Final Fight Streetwise isn't a bad game as people make it out to be. But it isn't great, either.
It quickly received two sequels, which brought characters to the table that still stick by the games to this day, like Maki who is in Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX on the PSP. But with the third game, the series went down the hill as quickly as it climbed. The whole genre just got forgotten for over ten years. It received a crappy 3-D fighting game but that's it. Now, almost fifteen years after the classic, Capcom decides to revive the Final Fight name, with Streetwise. Maybe they should have kept it under wraps. Or not.
The game follows the story of Kyle, Cody's brother, who is trying to find out the whereabouts of his sibling that went missing after a brawl. As he looks and fights everywhere, he runs across old faces like Mike Haggar, Metro City's former wrestler-turned-mayor and Guy, a ninja man who's a friend of Cody's.
So, you ask, is the game any good? I can say that it's a mixed bag: the fighting is kind of nice, a little repetitive and it is a piece of cake, since most moves tend to knock a whole bunch of enemies down. What really get's in the way are the side missions and minigames. These range from memory games and cockroach smashing to trying to find a hooker's brother... it really gets annoying, but luckily you can just skip most of these and get on with the Hollywood B-movie story.
It's hard to really recommend this game to everyone. Old school guys like myself who played a whole lot of the old games will get a little kick out of it. But people new to the story will probably get a better experience with The Warriors.
Thanks for reading!