Do you remember the mid 2000’s? Such an amazing time, when everyone was walking around with full tribal arm tattoos and jnco jeans with spiked pocket chains. Limp Bizkit, blessed be the name of the holy ones, played from the heavens themselves above the constant street fights that went down in the cold Canadian streets. It was a magical and better time, filled with mesh tops and leather pants and one leg jeans, where friendships were forged by beating people down with a vengeance before asking them to join your posse and for some reason they would agree most of the time. Mailmen, convenience store clerks, you name it; they were throwing down.
Assassins and brutal drug cartel members were the local ‘minibosses’ of their block, and if you needed an item ranging from an ‘F Knife’ or some ‘MED (S)’ you could just break a conveniently placed box. Given names had no meaning there in that chaos, replaced with nicknames and titles. The only thing that mattered was your reputation, personal edge and how ‘phat’ or ‘dope’ your triple flip kick was. Personally, I went by “Octo G” because I was a straight up ‘G’ and in charge of several gangs, as most people were. I also was really into bomber vests, as everyone was; you had to be there to understand.
My fashion was on point, man. This picture was taken around my 10th consecutive win in the ‘Beat Down Tournament’, where we were let loose onto the streets of Saskatchewan and only one survived. It's entirely on brand for Saskatchewan.
The cops were corrupt and useless, so justice was delivered through fist and conviction, and- wait, none of this ever actually happened? What do you mean? That's impossible, Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance told me that's what the western side of the world was. Why would Capcom and the developers at Cavia lie to me?
Beat Down is a special kind of game, sold almost entirely on its aesthetic- and what an aesthetic. I don't think you can get a more “early-mid 2000s” action game than this. A potential player character named Lola, a hitwoman from a South American guerilla mercenary group that turned into a mob because of course they did, has a cheetah print tube top and denim jeans with some weird leg extension things. One of the rival gang minibosses you encounter fairly early in the game named Fatima is clad in an all leather samurai hakama, wields a katana and has a tribal teardrop eye tattoo. More than the fashion, it’s the whole vibe the game has going on. It’s saturated with ‘extreme’ 2000s energy. It's excessive, absurd, beautiful and ugly all at once; the 2000s personified.
Hey there bud; **** you, these pants are sick.
I don't know why this game has resonated with me as much as it has. I first encountered it back in the day when it was relatively new, and thought it was one of the coolest things I'd played because I was a young preteen going on a full teenager and so was very cringe. I played through it once, went “neat!” then went back to playing Ninja Gaiden Black because again, I was young and cringe. It was only recently that, browsing through a list of PS2 action games for nostalgia's sake, I came upon Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance and unlocked a brain blast of memory. It came flooding back to me; the cheetah print tube top (that stuck in my memory for several reasons), the bomber vests, the wrap around shades and the tribal tats. For a brief moment as I remembered, I could faintly hear an echoing reverberation of the battle music. I remembered very little about the story itself other than vague recollections of “something something this gang, something something drugs" and there was something else that I had very little recollection of: the actual gameplay. I knew that you ran around a pseudo open world, but had no recollection of the systems themselves. It has been overshadowed by its aesthetic, forgotten due to the sheer ferocity of the vibe at play here. So, I decided to revisit it. Was the gameplay any good? Does it deserve its middling review scores? We’ll find out, but first some background.
Background; The Cultural Divide
Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance was a late game in the sixth gen's lifecycle, coming out in 2005 only a year or so before the launch of the PS3. It was only published by Capcom, which was a pretty rare move for the company at that point. It was actually developed by Cavia, a Japanese company who had a small but decent resume at the time and had prior experience working for Capcom; they were the developers of the Drakengard series, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex also on the PS2 as well as a few others. Their previous contract work for Capcom? Resident Evil: Dead Aim, the fourth game in the…interesting Gun Survivor light gun spin-off series. They would go on to develop a good assortment of games afterwards until their closure in 2010- the first Nier game as a spin-off of Drakengard, as well as a few other Capcom published games such as the much better Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles Wii arcade light gun styled games. They even developed Bullet Witch for the Xbox360, one of the most fascinatingly terrible games of that generation. If you know Bullet Witch, you know what I’m talking about. Cavia clearly had some talent and ability, but maybe not the best sense of what does or doesn’t work in terms of game development.The game was specifically designed to attempt to appeal to the western audience, which makes everything make sense. This wasn’t actually the wants of the western market, this was some Japanese executives' idea of what the wants of the western gaming world were. Originally started as a PS2 exclusive, the team saw the success of the Xbox console in America during Beat Down’s development and decided to double down even more on the target audience, and started an Xbox version as well. This is interesting, as the Xbox was by no means a success in Japan- arguably it could even be called a failure in the foreign market. The team took specific inspiration from the bevy of western ‘crime action’ games of the time, as well as movies; from this came some level of difficulty of an entirely Japanese dev team trying to take a crash course of western culture. Speaking to IGN in 2005, executive producer Tatsuya Minami (of future Platinum fame) said; “I can’t think of any specific movie right now that has influenced us but rest assured a staff of entirely Japanese people doing a game that takes place in a gritty American urban environment need to do plenty of research.” It makes the game make more sense in context, it’s exaggerated fashion sense and ‘hardcore’ aesthetic that’s simultaneously both on point and yet out of touch owing to an understandably large cultural divide. Outsiders looking in on exaggerated examples of other groups' pop culture is always a strange phenomenon; it’s like they looked only at Limp Bizkit concert footage and GTA clones and went “this is what all westerners like”, which would explain Beat Down. The Japanese game business scene in general was looking more and more to the west for sales and inspiration around this point, so it wasn’t just Capcom and Cavia.
Jesus, this story escalated pretty quickly.
Something I find fascinating about the development of Beat Down is the fact that it is so similar to another Capcom game that came out a year later, the much maligned Final Fight: Streetwise. Both game’s have a similar vibe in terms of gameplay and feel, and both are ‘extreme’ and ‘hardcore’ in a way that only the 2000s could provide. Streetwise was developed by Capcom themselves, or at least their US based subsidiary Studio 8. Development of both games had to have been relatively simultaneous, especially given the very troubled development history of Streetwise which begs the question: why? I suppose Capcom really wanted a hit in the western appealing action game market, so they shot out two games in a very close timeline.
Even the cars are street fighting, and they don’t even stop moving to make it fair.
Did all that research on oversized t-shirts and bomber vests pay off upon release? Well, no- that one should be fairly obvious. It was released to average reviews of around 50- 60%'s by most western reviewers, so just slightly above a failing grade. It did better in Japan which will always make me laugh with the deliciousness of the irony. There’s nothing wrong with marketing towards certain groups as a business decision, but you still need to actually make a good game around said mercenary business decision. Was it’s mediocre reception all Beat Down’s fault? We’re not there yet, but before we get into the actual gameplay it’s important to realize that Beat Down’s release was a tough year; 2005 was absolutely stacked, particularly for action games. You had Resident Evil 4, The Punisher, Nano Breaker, Star Wars: Republic Commando, goddamn Devil May Cry 3, Dragon Ball Z: Sagas, God of War, Star Wars: Episode 3, Advent Rising, Killer7, BloodRayne 2, the eternally unsung DarkWatch and I’m only halfway through the list maybe. Some of those were shooters, yes, and ones I just wanted to name drop; but it just shows that there was a lot of competition that overshadowed a lot of other games, to say the least. For your average player, why would they care about an unknown IP when they were likely still getting their scrawny red leather-jacketed ass handed to them by Vergil in DMC3? Funnily enough, Capcom was its own competition that year.
“Stop, fashion police! You can’t wear a purple leather mini skirt with a Hawaiian shirt! It’s a denim skirt or nothing!”
Street Fighting Beat Downs; The Gameplay
The game sees you play as one of 5 thuggish criminals in the city of Las Sombras- each of them is a top enforcer for the Zanetti crime family, have some sort of specific plot relevant connection to Zanetti and the gang, and they also each have a unique brand of fashion sense/faux paus. There’s Aaron, the illegitimate son of Zanetti; Gina, an ‘exotic dancer’ in a purple leather plunge, miniskirt and matching lace stockings and gloves who’s also the top kickboxer assassin for the crime family, because of course she is; Jason G, who I definitely was not back in the 2000s, who’s a street orphan who grapples and piledrives opponents in his bomber vest and jeans that you can unzip the legs of to turn into shorts (I did actually have a pair of those); Lola, the previously mentioned Brazilian cheetah print tube top hitwoman who of course is a capoeira master being Brazillian; and Raven the brutal street fighter with a terrible Welsh accent who simultaneously has the most ridiculous name while also having the most approachable outfit of cargo pants and a maroon leather jacket. They each have different stats and a different ‘archetype’ so to speak of how they play; Jason G is the slow tough guy grappler for example, while Gina is the fast but weak acrobatic kickboxer. They have a few different cutscenes here and there, but largely go through the exact same story.
Gaze upon my fashion, father. Are you not amused? Are you not proud of me?
After an intro that sees you set-up and betrayed by the Zanetti crime family, you’re now on the run and decide to take down the family in the name of revenge by getting into so many street fights, and recruiting as many random people as you can find to join you.
Who wouldn't want to join the gang of someone who can pop a wicked flip kick this crisp?
First, let’s go into the game’s core combat mechanics as it’s the most important part of any brawler. The combat itself plays like a mix of a 3D fighting game and a traditional beat ‘em up. You have a punch and a kick button, a block, and a dedicated grab button. The 3D fighting game influence comes from both the dedicated punch and kick buttons, as well as employing three ‘levels’ of guarding and attacks; highs, lows, and mids. Highs miss on low guarding or crouching opponents but crush mid guards, mids crush low guards, and low guards beat low attacks. There are two modes of fights in this game depending on some circumstances- either a traditional 3D one-on-one fighting game with 8-way movement that’s usually done for bosses or when you challenge individual people on the street, or an open movement beat ‘em where you fight numerous opponents that’s similar to Tekken’s Tekken Force mode. When you get close to an enemy, your character will lock on to them and your movement and camera becomes soft locked onto them. It's really only an issue when you're trying to move away from someone to attack someone behind you for example. The game really would have been better with a manual lock on system like the Devil May Cry series in this regard.
Character’s also have special moves they can do with specific inputs in certain circumstances. There’s no quarter circles or anything of that nature, and they generally follow 3D fighting games with double tapping a direction followed by a certain button to pull off. Jason G can spin enemies around in the wrestling classic ‘giant swing’ by spinning the analog stick in a 360 when grappling someone, while Aaron has an evasive counterattack that sees him flick back then launch forward into a punch by hitting back+block then punch. It’s fairly basic stuff. One thing missing from the game is juggle combos, or really combos of any sort. Some special moves are little combo strings, like Aaron's 3 hit launch kick special I learned early to spam, but I never encountered much potential for launching opponents and piling on other moves before they'd hit the ground.
The fighting system is…fine? It's not really very good, but isn't unplayable. The fighting game layers to it work well and flow, but the game suffers from a little bit of stiffness in its animations and responsiveness and a lack of real thought put into the system. You can get used to the stiffness after a little bit of time, but you also shouldn't have to, you know what I mean? It's not unplayable, just a little off. The bosses really show some of the typical beat ‘em up trope of ‘they’re complete bull****’.
I wasn’t kidding about the all leather samurai hakama. Also, **** this boss.
After you get set-up in the intro, you find your way to a dive bar appropriately titled ‘The Hole’. You use this bar as your base in your vengeful quest, and it’s here that the other layers of the game start.
The game is also part open world-ish RPG in some ways. You can take on side quests from the bar, called ‘Jobs’, to get money as well as encounter side quests by talking to specific people in the city itself. As mentioned before, part of your mission is to build up your own gang of combatants to take on the various other gangs, and police, of the city. You can recruit almost anyone you see in the game world by running up and asking to recruit them; sometimes this will result in the person attacking you, as that’s the world that you live in, man. The ‘generic’ NPCs all come from the same pool of pre-made character models, so you will see some duplicates for sure. What’s the point of having these other characters in your gang? You can have up to two of them follow behind you and back you up in case you get into a fight. In the beat ‘em up combat mode, they will be running around in the fight alongside you, attempting to use their very limited AI to occasionally assault enemies when they’re not getting stuck on a bus sign or running into a wall. You can swap them out by calling for back-up from the menu, which can be important as different people have different special passive abilities that can come into play in some side quests. In the fighting game mode when you’re fighting some bosses, your posse members actually tag in if you go down, turning the game into a tag fighter essentially. Also, they huddle and cheer for you in the background of the one-on-one fights, and everyone really needs some good hype men.
I ended up donning the ceremonial combat garb of my Canadian people to display my battlefield prowess to any potential battle brothers; this all denim outfit is called the ‘Canadian tuxedo’, and is worn by all great Canadian warriors. So is the way.
Part of the RPG elements is that you level up after defeating enough opponents, because again, the game is ambitious to a fault. When you level up you can increase one of three stats; your damage, your health, or your ‘technique’ which lets you learn new special moves and affects other things such as your success rate when recruiting characters. There is also three ‘stats’ to your little gang you build up, comprised mainly of random passersby of course; your ‘leadership’ which is the size of your gang, your ‘cashflow’ which is how much money you’re raking in, and your ‘charisma’ which is described in the manual as your “pride as a criminal”. All three of these make up your total ‘criminal level’, and all three are also increased or decreased based on what you’ve done in various ways. This ends up being pretty important to keep high, as your criminal level will affect the ending of the game when it gets to that point if you care about that stuff; too low of a criminal level, and you won’t get the full ending.
Just me and the squad hangin’ out, deadliest street fighters this side of the Construction Zone North.
Trap this, mother****er. Oh sorry, the spirit of Beat Down came over me there for a hot second.
Being an open world-ish game themed around crime and repeated aggravated assaults, there is also a police awareness system as there should be. As you rob people or deliver the canned Beat Down murder cutscene, the police get closer to tracking you down as shown with the ‘Police Awareness’ stat on the map. As it increases, more police will be on the map, and if it gets to 100% they will spawn in specifically to deliver a very specific kind of community outreach to you. This stat is also increased if you get too close to randomly patrolling officers, loot bodies next to other characters, or if you attack them of course. If you get defeated by them, they sometimes bring you to jail where you have to break out; sometimes though, they just beat you to death. Such is the cycle of the ‘Beat Down’.
There is unfortunately plenty wrong with Beat Down. Speaking of the whole police awareness mechanic which isn’t so bad as you can largely avoid officers and only use the ‘Beat Down’ sparingly, there is one for the Zanetti family as they are also actively hunting you down; this one can be very frustrating. The core idea of Beat Down’s story and gameplay is running around to recruit and/or street fight (it’s all intertwined, really) different gang members and opponents. The issue is that by talking to, walking around and fighting characters, it raises your mob awareness in much the same way as the police, and if it gets to 100% everyone on the streets attacks you on sight. Everyone is in on it because of course they are, that's how Las Sombras is. There aren't ever that many people walking around the streets for it to truly become oppressive when everyone starts jumping you on sight, but it can get frustrating for sure. I’m not quite sure what Cavia was thinking on this one; by actively playing the game, you're being punished in a sense and forced to deal with this mechanic. It makes sense from a story standpoint given that you are on the run, but I think they could have probably represented this in a different way.
Ah, a fellow aficionado of denim. I don't know what other context there could be to that statement.
There is a way to lower your mob awareness, of course, but the method is also awkward. You can buy clothes and various accessories in this game to change up your style, as any fashion forward game such as this should let you do; by doing so, you also lower your mob awareness as you’ve put on a ‘disguise’, I guess. You can also get plastic surgery to do the same and change your characters face and buy mustaches for them, which again- serious vibe right there. It is interesting how they combined the dress up side of the game into the actual gameplay, but it’s also kind of annoying when you have to run to a clothing store to spend money on clothes maybe every other half hour or so or have to deal with enemies constantly attacking you on sight.
Ultimately there are a lot of ambitious concepts in the game, but they have mixed outcomes. The actual beat ‘em up aspects and combat system is competent, if maybe a little stiff feeling. It’s mainly the layers on top of those that completely falter. Every attempt at the RPG elements are half baked, and you can't sell a game on 'uniqueness' or ambition if you can't actually back it up. You can’t even really commit any crime other than extortion of petty change and unfathomable amounts of aggravated assault, and you can’t even really go on a rampage against innocent NPCs or anything of that nature which is half the appeal of the western crime games Beat Down is trying to emulate. It's ultimately in an awkward state where the ‘beat em down’ mechanics aren't fleshed out enough or deep to fully stand on their own, while the ambitious RPG-lite mechanics aren't executed well enough to elevate the game.
I think the most glaring and obvious shortcoming of the game is there's just nothing to do in its open world-ish city other than street fight and buy clothing like it's some capitalist anarchist nightmare. There are ‘side quests’ you can get from the bartender at The Hole, usually 1 or 2 per chapter that I put in quotations as there really isn't much to them. You generally go talk to a guy, then he tells you to go beat people up and maybe there's an optional objective for more cash and that characters just aren't at all memorable. I can’t recall a single name or character from them and I literally played them not even a few hours ago. Compare this to something like the GTA series where the majority of side characters are unique, identifiable and also show up repeatedly in ongoing arcs; it's one of the best parts of that game series, really. This game is tailor made for that sort of characterization given how absurd Las Santos is, and there just really isn’t any. It’s such a waste. Even some little minigames that you could play in the game world would improve it a little bit, like being able to shoot some pool or play some arcade games. The games tried really hard to be something like Yakuza, and to Beat Down’s credit the first Yakuza game wasn’t out for another two months after this game.
It’s all a damn shame, because there is a lot to like with Beat Down and I honestly want better things for it. This game wears its absurd, violent and profane heart on its sleeve, a heart that beats with so much style and unique energy that it should be impossible. The game is filled with small touches and references. As characters lose health, they begin to get bruised and visibly bloodied as a rudimentary version of real time battle damage. Somewhere in here is a really good game idea of fighting the streets of a comically exaggerated town while you try to build up a street gang, and it's a shame that it was wasted on this.
In the end, I was left disappointed by Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance because the game could have been something memorable and great, instead of ultimately barely lukewarm after adding everything together. I would say with another development pass over its ideas and mechanics, and probably just entirely scrapping or reworking a few of them, it could have made it. The pure power of its aesthetic alone compelled me to write this whole article, the longest time anyone’s ever talked about this game most likely. I’ll take my award now please, Capcom; it can't be from Cavia, they've long closed down. It makes sense now why I didn’t remember anything from when I was a cringe pre-teen about the gameplay itself other than the vague idea; even back then I knew it was bad, and I was cringe. The answer to my previous rhetorical question of “is it Beat Down’s fault for its mediocre reception?” (it’s rhetorical because I already knew the answer when I wrote that) is this: yes. Even though 2005 was a very good year for video games, Beat Down is also just unfortunately and disappointingly bad. This is the game's legacy: being bad, and having some ironically enjoyable aesthetic.
Seriously, look at a list of games from 2005- it’s absurd how much stuff came out that year. Devil May Cry 3, God of War, Resident Evil 4 and Yakuza all in one year? Jesus. What else was there in 2005, let’s see; Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Nightshade, and…oh god, Tekken’s Nina Williams in: Death By Degrees. That’s a good one right there, man. No wonder Beat Down did so badly; everyone was playing Death By Degrees.
Pros
- + So much early-mid 2000s energy. It should be impossible for this game to exist like it does.
- + Great concept.
Cons
- - Mediocre combat.
- - Mediocre to terrible 'RPG-lite' mechanics.
6
out of 10
Overall
Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance is a terribly flawed game that wasted far too much potential. It's violent, profane and makes no apologies for looking the way it does but in the end it can't back up its smack talk.
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