Beatdown: Welcome to the 'Hood is an ugly little game brimming with cheesy cliches and suburban fantasies of urban violence. Touted as the first in a new genre of urban action/strategy, it's plagued with a crummy interface, frustrating controls, and no real strategic depth. But mostly it's just so darn silly.
This mission-driven action/real-time-strategy crossover places you in control of a band of modern street thugs, varying from mission to mission in size and lineup. These units are cleanly rendered sprites that predictably differ in appearance, offensive and defensive strength, maximum health, and attack style. Among the more conceptually dubious are Illinator, who "uses his empty '40's' to make Molotov cocktails," and Shredda, "a lethal combination of skateboarder, pyromaniac, and graffiti artist." Ouch. Some, Gunman for example, have ranged attacks; others, like Thug, just use their fists.
The missions are pretty straightforward. Though some are more interesting - for example, "Deliver package to the Chemist" - mostly you're out to kill the boss and/or everyone else. Along the way you can mug wandering pedestrians and hookers, buy ammo, and buy drugs (power-ups) from the Chemist, like health bonuses, Crazz, which boosts offensive power, and Nopain, for higher defenses. If you are spotted by the cops while purchasing drugs or mugging someone, a siren sounds, and the guilty party member is penalized with 30 seconds of paralysis and a cute little handcuffs icon. I suppose it's the game's sardonic sense of street smarts that leaves the authorities looking the other way during the real crimes: the intergang gun battles that make up most of the game. Actually, I'm sure no one even thought of it, or anything else. This game is a dog. An amusing footnote: If the Don - a powerful leader type and a "man of style" - is positioned outside of "the hotel," he receives a cut from the hookers. Welcome to the 'hood indeed. Yikes!
There is a cloud of ineptitude hanging over Beatdown. From a general play-mechanics standpoint, there is plenty of reason to believe that its characters were actually modeled after Chase, Belushi, and Aykroyd rather than Cube, T, and Moore. Highlight some units, click a location on the map, and off they go. Often as not, they go the wrong way or not at all. The pathing is atrocious. You're in a building and want to take everyone outside and to the left, but the only door is on the right? Plan on clicking the door, then a spot next to the door, then another and another, as confused thugs run in strange hieroglyphic patterns inside the place. Similar accidental slapstick always seems to leave your gunmen on the wrong side of fences or just plain abandoned after some skirmish. Just for fun, try saving the game right before getting attacked by a whole bunch of dudes (though this does require second sight). All characters are deselected whenever you save, leaving them completely vulnerable upon reentering the game proper. Poor interface precludes any sort of tactical invention. You control a maximum of eight characters at a time. You cannot create multiple, switchable groups, which might not seem that important, since most of Beatdown's missions involve fewer than ten units. However, two of the more interesting units have explosive attacks that affect larger areas but can be dangerous to the units themselves and their allies. Units in the game are immune to the bullets of their own side but not the fire-based attacks - thus making these explosive attackers essentially unusable when traveling with a group. This is exacerbated by the combat controls, which require that you hold the control key and repeatedly push the left mouse button throughout the duration of a fight. If only you could just give an attack command so your units would keep fighting until one side was eliminated, then you could separate the more hazardous units from the rest, and let them enact their violence with your other units fighting safely outside of their range. That way, even if you couldn't create groups to send multiple sorties to perform separate, simultaneous tasks, you could at least use the more dangerous units.
The bottom line is that switchable groups, or a greater number of simultaneously selectable characters, would have made the game more tactically viable. Later levels offer increasing numbers of hoodlums at your command, but any number greater than your allotted eight are more of a liability than an asset, since you really have no way to control them. As a cold-hearted kingpin out there on the tough streets of gangland, your best bet is to stash the extra guys in a building until somebody dies.
Even if the grouping, pathing, and essential play mechanics were better, there would still be little room for strategy. The world of Beatdown has essentially three variables: money, health, and ammo. And you can purchase the latter two with the first. Thus, nearly every mission can be accomplished with the following formula: wait around, mug pedestrian, buy ammo/health/drugs; repeat until all characters are at full health, with full ammo and both drug enhancements; go kill boss/have showdown/invade enemy turf. That's it.
Yet for all its foolishness, Beatdown is not totally unenjoyable. Somehow, some invisible silent element inside the game provides some sort of stimulation. Maybe it's the spooky hip-hop soundtrack. Maybe it's just a matter of seeing to what strange lengths the game will go - like the mission where the enemy gang is just hanging out, completely unmoving, on a playground clear on the other side of town, waiting for you to pick its members off one at a time. Don't get me wrong. This is not a good game. It requires little thought and little in the way of reflexes. Most of its challenge comes from grappling with an interface that feels broken. And the language and trappings of the game are foolish to the point of embarrassing the player. I'm just saying that if you were forced to play it, it wouldn't make you cry.
