Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

While the Nintendo DS has a lot of games, it seems like it is better suited for specific genres.  The DS is crowded with puzzle games and RPGs.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and even though the DS has had several unique gameplay experiences that cater to the strengths of the system, there are some genres that are woefully underrepresented.  Sure, it can be fun to level up your party or solve the next puzzle, but there are times when you want to beat the crap out of everyone.  That's where Tokyo Beat Down comes in.

In Tokyo Beat Down (TBD) you follow the exploits of the Beast Cops.  These are the guys (and gal) that get called into the most intense situations.  When your regular beat cops won't do, the Beast Cops are there to clean up the scum and make sure that they know they are defeated.

Most of the time you play as Lewis Cannon, who strongly resembles Mel Gibson from his Lethal Weapon days.  He is the troublemaker of the Beast Cops.  When he interrogates a criminal, he likes to let his hands do the talking.  He is the most well-balanced fighter.  Then there is Takeshi Bando, the Captain of the squad.  He's fearless, but he's a bit slower than Lewis.  He packs a bigger punch though.  Rika Hyodo is the mandatory “hot chick” in the squad.  She is quick and “great with her legs” according to the instruction manual.

Throughout TBD you have short intermissions that help to continue the story.  Here you meet the other members of the Beast Cops.  There is Chief Watanabe, the calm cool, and collected leader.  Then you have the rookie Shin Koga.  Finally there is Hiro Suzuki.  He's probably the unluckiest man in the world.  He gets into two car accidents and gets shot all in the same day.  Most of the intermissions have a static background with a picture window that shows who is speaking.  These actually look pretty good, even if you get the same faces over and over again.  It does have a bit of a comic book feel to it.  Occasionally some in-engine cutscenes occur, but they are rather simplistic.

The actual gameplay consists of moving to the right and attacking the enemies.  If you've ever played Final Fight or Double Dragon, then you have a pretty good idea what you are dealing with here.  There are the occasional vending machines to destroy and get extra health.  You have punches and kicks that subdue the opponents, but if you miss you open yourself up to getting hit.

Graphically, TBD doesn't look that great.  Everything is modeled in 3D, which is not a strength of the DS.  The character models look blocky, which really makes you appreciate the graphics of the 2D brawlers of yesteryear.  This wouldn't be so bad if the character animations were fluid, but the characters are as stiff as a two by four.  When you or an enemy gets knocked back, you go tumbling so far that you look like Shawn Johnson.  It's almost comical, especially when you get stuck along the edge of the screen, rolling in a stationary spot.  There aren't that many character models either.  Several of them are the same model with just different colors, but that's not anything new in this genre.

The music sounds upbeat, like the music found on most television cop shows.  You can tell that it is there, but it never overpowers.  There isn't any real voice acting in the game, other than the occasional grunt when someone gets hit.  However, it does offer some comedy gold when you get dialogue from “Boy who hates police,” “Man who can't sleep,” or “Closet Anarchist.”  Still, it's a lot of reading.

The collision detection seems to be spotty during fighting in TBD.  Sometimes you swear that you are in the same plane as an enemy and should hit them.  You don't hit them, but they can hit you.  Sometimes it's vice versa.  It seems that the first one to land a hit will be the one to win the fight.  Sometimes this makes your fights easy, but other times this can be very frustrating.  This is especially true of the boss battles.  Some of the boss battles made me want to throw my DS across the room.

The inclusion of guns into the beat-'em-up genre could have made TBD feel inventive.  While other games have used items like clubs and metal pipes, guns could have given the game an entirely new strategy.  Instead, the guns are too slow to take out and fire.  This makes their inclusion trivial and a waste of resources.

It doesn't help that the controls feel a bit sluggish.  Eventually you get a feel for the combos, but there are times when you want to attack but can't because you are waiting for your character to stand up completely.  This can leave you open to attack.  When you get enemies on both sides of you, that can cause you to lose a lot of life as you can't turn left and right very quickly while being attacked, the slow turn even hods true after an attack is finished. The end result are more deaths due to bad controls and slow turning.

The pace of TBD is actually fairly consistent.  You go through the stage and defeat the enemies that appear on the screen, move to the right, continue on, occasionally talking with a bystander to get information, until you get to the end of the stage.  There were a couple of stages though where all you do is talk to the people standing on the street for information.  This didn't make any sense and really dragged out these sections.  It was kind of funny when you got to the end of the stage and you got the “You beat them down!” message when you didn't even throw a single punch.

The funny thing is that the storyline is what made me want to keep on playing.  While it was a typical cop story, it had enough humor and cheese to make me want to find out what happened at the end.  The game plays through six days, and each day the story got more involved.  It is one of the few redeeming qualities of the game, even if it is pretty cliché.

When I got Tokyo Beat Down, I was really hoping for a great beat-'em-up experience translated into the third dimension, similar to how adventure games and one-on-one fighting games have transitioned into 3D.  Unfortunately Tokyo Beat Down falls short of that, and if I want a beat-'em-up I'm better off putting my GBA copy of Final Fight One into my Nintendo DS.

Gaming Trend Score

63

1. Graphics: 76
2. Audio: 74
3. Controls: 62
4. Gameplay: 54
5. Value/Replay: 56
6. OVERALL:63