With its surprise showing on XBOX Live Arcade, Streets of Rage 2 is the best beat-em-up on any downloadable service now.
Streets of Rage 2 starts when Mr. X is up to no good again taking over the city again. The major twist in this sequel is he kidnaps Adam, one of the three characters in the first one, and it is up to the cops to save him and the city from Mr. X's clutches. Axel and Blaze return from the original Streets of Rage better than ever with new sprites. Two new characters join the fight as Max, a wrestler, and Skate, Adam's younger brother and on roller blades, join Axel and Blaze on their quest of beating up many dudes again. This is basically the story of the whole game, as with most beat-em-ups, story is not really a strong element of the game, but it at least gives you a reason to beat up lots of dudes.
The gameplay in Streets of Rage 2 is a full improvement of everything the first game had. All of the moves from the first game return, but the new additions to each character's movelist made the game completely better. Another thing is that each of the four characters play diversely from one another with different special moves and dash attacks along with their simple combo, jump kick, and throws. The dash attack is the one new move you will use a lot in Streets of Rage 2 as it unleashes enough damage to low-level enemies and crucial against bosses. The special attack movelist for each character is more of a risk and reward type of deal as each time they get used, the character loses a bit of health. These special attacks are more beneficial when you are surrounded by enemies or against bosses. All the enemies from the first Streets of Rage return ranging from your generic thug, the mohawk guys that like to throw and slide kick, the fat guys that spit flames, and so on. The new enemies are a mix of obvious and random from your flying guy that is annoying to jumping robots. Most of the bosses appear at least twice throughout the eight diverse stages and some can be annoying providing a challenge. There are also weapons to use in this game as in the original, but they almost feel useless because of the new moves.
As with most beat-em-ups, Streets of Rage 2 is not that long of a game. Veterans will breeze through this in less than 2 or 3 hours while new players may have a hard time using continues. Since it is part of the Sega Vintage Collection on Xbox Live Arcade, everything from the bland menu screen as you boot it up and then zips you to the character select screen right away, to the save anywhere feature that is present in Sonic, Golden Axe, and Ecco the Dolphin is here. Especially going for achievements, which range from beating the game without special attacks or continues to scoring 800,000 on Hardcore settings, expect to use save states if you are desperate for achievement points. At least, you can stretch the screen to full from its boxed default if that is your preference. There is also multiplayer in this game which is both local and online for co-op and versus. Versus mode feels tacked on as an one-on-one duel in various parts of the game with weapons. The definitive multiplayer experience in this game is the online co-op, which many considered a dream, and it delivers well depending on connection settings. Playing the game on co-op is awesome and plays like a risk and reward deal too with friendly fire on and more enemies on screen.
The graphics in Streets of Rage 2 is a huge improvement over the original with new sprites for the returning characters, enemies, and bosses. The stage backgrounds feel more colorful and diverse being not as generic as most beat-em ups. The diversity of the stages is what makes the graphics, but some of them may be familiar to those who played the first game. The emulation seems perfect on this Xbox Live Arcade version and there are no inaccuracies in both graphics and sound.
Speaking of the sound, Streets of Rage 2's music is simply amazing and considered one of the greatest soundtracks done by Yuzo Koshiro. The music is that good that you want to hear it on a iPod or even hear it at a club. Every stage had its own theme music wise and it fits perfectly to the backgrounds. The best bits of music have to be in stages three and five of this game. With the amazing music, the sound effects are also great as every hit sounds like a hit and weapon sounds seem accurate according to the weapon.
Streets of Rage 2 is simply the best beat-em-up to buy on XBOX Live Arcade. It is not a straight port of the game as seen on the Wii's Virtual Console as online features and achievements make the game more fun to play. It is definitely one of the greatest Genesis games during its era and Microsoft is at least smart for making this game official on Live Arcade. Even though this game is the best game of the series on a console, there is a fan-made game that is free for PC called Streets of Rage Remake I would highly recommend playing it if you are tired of this game or got all 200 achievement points. Other than that, Streets of Rage 2 is a must buy on XBOX Live Arcade if you are looking for another five dollar game.