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Urban Reign Retro Review: Frustratingly Fun

MrCheater
Urban-Reign-Review

Urban Reign is a little known beat-em-up that Namco rolled out in between Tekken 5 and Tekken 6 back in 2005. It’s essentially an arena-battle mode that mimics the beat-em-up qualities that Namco was experimenting with via the Force Mode from Tekken 3 (which was further evolved in the subsequent sequels). However, unlike the Force Mode from Tekken, Urban Reign’s battles are sadly limited to arena levels instead of progressing stages like in the Tekken games.

The main meat of the game is the Mission Mode, where you attempt to uncover the plot behind the kidnapping of a gang member named KG. This unravels over the course of 100 missions, which takes all manner of twists and turns until a giant conspiracy is uncovered. You can also unlock a Free Mode and a survival mode called Challenge Mode, the latter of which can be played in single-player or cooperatively with two people. A Multiplayer Mode is also present, allowing you to do versus battles with up to four players, using all of the available characters you’ve unlocked throughout the game.

Urban Reign is both fun and frustrating, though. It carries a lot of the cool features from Tekken and SoulCalibur but in an open-space, sandbox style arena fighting setup. While that sounds cool on paper, the problem is in the game’s execution, which can render the entire experience more frustrating than satisfying at times.

Controls: Borderline Atrocious

The controls are simple enough: you have an attack button, a grapple, a dash, and a dodge (sadly, no block button here and no jump either). You can focus on enemies using the R1 bumper, pickup items with L1, and give teammate commands with the R2 trigger. Simple right?

Well, the simplicity is always the one thing that works against Urban Reign when it comes to intuitive gameplay.

Not having a dedicated jump button means you can only perform jump attacks when dashing, and you can only effectively do jump attacks when targeting an enemy. You can also use the exact same button combination and pressing down on the analog/digital pad to perform a running dash-slide. If this sounds like a cumbersome way to dash-slide or jump kick, it is!

You can also only perform a roll when you dash. This means trying to get out of the way enemy attacks when performing a special is not only cumbersome but completely inconvenient. It’s usually easier to just eat the attack or perform your own special, which can be done by pressing Triangle and Circle together when your special meter is high enough.

As you progress through the game you unlock new moves, such as air-grapples, wall-hop attacks, double-team moves, and additional special attacks.

The move variety is not nice but the controls aren’t.

A lot of times you have to press Up, Down, Left or Right with the attack or grapple button, or when doing your special, to perform different attacks. Given that the game is in 3D and not 2D, it makes for an extremely inconvenient time as you’re trying to attack someone in front of you but you’re pressing Up + Triangle + Circle, which can sometimes make the character face the opposite direction if you’re facing down towards the camera where the enemy might be.

This is another issue: the camera.

The camera is focused solely on the main character during the missions. While your character is in the center screen, it can completely obstruct everything that isn’t within the center purview. What ends up happening is that enemies can move in and out of the screen away from where the camera is looking to launch attacks against you.

You basically have to stop and rotate the very finicky camera in order to get the enemies back into view, or hold down the enemy lock-on button. Now the enemy lock-on button would solve this problem fine but when you’re fighting multiple opponents, sometimes it will lock onto someone NOT within your view, or the person that you aren’t facing, and in turn it can cause more problems than solve them.

This issue could have easily been fixed with the camera having a soft-focus on the enemies nearest to you. This way they’re always within view, and you don’t have to worry about the enemies being just outside of your view. This is literally how the camera works in the Tekken Force Modes in Tekken.

Also, the lack of a dedicated block button is simply atrocious. The game suffers from an input delay of sorts, which has always been a common problem in Tekken games. So you’re trying to perform certain moves but there’s a delay if an animation is current playing, the current is in a certain position, or the enemy is performing a specific move.

Blocking/dodging/countering is all done with one button, and it’s not always consistent. Spamming the button sometimes works, but oftentimes doesn’t. Pressing it at the “right” moment can usually get the desired results when facing off against certain enemies, but a lot of times it’s a shot in the dark. It’s especially frustrating when getting air juggled or grappled, because the counter for the grapple moves all have to be done at different times. It’s not like Tekken where you just press the counter-grab buttons and instantly prevent the grab from taking place. Here, you have to perform the reversal similar to a wrestling game at the exact moment where the reversal opportunity is present, but you may not always know when or where that is.

And given that in this game you’re fighting multiple opponents, sometimes you find yourself getting double-teamed or punk-fu’d in the air or on the ground and have no way to get out of it. You just have to soak up and eat all the damage, which usually results in losing the mission. It’s incredibly frustrating and there’s really no way to avoid it. Basically it’s all of the bad habits from Tekken’s air-juggling but in the form of an arena beat-em-up.

And given that this game is in a 3D space instead of a 2D space (the latter of which limits enemies to attacking you only from the left or the right), in Urban Reign you can be attacked from top bottom, left right, front or back. Yet there just isn’t any convenient ways to guard/block or safeguard yourself. You basically have to do a lot of running, kiting, and crowd control to try to get away. And since rolling isn’t very convenient, you’ll find yourself running around for a bit until you can create separation and then try to attack the enemies one at a time.


(gameplay video courtesy of Lacry)

Gameplay: Fun Yet Completely Annoying

The gameplay of Urban Reign is very similar to Wu Tang: Shaolin Style for the PSX. While it may be classified as a beat-’em-up, it’s not like Fighting Force or Gekido at all, both of which are the equivalent of 3D versions of Streets of Rage or Final Fight. Urban Reign, instead, relishes in modern day, urban-centric battle environments not unlike Def Jam: Fight For New York or Def Jam: Vendetta.

I think this style of game works well enough if the controls and gameplay loops are solid. And in some cases, there’s a seed of something great within Urban Reign, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and many of the gameplay factors are rendered more frustrating and annoying than fun.

For instance, the early missions are easy enough, and the gameplay focuses around basic combos, crowd control, grappling, and utilizing the environment to pummeling and bash the heads of enemies in. It’s a satisfying romp… just until it isn’t.

Later into the game you begin to face off against more difficult foes who have more complex combos, specials, and counters. This is all well fine on paper, but in execution you’ll find yourself nearly ripping your hair out of your head and throwing the controller at the wall. Why? Well, the short of it is:


So to go a little more in-depth, some of the characters have moves (some special, and some normal) that have invincible frames, meaning you can’t hurt them while they’re performing the move. Basically it leaves you open if you attack and they don’t get attacked, because while you’re still finishing your move, once they’re done doing their move, they can attack you.

That leads into another big problem: inconsistent hit boxes. Sometimes you can attack enemies during/after certain moves and other times you can’t. Sometimes you can juggle an enemy, and sometimes you can’t. Depending on where you’re facing, what angle they were popped up into the air or how you started your combo determines whether the moves connect, which can become incredibly frustrating when you’re in a battle where every single hit counts.

Another issue is that depth perception can cause you to shortchange the distance on some moves, and given that holding the direction toward an enemy and pressing your attack button doesn’t actually move you forward means that you’re once again leaving yourself open for serious punishment if you shortchange the distance on an attack.

The shortchanging issue wouldn’t be such a big deal if there were ways to properly block attacks, because you can’t dodge/parry/counter during the middle of an attack, and you can’t perform attack-cancels. So basically every single mistake you make CAN be punished and there is no recourse for that.

During the second-to-last boss battle, it took me over an hour to defeat him because he could just spam attacks that you just can’t get away from properly enough, and if you tried doing combos on him, he could parry and drain all your special meter. And yes, every time you use the dodge button successfully, it drains the enemy’s special meter. I’m not sure who thought that was a good idea, but it essentially makes the game ridiculously hard.

For instance, if you get an enemy cornered and you try to do a combo to build up the meter to perform a special, they can just parry a couple of your attacks (which the CPU will do effortlessly and frequently). This will drain your meter and then render you completely defenseless, since you gain meter by successfully dodging. So the CPU can easily refill its meter, drain your meter, and once they start doing their special there’s nothing you can do… literally. Nothing.

Now you can stop special attacks with other special attacks, and for that you need meter. A proper balance would have been to add meter for successfully dodging attacks, but without taking away the enemy’s meter. Because when you’re fighting four or more opponents, all of whom begin to dodge or parry your attacks, you’ll literally have all your special meter drained and then four or more opponents who can then instantly do their special attacks on you simultaneously while you’re practically defenseless (unless you run away).

One saving grace for players is being able to cheap-attack your way through enemies by spamming the dash-slide and air-juggles, or heavy wall strikes. If you use a heavy kick against an opponent who smacks into the wall, they get stunned; you can keep repeating the kick into an opponent against the wall and they can stay stun-locked there indefinitely. It also works well against some bosses, too, just until they parry and then punish you for it.

Despite all of these nagging setbacks and issues, the core gameplay can be very fun, especially in multiplayer. The mission mode is very balanced, and the AI employs a lot of cheap, annoying tactics against you, which can absolutely ruin the flavor of the mood. But if you can trudge through the cheapness, there’s a hidden gem tucked away beneath the refuse of unfair AI tactics and some broken hitbox mechanics.

Graphics: Surprisingly Good

The visuals in Urban Reign aren’t standout or timeless like, say Wind Waker, but the characters have unique designs and actually look kind of cool. Some of the more standout characters who aren’t just thug-fodder actually have some really neat designs, like Park and Glen, as well as the Capoeria and Muay Thai guys.

The texture work isn’t groundbreaking, but the character models have enough polygons and artistic ingenuity to standout and come across as unique. Funnily enough, the main character, Brad Hawk, looks terribly generic compared to a lot of the other characters you eventually unlock.

And as usual, since this game was released back in 2005, the lone playable female character, Shun Ying Lee, is actually highly attractive, but without being overdone.

Since the animations are mostly copied from Tekken and a little bit of SoulCalibur, you expect the character movements and fighting styles to be reflective of Namco’s top-selling fighting franchises, and they are. Many of the characters on the roster are expies from Tekken. For instance, Park is a Tae Kwon Do practitioner who mimics the fighting moves of Hwoarang from Tekken, while there are various wrestlers in the game basically have a lot of King and Armor King’s arsenal, consisting of various popular slams and throws. There are a few new moves added to Urban Reign, such as The Rock’s Rock Bottom, complete with the character doing the little fist throw jiggle that The Rock used to do when performing the move. Although, I will admit it looked kind of weird seeing a well-dressed swordsman in a two-piece, pin-stripped suit performing the move.

All of the characters have fully modeled facial animations as well. Essentially if the game had better lighting, you could still convincingly utilize the models for a low-budget game made in today’s era without it seeming too jarring. It’s not like the characters are so low poly that they’re ultimately distracting. Though, it should be noted that some character models have more details than others. Characters like Lin Fong and his henchmen, such as Golem.

The environments are nothing to write home about. They’re a collection of urban areas and locations that vary in size from small to medium, to slightly large. However, as mentioned, this is not a scrolling or progressive beat-’em-up game, so all of the environments are designed around keeping the action in the arena.

There are breakable elements within the environments, which can actually cause additional damage. For instance, powerbombing someone through a table or against an arcade machine, a car, or a wall will do additional damage. You can utilize the environment to your advantage, which can make or break some fights.

It’s still a shame that the game didn’t have progressively linear environments, though, as that would have really added to the appeal. The best stages in the game, though, are the ones that give you room in which to fight, but also have plenty of breakable elements. That being said, the Chinese restaurant is probably the best stage in the game, because it’s a medium sized stage and has tons of breakable elements. It feels like a stage that comes out of a Hong Kong martial arts action film.

The rooftop is also a nicely designed stage that feels rather filmic in its construction. Unfortunately, the rest of the stages are just kind of generic open spaces or small areas set within confined locations, such as a storehouse, a sewer, a subway platform, and various outdoor streets or parking lots. It’s a shame they didn’t have more inspired levels like the restaurant level. A mall, or office building, or a bridge with cars driving by, or a few more locations based on popular movie environments would have helped broaden the appeal of the levels.

Audio: Passably Forgettable

If you’re expecting a rocking soundtrack like Tekken, or the symphonic techno/rock from SoulCalibur, you’ll be sorely disappointed with Urban Reign. It’s a real shame because Namco has a lot of licenses where music plays a big part in bringing the action to life, such as in Dragon Ball, Naruto, My Hero Academia and One Piece, but here, the music is practically a throwaway element.

You have the basic hit cues and punching noises; some good whacks and thumps for all the kicks and slams you can perform (or have performed on you). However, there’s nothing in the audio that really stands out. The only song that is almost memorable is the final boss theme, which seems to be mirrored after the battle with Geese in his high-rise, only the main boss here is no martial arts expert. But the song is quite fitting, even though you don’t get to hear much of it due to how short the final battle is.

The voiceover work is passable enough. Most of it is performed by Shun Ying Lee’s voice actress, who narrates majority of the 100 missions in the story mode. She has an attractive voice and gives enough of herself to bring the character’s sultry but fiery personality to life. The rest of the voice cast only offer the briefest of lines throughout the rest of the game, just enough to pad out their mostly visual-based personalities.

Replay Value: Very High

Most beat-’em-up games pride themselves on having very solid gameplay loops. The loops and the stages are what makes them worth replaying, it’s why games like Super Double Dragon, Vendetta and Streets of Rage 2 are so infinitely replayable. Urban Reign isn’t quite on that level, but it is somewhat comparable to the old Def Jam games, insofar that you can just pick any of the fighters you’ve unlocked and play around in the game modes you’ve unlocked.

The core mission mode will take anywhere between several hours for the utmost Chad players, up to 10 or more hours for those just playing the game for the first time. And that’s no exaggeration about it taking up to 10 or more hours. Some of the stages will have you stuck replaying and restarting them for hours due to their difficulty (or cheapness, depending on how you view it).

The game’s campaign sports 100 different missions, and a sizable portion of them allow you to bring a partner into battle with you. You have to unlock each of your teammates throughout the campaign, and then once the campaign is complete, you can replay all of the main missions in the Freeplay Mode, where you can pick any of the characters you’ve unlocked. You can also alter the difficulty and activate modes like the max stats so no matter who you pick they’re at their strongest.

You can also unlock some specially hidden Tekken characters by playing through the Freeplay and Challenge Mode, which further adds to the game’s replayability.

The Challenge Mode also further extended with the ability to do solo or teamplay with up to two players. And since not every character is unlocked after initially completing the campaign mode, it gives you ample reason to keep replaying the game until you unlock all of the characters, including the special ones.

I suppose, if you really liked the fighting systems from Tekken 3 – 5 and wanted a quasi-beat-’em-up game set within semi-destructible arenas, you might enjoy Urban Reign. Just keep in mind, though, that the single-player campaign mode is rife with frustrating moments, but the multiplayer, Challenge Mode, and Freeplay Modes will likely keep you coming back for more and enjoying yourself more than you thought you would.

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