"River City Girls" An Ode to Beat 'Em Ups
Arcade games were always a bit ahead of my time, as by the time I was old enough to play games, the only ones I had were old SNK arcade machines in the decrepit mall my mom once worked in again, and the smelly corridors of Chuck E Cheese. While Metal Slug was right there at my fingertips, it was clearly too difficult for me to play, especially at the quarter per life price, and frankly it was never colourful enough to excite me that much, so my game of choice was the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.
To anyone old enough to have never used an arcade machine, I pity you, because this was the quintessential arcade game, and at Chuck E Cheese, much to the chagrin of my parents, I spent as much as I could, on this game. And to me, that's what River City Girls invokes, it's not attempting to reinvent the wheel, but it's pastiche, it has the absurdity that comes with such a lively and vibrant palette, and the gameplay to back it up. Now, me personally, I never had the time, nor the resources to finish the original TMNT arcade game, so I think that's what drew me to River City Girls, surely there would be something for me to find to once again invoke the memories of old.
And it did, though while I do have my complaints about the series, when I played them with my friend Jordan, it all disappeared, because it was just darn fun. In terms of difficulty, I never really felt like it was bad, even on hard difficulty, though, I do have to concede that my friend and I did play with friendly fire off. Frankly, I'm confused at how anyone could even play with it enabled, as originally, when my friend and I first started, we had it enabled and it bogged down the game completely as being in the same space was simply impossible.
Moreover, near the end the enemies just became ridiculous. I'm unsure if it was because we had hard mode enabled, but the bosses began to become easier simply because of the amount of sponges being sent our way. Now, this isn't a problem mutual to Beat 'Em Ups, as I vividly remember one of my favourite games of all time, Payday 2, suffering from a similar issue in higher difficulties, but it was still a nuisance. There was no reason for regular enemies to hit as hard as they did, while also taking ludicrous amounts of damage to defeat, because oftentimes what happened was that it took us multiple tries to beat waves of enemies, but only one or two to defeat bosses.
That is not proper power scaling, and speaking of power scaling, surely they could have done something about the lack of upgradability at later levels? While the game was full of collectibles and moves, what they fail to tell you is that you unlock all of these moves quite early, and once you unlock them, there's really no way to get stronger. Not to mention, most of the other items you get are food, which are mostly unnecessary in two player mode, where reviving a teammate can provide you a decent chunk of health anyways.
Now, for my last complaint, and this was by far the worst, it would have to be the vertical movement. For a 2D game, there is absolutely no depth of perception, in fact you can't even run vertically. Horizontally everything is fine, but vertically you can't even move at a regular speed, and its a pain in the ass to even fight with such piss poor movement. Also, why would you ever create parkour sections of this game if you weren't going to address this issue, it makes those sections painfully slow and the variety goes from novelty to burden very quickly.
Final Score: 75/100
Despite all of this, the game is still damn fun. It's full of character and there's never a dull moment when you're with the river city girls. One of my biggest gripes with the genre is that when I was younger, I never had the money or the time to get good at them, nor to ever even get far at them, but now with the luxury of playing them at home, I've really began to appreciate the genre for what it is. Yes, while I was spammy for a bit, it really did feel like this game was a bundle of love. Other than a bug I encountered in the first level, nothing ever really deterred me, and frankly I only wish it was a bit longer (and for the skip button to allow you to skip right to fights but that's nitpicking).
To anyone old enough to have never used an arcade machine, I pity you, because this was the quintessential arcade game, and at Chuck E Cheese, much to the chagrin of my parents, I spent as much as I could, on this game. And to me, that's what River City Girls invokes, it's not attempting to reinvent the wheel, but it's pastiche, it has the absurdity that comes with such a lively and vibrant palette, and the gameplay to back it up. Now, me personally, I never had the time, nor the resources to finish the original TMNT arcade game, so I think that's what drew me to River City Girls, surely there would be something for me to find to once again invoke the memories of old.
And it did, though while I do have my complaints about the series, when I played them with my friend Jordan, it all disappeared, because it was just darn fun. In terms of difficulty, I never really felt like it was bad, even on hard difficulty, though, I do have to concede that my friend and I did play with friendly fire off. Frankly, I'm confused at how anyone could even play with it enabled, as originally, when my friend and I first started, we had it enabled and it bogged down the game completely as being in the same space was simply impossible.
Moreover, near the end the enemies just became ridiculous. I'm unsure if it was because we had hard mode enabled, but the bosses began to become easier simply because of the amount of sponges being sent our way. Now, this isn't a problem mutual to Beat 'Em Ups, as I vividly remember one of my favourite games of all time, Payday 2, suffering from a similar issue in higher difficulties, but it was still a nuisance. There was no reason for regular enemies to hit as hard as they did, while also taking ludicrous amounts of damage to defeat, because oftentimes what happened was that it took us multiple tries to beat waves of enemies, but only one or two to defeat bosses.
That is not proper power scaling, and speaking of power scaling, surely they could have done something about the lack of upgradability at later levels? While the game was full of collectibles and moves, what they fail to tell you is that you unlock all of these moves quite early, and once you unlock them, there's really no way to get stronger. Not to mention, most of the other items you get are food, which are mostly unnecessary in two player mode, where reviving a teammate can provide you a decent chunk of health anyways.
Now, for my last complaint, and this was by far the worst, it would have to be the vertical movement. For a 2D game, there is absolutely no depth of perception, in fact you can't even run vertically. Horizontally everything is fine, but vertically you can't even move at a regular speed, and its a pain in the ass to even fight with such piss poor movement. Also, why would you ever create parkour sections of this game if you weren't going to address this issue, it makes those sections painfully slow and the variety goes from novelty to burden very quickly.
Final Score: 75/100
Despite all of this, the game is still damn fun. It's full of character and there's never a dull moment when you're with the river city girls. One of my biggest gripes with the genre is that when I was younger, I never had the money or the time to get good at them, nor to ever even get far at them, but now with the luxury of playing them at home, I've really began to appreciate the genre for what it is. Yes, while I was spammy for a bit, it really did feel like this game was a bundle of love. Other than a bug I encountered in the first level, nothing ever really deterred me, and frankly I only wish it was a bit longer (and for the skip button to allow you to skip right to fights but that's nitpicking).
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