When I was younger, my absolute favorite beat-'em-up franchise wasn't Double Dragon, Final Fight, or even Golden Axe. It was Streets of Rage. A trinity of games starring a group of hard-fighting, outside-the-law police officers battling the forces of evil, each title brought something interesting to the table. The second game was generally considered the best, but none of them were bad, and they had a bevy of secrets and bonus content to make them more playable. We haven't had a single new Streets of Rage game since the mid-'90s, but Streets of Rage 4 has come along to address that oversight.

At its heart, Streets of Rage 4 is an old-school beat-'em-up. You're given a few lines of plot, and then you select a character and get to beating. Each character has a standard set of moves: basic attack combos, jump kicks, special attacks and super moves. The goal is to beat your way from one end of the arena to the other, where a boss awaits. The plot is also the same as before: Evil criminals are taking over the city, so you must beat them up. What more do you really need?

SoR4 is a beat-'em-up through and through, but there are some pretty cool twists to the mechanics to make the experience more engaging. Perhaps the most significant is a revamp of special moves. In earlier SoR titles, you'd spend your health to perform special moves. SoR4 has one significant difference: Any health you spent is temporarily marked with a green bar. When you hit enemies without getting hit, this bar fills until you regenerate the health you lost, but if you take any damage during this period, you'll lose all of the "stored" health in addition to whatever damage you suffer from the attack.

It might sound like a small thing, but this is a wonderful change. It means that you can now use the character's special attacks as a regular part of your arsenal. This keeps the combat feeling fresh, since you can string together longer combos and balance the risk and reward of going for a big attack. This is also important defensively. Every character has three specials: air, forward and neutral. Air and forward are both attacks, but neutral hits everything around you and grants a brief moment of invincibility. While you can't traditionally block or evade in SoR, it's critical to learn when and where to use your neutral attack to avoid damage so you can get through some of the tougher challenges.

The change to special attacks also means that most of the playable characters can feel distinct and useful. The starting four characters (Axel, Blaze, Cherry and Floyd) each have significantly different play styles. Axel is slow but hits like a truck, especially his special moves, which are among the strongest in the game. It takes work to close in on enemies, but once you do, they're dead. Blaze is a more balanced character who's somewhat faster than Axel but lacking in raw power. Cherry is the only character who can dash and move quickly, and she can hop onto enemy heads to grab them, but she's the most fragile of the lot. Floyd is similar to Axel, but his robot arm can be extended to grab enemies, so he can perform devastatingly powerful throw attacks although he lacks Axel's sheer damage output.

I found myself swapping characters regularly because each had a fun new play style. When you unlock new characters, they also have their own distinct styles of play. I'll avoid spoiling these characters, but they include a lot of returning favorites — sometimes in expected forms. There is a whole lot of replayability in the game by mastering different characters on different difficulty modes, including a Boss Rush and a "one credit" Arcade mode.

Be warned that SoR4 intentionally mimics an arcade game, so by default, you're given three lives to finish a stage. Die three times, and you have to restart the stage. You can earn extra lives by getting a high score or by taking "assist" options, which give you bonus lives at a cost to your end-of-stage score, which is used to unlock additional characters. It's also a game where you can die very quickly if you get overconfident. If you're nostalgic for the quarter-eating days of the arcade, you'll feel right at home here.

SoR4 has a good chunk of content for an arcade game, but it's the kind of game you pop in when you want to play with friends or just to beat up some bad guys. The game offers both local and online co-op, which does a lot to extend its value. If you don't think it's likely that you'd play the game multiple times, it might be difficult to justify the $30 price tag. If you have even the slightest fondness for Streets of Rage, you'll find a whole lot to enjoy here. It's a love letter to the older games with tons of callbacks, cameos, and the same great gameplay style.

A bit part of this nostalgia comes from the absolutely gorgeous hand-drawn sprites. While some look a little odd at first, just generally look fantastic. They're bright, large, well animated and filled with little details. Every rising upper from Axel or massive guitar to the face from Cherry is rendered in absurdly loving detail. The backgrounds are full of life and style, and even the most boring environment is still a treat to see. The soundtrack is similarly top-notch, containing both remixes of some of Streets of Rage's best songs as well as some brand-new tracks for the list. It even has all the familiar sounds and the option to use a "retro" soundtrack. Them developer absolutely knocked it out of the park with the presentation.

Streets of Rage 4 is the perfect love letter to Sega's fan favorite beat-'em-up franchise. It captures the spirit and soul of the games while adding great new mechanics and tons of style. At its heart, it's a short, sweet, and well-made game about punching criminals until you can punch the biggest criminals of all. The price tag might be a bit steep if you're not someone who loves beating things up with friends, but for Streets of Rage fans, it is everything it should be.

Score: 9.0/10