If you're a hardcore fan of beat-em-up games, you might get some enjoyment out of Beat Down.
5 tough members of a mob called the Zanetti Mafia are assigned to meet at a warehouse to confirm a drug deal. However, everyone inside the warehouse was killed. Soon after, the Zenetti Mafia thugs arrived and are assigned to kill the 5 characters. Choosing one of these characters, you will go through a bit of their back-story as you play throughout the entire game.
History:
Beat-em-ups were once thought to be a dead genere. They were massively popular and superb back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. During those times, we saw excellent games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and so on. We saw many ports onto the 2D consoles and were surely enjoyable rides. However, when 3D consoles came in, the beat-em-up genere seemed to die. Recently, companies have been trying to resurrect the old repetitive, yet fun, formula into 3D. Unfortunately, with the exception of a couple games such as Die Hard Arcade and more recently, The Warriors, most of these attempts weren't successful. Some of the 3D Beat-em-ups today are influenced by urban games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and many of them turn out to be ether mediocre or one of the worst games ever made.
Capcom's Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance, while makes a nice attempt, is just another beat-em-up that doesn't succeed as well as the old school brawlers.
Gameplay:
Beat Down tries to give out not only brawling gameplay, but free-roaming elements too. You are free to explore the city of Las Sombras, and it's a fairly decent sized city too. There are locations you can visit, such as shops to buy clothes or materials. Buying these are mostly for the purpose of disguising yourself from getting caught by the police or found easily by gang punks. You'll get 2 meters that are measured by percentage. One is for police suspicion and the other is for mafia suspicion. If the gauges fill up to 100%, expect to be encountered frequently. When mafia gang members or the police encounter you, you're forced to fight them down.
The combos, depending on the character you choose, are varied, but also can be the same. The fighting system has a decent amount of depth to it and you can learn some new moves over time. You can punch, kick, block, and grab the NPC in ways of defeating them. You'll have to get used to how auto sight works in the game. When your character is close to an opponent, they will force their sights on them and punch or kick towards them. It's very hard to escape this, and can be a bit frustrating in situations when everyone surrounds you. You can also use weapons that the NPC's will use by ether hurting them until they drop it or steal it from them while grabbing them. Weapons range from knives, pipes, bats, and even fatal objects such as barrels and firearms (they don't come around often though). Some of these weapons may take time getting used to, but they can help out in some situations. When you defeat all the NPC's in your area, you gain a bit of experience points which level up your characters. Afterwards, you can walk to their dead bodies and steal money or various items.
There's also one on one battles, which are mostly for story purposes. These set the camera at the side to make it feel like a 2D fighter that Capcom is famous for making. The combos and weapons use is the same as before, only you'll need to learn how to fight in certain directions. It may be best to use the D-pad for this. One on One battles can also be used to force your enemy to do something. Your character and the enemy have different gauges. If the gauge for your enemy is at 0, you can negotiate with them by pressing the B button near them. If you succeed, you have the option to ether recruit them to fight by your side, rob their money, get some useful information out of them, or just kill them with beat down. These options are very interesting and can make an impact on how you progress. Recruiting members is one of the most vital features of game, since they help out in your fights, especially the ones that are important to the story. You'll have to make sure your members don't die though, since you can't reach them afterwards. You may recruit as many punks as you want, but you can only take 2 of them with you. You can summon your members by calling them and meet them at a certain location in the city. It's useful to do this especially before important battles.
When you're not fighting your way through the streets, you can roam around the city, buy clothes, talk to random people, get some food for healing purposes, or even get plastic surgery. You can even do some missions to earn money, which will be important when exchanging clothes or getting healing materials. It's nice that Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance offers some interesting ideas that seem innovative. However, there are notable flaws to point out. The sections you visit in the city are rather small and limited, and when going to a different section, there are always load times in between. Not that the load times are long, but they are very frequent and get annoying after away. This damages the pacing of the game. The camera can also get out of place when brawling out opponents in weird areas. The controls also feel like they could've been worked up better. However, once you get past some of these issues, there's a mildly appealing gameplay buried in this title.
Graphics:
The visuals aren't exactly going to beat you down, not in a good or bad way. The character models look decent and have variable effects on their condition, such as blood spots when they take serious damage. However, aside from these character models, Beat Down looks like a Dreamcast game. The environments and textures on various buildings and objects are no way near what the Xbox or PS2 is truly capable of. The frame rate is okay, while the camera can have some occasional issues.
Sound:
The music theme is a combination of hip-hop, metal, and techno. The selection of songs is limited, and some of the tunes are pretty generic. There's nothing good or bad about the music, it's just there to fit into the urban atmosphere. In fact, the main issue with the audio is the voice acting. While a good majority of the game's dialogue is in text only, there are a couple cutscenes with voices. You're guaranteed to hear some awful voice acting that don't fit in some characters. Sure there are a couple voices that get the job done, but you'll be laughing at how pathetic some of the performances are. Another humor factor is how the game tries to be as gritty as possible. When voice acting is heard, you'll hear a hell of a lot of cussing that in some cases, it feels pointless. The sound effects are alright and deliver the standards. So aside from the voice acting, the audio gets the urban feel down in average conditions.
Conclusion:
Cavia tried to deliver the reinvention of the beat-em-up genre with this game presenting it with some unique ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas weren't presented as well as we hoped. This game had potential to be great, but it falls under the Fair category for me. Fortunately, if this game does interest you while playing, there’s some replay value involved, such as playing different characters in the storyline or completing all the missions. However, this game is only to be approached by hardcore fans of beat-em-ups if they are interested in this game. Otherwise, we can only wait for some day in the future, when we will finally get a beat-em-up title that lives up to the old-school classics.
Pros:
-Decent urban atmosphere
-Nice ideas
-Gameplay can get somewhat fun if you dig into it.
Cons:
-Annoying load times between sections of the city
-Controls could've been worked a bit better
-Graphics are sub-standard.
-Some poor voice acting