The Warriors: Street Brawl – Review

In celebration of the 30^th anniversary of the cult-classic movie, The Warriors: Street Brawl was released exclusively on the Xbox LIVE arcade.

True to the film, you step into the role of Warchief and must fight your way through gang-infested Manhattan to make it back to your home town, Coney Island, alive. If you’re expecting to relive the whole film, it must be made clear that some scenes have been skipped due to the game’s brawler format.

So, does Street Brawl want to make you come out and play-ay?

The game has your standard side-scrolling brawler format, consisting of six missions split into three different acts, providing eighteen arcade style battles to bop your way through. Initially you can select from four playable characters (Swan, Cochise, Vermin and Rembrandt), and unlock two more as you progress through the game (Mercy and Ajax).

You can expect the traditional control layout, with light, heavy, grab and jump attacks. The move set available is not very deep or varied, and there are practically no combo moves. As you defeat enemies or pick items up a ‘rage’ meter fills, once it is full you get more powerful attacks.

Of course, no brawler would be without items to loot, and Street Brawl is no different. The items include first aid kits and items that give the player point bonuses. The real treat is in the arsenal of weapons, straight from the film, including knives, bats, crowbars and Molotov cocktails.

There are three different methods of playing through the main storyline, single player, local multiplayer, or online multiplayer. The multiplayer modes allow up to four players to represent the toughest crew in the city. There are three different difficulties available, and the amount of enemies you face is scaled depending on how many team mates you have with you.

There is also versus mode, where you simply go toe to toe with four other gang members to find out who the real war chief is. Along with versus, there is boss mode, and as the name suggests you fight through waves of bosses, accumulating points as you go along.

The A.I. can become very frustrating in Street Brawl, enemies and friendlies alike will do minor things which soon become annoying. A good example of this is when enemy opponents are knocked down, they will perform a sweeping kick while getting up. This is very frustrating as you will often be fighting multiple enemies, and you will get your ass handed to you with a little bad timing.

The comic book visuals are top notch, and really capture the atmosphere of the movie. Unfortunately, the voice of the original cast has not been licensed for whatever reason. The replacements are definitely sub-par, listening to the classic lines being delivered so poorly is a shame. The original soundtrack is also missing, again we assume due to licensing, even though the replacement isn’t bad it just doesn’t compare to the original.

So, do we dig it?

Well, we can certainly see where the developers have tried to pay homage to the movie, but licensing issues, such as the lack of the original sound track or voices leave a void in that regard.

Fans of the genre or movie should definitely check out the demo on the Xbox LIVE marketplace, but we definitely feel the game falls short of what it could have been.

6/10

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