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The beat-'em-up is dead. Really, it's been dead ever since gaming went polygonal. Early 3D attempts like Fighting Force set the tone for games like Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance and Spikeout: Battle Street, making bad cameras and generic, boring action the new hallmarks of a genre that used to have no fewer than three stand-out games in it: Taito's Double Dragon, Sega's Streets of Rage, and Capcom's Final Fight. Fresh for 2006, Capcom has a new take on its series, the curse-filled fist-fest Final Fight: Streetwise. But all this game manages to do is further nail the genre's coffin closed, while sullying the good name of an arcade classic along the way.
Any game featuring Mike Haggar can't be all bad, can it?
Streetwise puts you in the role of Kyle Travers, younger brother of Final Fight's Cody. If you've been following Cody's story over the years, you remember that he appeared in Street Fighter Alpha 3 as a convict. Streetwise picks up on this and paints him as a released convict, which you'll notice only because he still wears his orange jail shirt. Anyway, Cody's old now, apparently, because he can't fight anymore. But Kyle can, and the game opens with you in the imaginatively named Fight Club, where you're beating the crap out of a guy in a makeshift ring. From there, the story sets off. Cody has gotten into something bad, and he's in way over his head. That "something" is the exciting new street drug, glow, which, just like liquid soul in Midway's NARC, is a horribly addictive substance that also happens to give users superhuman strength. Unlike liquid soul, though, it also makes glowing light shoot out of their eyes. As Kyle, you'll punch a lot of dudes in the face as you try to find Cody to get him out of this mess.
Final Fight: Streetwise attempts to deliver nonlinear action in a free-roaming environment. You'll always have a primary destination that will move the story along, but you'll also run into citizens in need of help who'll give you the occasional side mission. The side missions all seem to be fairly dumb, especially the ones that don't involve fighting. One is a slide puzzle. And in a couple of spots, you'll encounter people who won't help you out until you help exterminate the vermin in their shop. That means you'll get to run around and stomp on rats and cockroaches to an up-tempo ska beat. It's just stupid. Of course, the main objectives aren't much better. You go from one spot to the next, beating people up and triggering cutscenes. The dialogue and speech are almost universally awful and don't even work on an ironic level. They're just packed full of lame, gratuitous cursing. Not even the presence of the greatest video game mayor of all time can help save the pathetic story and objectives.
