River City Ransom: Underground

As someone who still plays River City Ransom all the way through a few times a year, I can safely tell you this game looks a lot like RCR, but plays nothing like it. The beauty of RCR was in its simplicity. There were 2 buttons, and it worked fine. . until you accidentally kicked that box at your friend instead of picking it up, then it was funny. RCR:Underground tries to meld the new with the old, and the result doesn't feel at all like RCR. Now there's a button to pick up items, a button to punch, a button to kick, a button to jump, a button to block, a button to use special moves, a button to eat snacks, etc.. They changed the game from a fun, and funny, casual street brawler into a grindfest with nearly impossible-to-pull-off combos and much less heart. As stated in other reviews, the moves list is often incorrect on top of everything else, meaning that even if you did manage to pull of the combo it wants you to, that may not result in a move at all. The feel of the game is also drastically different. There was some humor and some nods to the old game that I enjoyed, but they changed a lot. Instead of bad guys dying after a single well-placed Dragon Kick like in the old game (except for a few of the tougher guys that took 3 or 4), bad guys now take up to 10 special moves a piece to defeat. You'll sometimes end up fighting a single lackey or two for 5 minutes or more. It makes the game artificially longer, and just kind of frustrating. I miss the old gangs too, the packs of enemies that had a specific gang name, and a theme, and dressed similar and said particular things. Some were tougher, some were sneakier, etc. Now you just get a random mish-mash of bad guys thrown at you in every screen. Throw in a map system that doesn't seem to relate to the game world at all, and it's just a mess. As a side-scrolling fighting game, this one is mediocre. As a River City Ransom sequel (finally, after all these years) it's a pretty big disappointment.

I bought this one without prior research, "instabuy" for me, and had a nice surprise. The punching feels so satisfying, the awesome but simple soundtrack, graphics are charming, playing with your friends locally is fantastic. The developer recommends playing with a controller, but the keyboard controls are ok too. I tested only the Linux version, runs perfect on Arch Linux!

This would be a truly awesome game except that it suffers from a some bad design decisions and nasty bugs. The gameplay is generally very fun and unlocking moves for the characters is really neat. There are quite a few characters, each with their own moves, although at least one is borderline unplayable. The game manages to be fun and nostalgic, while not be quite as repetitive as the original NES game. However, there are some truly annoying missions you have to go through to win, and the end of the game is pretty tedious because most of the enemies stop dropping coins, and you can't use the subways so travelling to pick up power-ups to use on the last level is a real pain. Also, because the game is much more difficult, you can't just start using a different character.

The game makes a lot of effort to capture the feel of the original, but also adds a ton of depth. Controls are mostly intuitive, but I would have liked for people using Xbox controllers to see their actual buttons on the tutorial screens instead of the generic I,U,J,P, and so forth. Indeed, this is my only problem - for a game that makes a big deal about recommending a controller (and an Xbox 360/One controller no less), the lack of button displays is a weird oversight. This is, however, a minor problem that becomes a non-issue about a half hour in. What we have is a mostly satisfying, meaty experience using a broad variety of characters, each with their own wonderfully diverse move sets, to lay thugs out in a colorful, over-exaggerated world (you know the world's a bit overblown when the NERDS are a gang!). Lovely little title for those with an appreciation of not just the original RCR, but of retro beat-em-up games in general. Wonderful little title that should NOT be missed!