Game:

Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance (2005)

Duration: 10:57

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So while I was going over some really old emails I received asking about certain games, I came across some pleas to play a few Xbox and Sega Saturn titles and figured I needed to dust the Xbox off at least since I haven't done it in a while (barring Blinx, which was to test a new Xbox I bought). I was asked to play such titles as Dead or Alive Ultimate, SVC Chaos and Kakuto Chojin (showing specific things in the game), but then I saw this game I bought recently for Xbox sitting around: Beat Down. I started working on playing Kakuto Chojin but soon got bored as hell and decided to take a break from it, so I popped this in.

I should probably start by saying the game has a lot of foul language and blood, so if you're not into that, you shouldn't be watching these videos (the game is rated "M" for mature). Now that this is out of the way, I'd have to say that this game LOOKS pretty neat... but don't be fooled; it's rather terrible. In a way, you can look at it as re-inventing the old-school 2D beat-em-up genre in 3D, but that would be sorta disrespectful to the many successful brawlers of yore. It's hard to play this without throwing around a generous helping of expletives.

This game has so many good ideas but it's just plagued by simply awful design, play controls and mechanics, has loading for almost everything, and is quite a chore to play. It might not be "as bad" as it's made out to be, but I think it's pretty bad and "pretty bad" is enough for me.

In the game, you control one of five mafia members to view a story of power and betrayal from their point of view. As a member of the Zanetti Mafia family, you begin the game being attacked by your own mobster family and get seperated, where you soon discover that you are being framed for killings you didn't commit against a pack of drug dealers. Now everyone wants the five of them dead, ranging from your family and rival gangs to even petty civilians and the crooked Las Sombras police department. Cool.

The problem is that the game has touchy / glitchy / awful controls and camera, the CPU has the potential to be totally lame or a cheap SOB, all the game's characters have a relatively crappy, limited, ineffective repetoire of moves (ESPECIALLY the people you can have assist you), and your partners don't do jack because they have the dumbest A.I. and don't really fight anyone unless you're actually watching them (meaning they aren't doing much if the camera isn't on them). Most moves are overshadowed by the strength of throws or weapons too. You do a bunch of crappy missions and a lot of annoying tasks to recruit a bunch of no-name losers (well, they have names, but about as much personality or depth as most of the 108 stars of Suikoden fame) for what basically feels like nothing.

The good points? Some would say there aren't any, but there are, but it's not the bland visuals (characters look good though) or largely terrible soundtrack. One of the things that fascinates me about this game is the character customization. You can control so many aspects of both male and female characters that it puts many other games with such features to shame. From piercings to hairstyles to getting a tattoo, you have an amazing amount of customization. What's more impressive is that men and women can wear ANYTHING and it usually looks appropriate in the sense that they designed it with the character in mind. If a man wears a bra or skirt, it's going to be contoured differently than on a woman, and I give Cavia a lot of credit for that.

Another, smaller highlight is throwing off the cops and gangsters by changing your appearance. It sort of gets annoying pretty quickly, but it does grant you some relief and leeway. You can also get different allies with certain special skills such as allowing you to pickpocket (which is executed poorly btw) or jack cars. I also like how you can interrogate some people and kill others forever (though it rarely serves any good to kill people in this game ironically ). The dialogue is also pretty funny in a cheesy sort of way, but that's a good thing.

The game had some good ideas, they were just executed poorly outside of character customization, which more games should have in such detail. If you want a brawler, get titles like Urban Reign or God Hand instead. If they remade this game and fixed the problems and expanded its features, it would be off the chain. Aaaanyway, we uploaded two introduction vids and a game sample. The game sample shows certain aspects of the game from dressing up to killing random people for chicken to fighting a whore only to get the upper-hand by getting wasted and slowing down time-- nothing too fancy. Enjoy.

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