Breakneck City is a throwback retro styled side scrolling beat ‘em up with low poly graphics.  Play as a guy or a girl in single or two player co-op as you beat down thugs who are trying to shut down your favorite video rental place.  Punch and kick your way through city streets, night clubs, factories, and more.  It’s available on nearly all current game consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

There are six stages in all, each with a boss.  You can punch, kick, and jump.  Punching is good for close, quick attacks, but kicking someone will knock them back, handy if you get crowded.  You and enemies can also take damage from hitting a wall or falling down an incline, so there is a slight bit of strategy in how you attack.  You can pick up weapons like baseball bats, but I found them not as useful since wielding them makes your attacks slower.  The game is challenging but at least you get unlimited continues and only get set back a little bit when you lose all your energy.

But boy this game sure does have some problems!  I don’t know what kind of nostalgia they were going with the graphics, but the low poly visuals look WORSE than the PSOne or N64.  And the garish colors remind me of those old computer monitors that could only display pink, blue, gray, and white.  Music is awful, too, unless you like generic dubstep.  Controls are slow and they don’t do a good job telling you how to play.  For instance, I kept wishing for a way to dodge, but it turns out you can use the R stick to zip around the screen quickly, which looks ridiculous.  I guess if you want to play one of those ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of games, this would fit the bill. And you only have to play about halfway through the game to get all the trophies!   But if you want to play a GOOD beat ‘em up, I’d go with something like Streets of Rage 4 instead.

Kid Factor:

Breakneck City is rated M for Mature with an ESRB descriptor of Strong Language.  I’m surprised it didn’t get a descriptor for violence, because you do punch and kick bad guys.  But defeated characters just get knocked back and flash and disappear.  But the strong language is in the story text only, where they do drop quite a few unnecessary f-bombs.  Honestly if they cleaned that up, this would’ve gotten a T for Teen or lower rating.

Tags: Game Reviews