them to inadvertently glow. Setting out on the path of danger to once more rid Metro City of its lowlife contingent, Cody is kidnapped by a gang and Kyle is left to lay down some smack (of the closed-fist variety), retrieve his brother, and clean the crime-addled streets once and for all.

Playing Final Fight: Streetwise leaves a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth, especially as the once fabulous arcade beat ‘em up experience created by the original Final Fight is nowhere to be seen within it. As a brawler, Streetwise manages to throw the occasional heavy punch or swift kick, but as a stand-alone game it’s sadly lacking in any and all of the elements that made Final Fight such a classic back in the ‘80s. Those doubting that fact need only take a few minutes with the original Final Fight, which Capcom has been kind (stupid?) enough to include with Streetwise as an unlockable extra. The differences are gigantic and, while the original 2D arcade game doesn’t translate perfectly to the console format, the draw of its gameplay is still leagues apart.

Graphically, Final Fight: Streetwise is passable on the PlayStation 2 without ever truly exploring the 3D limitations of the console—Black, Shadow of the Colossus, and God of War can rest easy in that regard. Furthermore, despite the occasional bout of wonky collision detection, the game runs with enough visual competence to temporarily gloss over the gameplay cracks. One notable exception to the aforementioned competence lies with the character dialogue and, more specifically, the truly substandard lip-synching. It’s awful, and really does drag down the suspension of disbelief that videogames thrive on so readily. The game’s semi-open ended gameplay approach and its attempts at fooling players into believing they’re not actually following linear pathway falls flat thanks to somewhat repetitive environments that will leave established fans as dazed and confused as those totally new to Final Fight games

Streetwise appears to have been forced through some form of hard-edged development training regime where its characters and environments have been force fed steroids and anger pills to create a game that’s littered with completely unnecessary cursing, and uninvitingly murky and gloomy visuals. Perhaps this is thanks to the appearance of other questionable ‘street’ offerings such as 50 Cent: Bulletproof, and Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance. In layman’s terms, Streetwise concerns fighting for many different—but rather obvious—reasons, such as, your life, revenge, respect, cash, and the sheer joy of pummelling another guy’s face to a smooth pulp. Hmm, true enough but, unfortunately, in order to enjoy all those things, players will need to seek out a completely different videogame, because the fighting in Streetwise lands someway short of the mark where depth and fulfilment are concerned.

Players embark on Kyle’s quest with the bear minimum of useable fight moves, combos, and peripheral attacks (such as beating an enemy while they’re down, etc.,) but are soon able to purchase new, more powerful moves via monetary rewards garnered from mini-missions. These moments of distraction include gameplay-related challenges such as helping a shopkeeper to kill pesky vermin, as well as some truly banal tasks such as solving slide puzzles (what?). Oddly, Streetwise also sees the inclusion of projectile weaponry into the fray, which feels seriously ill fitting considering Final Fight generally revolves around beefy fisticuffs. However, the core fighting moves and attack combos, while being subject to tiered evolution in terms of power and effectiveness, often devolve into shamelessly applied forays of button-mashing mayhem, which is made all the more shallow and unrewarding by unchallenging A.I. and predictable boss encounters. The motivation to actually apply the game’s selection of combos is therefore never in evidence against opposition that scarcely requires it.

Deaf gamers and those players suffering with hearing impairments can follow Streetwise’s narrative, what little there is, thanks to accompanying subtitles during cut sequences and also in-game text that appears when talking to the game’s various NPCs. That said, the gamplay’s shallow button mashing delivery means that needing to know what to do next is never really a concern. Girl gamers are, yet again, forced to adopt the bulging muscles and shrunken brain of a testosterone injected brawler who’s, you guessed it, out for vengeance as a one-man army. One ‘man’ being the operative word there. Girls get angry, girls can fight, girls can sport muscle and flailing fists…and their exclusion as a character possibility is disappointing. Why couldn’t Cody have a sister with battling tendencies? Yet, in this instance, an applicable female character wouldn’t change the overall game and its undeniable faults.

Ultimately, Final Fight: Streetwise feels as tagged on and unnecessary as its injection of foul-mouthed language. It’s also as uninspiring and dull as its visuals, and as emotionless and shallow as its button mashing fight moves. Will Kyle clean up Metro City again and rescue his big brother, or will Glow prevail and turn the city into a seething den of destruction awash with crime waves and death? Given the game’s lapse execution, the latter would be more preferable—merely from the point of view of perverse curiosity.

Review by Stevie