Streets of Rage 4 was first announced in 2018, and now, after a two-year wait since then, the game is finally here. The series has been dormant since 1994, and after a quarter-century, Sega’s legendary beat-em-up franchise is back. The team at Lizardcube and Dotemu have hand-crafted all of the new content with care and aimed to find a happy medium between modern-day graphics with a hand-drawn look and to keep the feel of the original trilogy alive.
The developers responded to issues with the art style being too clean by throwing in some gorgeous real-time lighting to make everything mesh together better.
However, if you don’t want the super-clean art, you can also add a filter to things offering up a pixel art style that makes things about on-par with a high-end 32-bit 2D brawler. Players can also add CRT filters to either the revamped pixel art or the original hand-drawn look with each style having something to offer.
Axel, Blaze, and Adam are back with Adam’s daughter Cherry joining the fray. Each feels different from one another, and if you want more flexibility, there’s always playing a new character and unlocking pixel art versions of the returning playable characters from each game.
Their specials and combo systems are in-line with the original games, offering up an exciting blend of old and new. Brawler fans have had a slew of compilations to enjoy recently, but few new entries in the genre.
Streets of Rage 4 is available now on the Switch’s eShop, PC via the Microsoft Store, GOG, and Steam, the Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, with Game Pass users on Xbox or PC able to play the game at no additional charge. The same applies to anyone with Game Pass Ultimate, which gets them Game Pass titles on both the Xbox and PC.
