Fight'N Rage

Fight’ n Rage. This one is a beat’em up and another game made in South America…. What did I ever do to deserve this? Well it’s bad but not as bad as the previous game I reviewed. There are many “bs” moments and people complained about them on the Steam forums yet the developer said that everything is done how he intended it. Word of advice if you have a controller use it otherwise you risk getting arthritis or at least fingers cramps. Because that’s what happened to me after I finally beat it on easy difficulty. Which I also had to unlock! Why? Because by default easy difficulty is locked you need to buy it by earning game coins. Luckily it doesn’t ask for too much of them. It’s almost the same shite as it was in Cata-whatever that game was I already forgot it like a bad dream. It has infinite continues but only gives you 3 lives. Once again 3 lives are not enough for someone who is playing this game for the first time.

Whatever, let’s switch to the plot for a second. So here is what I figured out so far. There is this world where humanity exists with anthropomorphic animals, they are called mutants. Humanity and furries are on bad terms with each other as one side constantly tries to farm and enslave the other. This time it’s not humanity who’s doing the evil part. Mutants being superior in strength and numbers decided to mount an all-out attack. That’s where we come in. We’re a… I’m not sure who we are honestly. Probably someone who’s just fights back. We have 3 characters for the “Main game”. We have well-endowed lady simply named “Gal” who kind of looks like Mai from “King of Fighters”. Big bull Ricardo, who’s I guess is the Max/Haggar equivalent from Streets of Rage/Final Fight (Max’s still better for having a wider move set). Last one is some dude named F. Norris, dunno about him I haven’t played as him yet. Right back to the plot. So that attack against our village was initiated by big boss lion that looks like caricature dictator/tyrant from 90’s Saturday cartoon. But looks like he’s only a local warlord/pawn and not a global threat, there are someone who supports mutants all over the world to go and attack humans. Well that’s about the plot. There are several ending and I only seen one.

 Gameplay. This game has classic beat them up gameplay. We’re walking from one side to another while beating hordes of enemies. Like in a classic beat’em up there are palette swaps of enemies with boosted stats. What’s not classic about this beat’em up is length and amount of enemies you need to defeat even on easy. I’d call it pure bullshite. This amount of enemies and levels are for hard difficulty, not easy or normal. It could easily take around an hour and a half for a single playthrough. And you have to do it in one sitting, yes people say that there is a “save feature” but I haven’t figure out how it works yet. If I would compare amount of enemies you face at the last levels on “easy” in this game with appropriate difficulty of the Streets of Rage 2/3. The “easy” difficulty of Fight’ n Rage feels like last difficulty in SoR2/3. Once again proving my point about South American romhack sphere.

Okay, enough complaining what can we do as a fighter? Standard stuff like punching/kicking, jumping, dash by quickly tapping forward twice, jump to the vertical side by quickly tapping up or down twice, special attack that like in SoR 3can be used for free when the “special” gauge is filled. So to do significant damage you need to combine your attack while juggling your enemies. It looks like this: mash attack till enemy’s launched in the air, do another set of mashing attack, then do an anti-aerial then while in the air do your special attack. That’s where‘s the arthritis/cramp part comes in. After doing it for hour your fingers will hurt.

The problem is we’re mostly left in the dark with what we can do. Most of advanced techniques are hidden behind hints in the “Extra” menu and I don’t know how to unlock them. I looked how to do an anti-aerial attack on the forum and another one I saw in the tips menu that you can sometimes free yourself from a grab by quickly tapping jump button. The other problem is constantly being surrounded by hordes of different enemies. And if horde of rat and cat enemies isn’t a big deal on its own. Cats still can feck you over by their “anti-camping move”. But when you mix in pigs, ninja chickens, flies, bird Thai boxers, martial artist wolves, bikers then things will get quite difficult. They may not take you by skill (at first) but they will take you by sheer numbers and “sponginess”. So with all that you’ll use you special attack quite often and without waiting for refill because you’ll lose HP anyway so might as well get a better deal by also damaging your enemies with your special move. But the most annoying enemies are Doberman elite fighters, luckily there are few of them through the game but you will face at least 5 of most annoying Dobermans through the game. Here’s tip, they’re mostly vulnerable to throws, and so do you best to approach them diagonally to grab them. If they started to wallop on you first quickly do your special, you won’t overpower them even with the bull. If they jumped back, quickly perform a side jump.

Okay there are others modes but I haven’t checked them so it’s up to you. But after you done playing don’t forget to visit “extras” menu. You can buy some add-ons like in that SoR fan game. Anyway this game is an endurance and stress test mixed together but playable enough to tolerate it. You can easily skip this one and save your fingers from the torture because there are way better beat’em ups. So I give this game about 5-6 on overall score.