	Urban Reign
	Developer: Namco Publisher: Sony Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
It's been a long time since I've played a good roving beat 'em up - the Dynasty Warriors series has been decent, but I can't think of a good urban brawler type game on the PS2. The Bouncer? Death by Degrees? (snigger). Actually, I may chuckle at Death by Degrees, but with both that and Urban Reign having come from Namco, you'd think that they'd have realised the deficiencies of the older game and come up with a decent effort this time. Sadly, while it's an improvement, it's only an improvement in the sense that being kicked in the balls is preferable over being stabbed with a big pointy knife. You play as Brad Hawk, a lone brawler hired by the head of a gang in order to beat up every member of every other gang, until they've all buggered off or joined your side. Seems a logical plan to me. For each of the 100 missions your boss gives you some instructions, and then you go and fight between one and six thugs at a time in a small, enclosed area. Usually the aim is to beat everyone else to a pulp, although occasionally there's a little variation such as having to beat them all in a set time, or just break one of the thug's legs. Brad Hawk is a macho name, and it wouldn't be right if he didn't have the badass moves to match it. The face buttons of the dual shock are assigned to strike, grapple, defend and run, with striking being modified by the direction you press while striking – up produces a kick to the head, down produces a leg sweep, and left or right produce the same as pressing no direction – punches to the torso. So, that's a huge three moves then. The defend button blocks blows, and when combined with the right timing and a direction press will make Brad deflect punches and kick to put an opponent off balance, or escape from enemy grapples. It's simple, which is great at the beginning of the game, and the block/escape functions of the defend button have to be mastered to beat some of the missions from number 20 onwards, but there's only three different combos for striking, and all three start with two punches. Although Brad learns some flash new special moves on the way, the game doesn't significantly alter the way you fight right the way through, save ramping the difficulty increasingly skyward from the 30th level onwards. Quite why you'd want to progress much past the 50th level is beyond me though – by that point you've already seen each fighting area multiple times and every person that you'd previously spent a lot of time beating up - even those that you've broken the legs of 'to teach a lesson' - has joined your side. The graphics are good, but certainly no Tekken 5/Soul Calibur 3, and the characters are all animated nicely. The sound effects are meaty, and the music is medley of passable metal wig-outs. Right; graphics and sound done, time to get back to beasting the rest of the game. Where was I? Ah yes, the game starts off easy-peasy and then ramps up to hard about level 20, insane at level 40, and continues up through the remaining 60 levels. I don't normally mind a high difficulty though, especially when that difficulty is only down to my lack of skill, as skills can be improved in time – Ninja Gaiden proved that - but in Urban Reign, the AI is just a big cheat as seemingly none of the 'game rules' that apply to Brad apply to the bad guys. They recover from being stunned faster; they can attack and then perform a throw immediately; they can perform multiple consecutive floor grapples. That's just the regular problems from the beginning of the game – after the first ten levels or so you'll be facing sudden and rapid air juggles, and huge damage being caused to you by other enemies while you're being thrown. In essence, the later levels don't require much more in the way of skill beyond proper use of the defend button, but they do require an extreme increase in your level of luck to beat each mission. You get the odd health pick up to help you, but as both the actions of picking it up and then drinking it will leave Brad vulnerable to a kicking, it's best off to leave the damn stuff alone. At level 31 you at least get to start picking fighting partners to help you out, and for a short while this refreshes the game as it allows you to let them take a kicking while you work off your built up frustration on only a couple of enemies at a time. But after another 20 levels the enemy AI will start cheating on them too, and you'll regularly find yourself on your own with four men remaining. The worst thing is, it could have been bearable with a co-op mode - fond memories of Final Fight and the like might have persuaded me to give it a higher mark. Sadly there is no co-op, although there is a reasonable multiplayer game where you can have 2, 3 or 4 player battles, and the simple controls are a boon for post-pub antics. In conclusion, Urban Reign has the initial feel of a good fighter – simple controls and a decent blocking/deflection system. But beyond that there's not many ways for a player to vary the attacks that Brad can use, especially against multiple opponents, which will leave just about anyone significantly frustrated as the difficulty goes up.

Best Bits
- Blocking/deflections show signs of a good fighting system
- Nicely animated
- Brad Hawk – very macho

Worst Bits
- No variation in the fighting
- Difficulty hits level impossible pretty quickly
- Where's the co-op mode?


by: Jocky