Urban Reign

These features get the game off to a great start. Multiplayer battles go beyond the usual side-by-side combat by allowing four players to fight simultaneously. Taking into account the engine, which at first appears to be based on Tekken, the potential for four-player addiction is dangerously high. Paul Phoenix as a hidden character, Marshall Law as another – does it get any better? 

Telling a Story ... Sorta

Before you can access all of the characters in the multiplayer mode you must first complete the single-player Story Mode. This mode consists of 100 missions, but before you get all excited, let's take a look at some of the mission objectives you'll encounter:

Take everyone down

Take [specific character] down

Take [specific character] down within the time limit

Take [specific character] down while protecting [a comrade]

Notice that each of these involves the elimination of at least one character. "Bust up [character's] lower/upper body" is a bit more inventive. It's more restrictive in that you must attack a specific part of the enemy's body to win. But technically you're performing the same actions.

The thing about a story mode is that it's supposed to mean something. You're supposed to care about the characters, what happens to them, etc. Big Bad Arcade Mode would have been a more appropriate title given the lack of character development. There's a war among gangs, the good guys (or are they?) want you to help them, and within minutes a fight breaks out. This happens repeatedly until you've returned to each location a half a dozen times, give or take a few. And with almost every objective asking you take someone down, you can be certain, without knowing anything about the combat system, that Urban Reign is a repetitive game. 

Going In Circles

Attacks are delegated to a single button: circle. Kicks, punches, special attacks – you can't escape using the circle button to execute them. Meanwhile the X button turns your fighter into an aimless sprinter that will run till he hits a wall (at that point he'll attempt to run up the wall and perform a fancy flip). Triangle is the grappling button; square is what you press to dodge or deflect an attack. The shoulder buttons let you taunt, pick up weapons, lock onto enemies, and issue commands to AI partners. Eight buttons for eight different functions, none of which include blocking or jumping.

The dodge/deflect button was Urban Reign's hope of being innovative. Since you can't block you must press the square button at precisely the right time (right before your opponent's fist is about to hit your face). Nearly every move can be dodged or deflected. This is a combo-heavy game, so you'll have to press the square button multiple times to avoid each and every hit. Otherwise you'll get stuck in a combo and will be less likely to recover. The same goes for your opponents, but they have the advantage of being controlled by a cheap AI system that let's them grapple and combo player-controlled fighters with seemingly no effort.

The physics are nuts. I like the idea of being able to deflect more than one kind of attack, but if you time it just right you can get out of a wrestling-style grapple in the middle of its execution. Once free the fighter bounces in the air, he performs a strange flip and lands on his feet. Trust me, it's even stranger to watch than it is to read about.

Once you've proven you can keep up with the cheap AI, Urban Reign gives you a little bit of a break by introducing several computer-controlled partners. These partners may be told what to do (via commands like Split Up and Call For Help), but for the most part they'll fight on their own, keeping an enemy or two busy while you handle the rest.

Stand next to an opponent while your partner is close by and the two of you may perform a double-team attack. It sounds complex, exciting and challenging. Unfortunately it's executed by pressing the triangle button. Same goes for moves that hit two enemies simultaneously – to do that you must be standing in between two thugs and press the triangle button before they change position. 

I'm showing screens that are repetitious to illustrate the game's repetitiveness.

Don't Defy Me

Urban Reign's most problematic feature is its defiant camera. Adjust the camera to the left and it'll start to move in that direction, then lock up and move in the opposite direction. As you continue pushing left it continues pushing right. "I've got it!" you say to yourself, pushing the analog stick in the opposite direction. What does the camera do? It defies you again, this time pushing left. You can, under almost all circumstances, get a fairly good view of your opponent by locking onto him (R1). But if you have multiple opponents and wish to view the entire area you're screwed. The camera doesn't move well enough on its own to be left alone.

Gameplay: 6
Tekken and SoulCalibur use multiple buttons for multiple attacks, but Urban Reign puts too much stock in the circle button. Triangle is used sparingly in comparison. This 100-mission quest is tiring after the first 10; imagine how bored you'll be when you reach the 70th mission. And at that point you'll still have 30 to go.

Graphics: 8.3
Urban Reign looks almost as good as the most recent Tekken game, using what must be the same engine and graphic assets. For the characters that mimic Tekken's greatest fighters (like Eddy Gordo) it seems that Namco used the same motion capture actor. The interactive environments are pretty awesome – jostle and/or destroy cars, trucks, motorcycles, shelving units, boxes, trash cans, and most other objects that don't appear to be frozen in the background.

Sound: 5
Repetitive tunes for a repetitive game.

Difficulty: Hard
As in CHEAP. Urban Reign is frustration squared.

Concept: 8
Urban Reign hoped to live up to Tekken's legacy by having similar moves and mechanics. It also hoped to differentiate itself by using a control scheme that no prior fighter has used (and hopefully no future fighter will ever use again). It's good to see Namco trying new things, but they've got to go back to the drawing board before jumping into a sequel.

Multiplayer: 6
Four-player battles with the same clunky physics and repetitive gameplay mechanics.

Overall: 6.1
Excruciatingly cheap and lacking eventfulness, Urban Reign is another beat-'em-up that failed the repetition test. Cramming several moves into one button – that sounds like an interesting idea, but it has way too many limitations. They could've combined the circle button with every button on the controller to make for additional moves and it still wouldn't have been enough. I need a kick button (two would be nice), and one or two specific to punching. The dodge/deflect element – again, a cool concept, but it's not ready for gamers yet, certainly not in this title.

With a thorough re-examination of what it's got and what it doesn't, Namco could turn the franchise into their biggest yet. For now, however, Urban Reign is yet another game to add to the list of brawlers we will inevitably forget.