Streets of Rage 2

[Gabriel]

Time for more geek rage.

 

Recently Streets of Rage II came out for the Wii Virtual Console. Even more recently, it came out for XBox Live Arcade. In my authoritative opinion, Streets of Rage 2 is one of the finest games made. It's the best scrolling brawler ever and one of the tiny few gems of the 16 bit era which hasn't been rendered obsolete through the years. It's no surprise I bought both downloads for the Wii and 360.

 

I used to play Streets of Rage II a lot. It's second, right after the amount of time I spent playing the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat II. It has always been one of my go-to games. I'm very familiar with it, and I can say that the version on the Wii is not entirely accurate. The Wii version has some timing issues, and the game is noticably more difficult because a few enemies are markedly more aggressive and cheap. If you haven't played it a lot, it's not noticable, but if you've played it as much as I have, it's damn irritating.

 

Then there's the 360 version. It's much more faithful to the original Genesis game. The timing issues have disappeared, and the enemies behave as they should. For those who care, there are the usual pointless achievements. There's also the option to play with people on XBox Live. In short, it has everything that the Wii version has, plus some more stuff.

 

(I'm not sure if the 360 version actually saves your scores like the Wii version does. So that might be a slight perk of the Wii version. But who ever played this one for score?)

 

So, it's surprising to look at IGN and see that the Wii version scores a 8.5 while the 360 version scores a 7.3. Why could this be?

 

For one thing, the 360 reviewer complains about the 360's control pad. I can understand this complaint. The D-Pad of the 360 controller is not all that great. However, it's not worth a whole point. The game controls equally well on either version.

 

The other thing which seems to cost Streets of Rage 2 is it's Live Multiplayer mode. Surprisingly, it's laggy as hell. Everything I've ever attempted to play over Live has been laggy as hell, so this doesn't surprise me. Still, this is a feature which the Wii version doesn't even attempt. So, is the game worse because it has an extra feature?

 

The 360 version is $5 while the Wii version is $8. I guess that's another reason why it's over a point lower in rating.

 

Incidentally, the text of the review is rather fair to the game, and pays it its due. It's just the score in comparison to the Wii version which prompts a "WTF" reaction.

[Lord Helmet]

I think I'm going to pick this one up tonight.

 

Has anyone found a 360 controller with a decent d-pad? I find the Microsoft pads to be horrible in that regard. I have a MadCatz one that works a little better.

 

Edit...Oops, the 3rd party one I have is a Pelican like this:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-TSZ-Wired-C...1499&sr=8-9

Edited August 31, 2007 by Lord Helmet

[Lastblade]

There is a score leaderboard for the XBLA version.

[Atariboy]

How long is this game? I breezed through the first 3 levels or so tonight without any trouble. Does it get harder?

[IronMongeR]

How long is this game? I breezed through the first 3 levels or so tonight without any trouble. Does it get harder?

 

Only if you change the difficulty.

 

I'm stuck at the end of level 2 on Hardcore mode.

[Hyper_Eye]

I have played this game from beginning to end more times then I can count. I played it when Genesis was new and my Genesis still plays this game today. I don't know if I want to get it for XBLA when I am still very satisfied with the Genesis version and play it frequently. Are there graphics improvements and, if so, are they true to the original? I am thinking of improvements such as the ones made to SotN which were perfect.

[Atariboy]

Sega's XBLA stuff blurs the graphics if you want just like Castlevania can, though why you'd want to do that I don't know.

 

I haven't gone into options to see if theres enhanced sound like Ecco the Dolphin offers, but it appears to just be regular Streets of Rage 2 after checking it out in Genesis emulators. Besides the achievements, ability to blur the graphics, and online play, its the same game.

[Hyper_Eye]

I play SotN on an 80" 720p screen. The enhancements make the graphics much more sharp. Without the enhancements it looked like crap (like the original but like crap nonetheless.) I don't know what your referring to as far as blurring the graphics.

[Atariboy]

Well thats basically what the smoothing option does in these games, that's all I meant by that.

 

I don't have a hdtv so I guess the feature wasn't meant for me, but it just hurts the graphics on a sdtv.

[Gabriel]

I have played this game from beginning to end more times then I can count. I played it when Genesis was new and my Genesis still plays this game today. I don't know if I want to get it for XBLA when I am still very satisfied with the Genesis version and play it frequently. Are there graphics improvements and, if so, are they true to the original? I am thinking of improvements such as the ones made to SotN which were perfect.

 

SoR2 looks crisper. It's not enchanced, it's just a sharper version of the original. The "smoothing" option is a total waste, just like in Golden Axe.

[IronMongeR]

'Smoothing' makes SoR2 look like a bag of ass.