Review: The AssKickers (PC)

10 Aug, 2011

Title: The AssKickers
Platform: PC, Mac (reviewed on PC)
Developer: AGO Games
Publisher: AGO Games
Tagline: The Red-headed stepchild of Double Dragon and Streets of Rage
Family Friendly: While not all that bloody, the game is all about beating people up. It is called The AssKickers after all.

Nostalgia can be a potent weapon when it comes to selling a game. Do it right, and people will come out of the woodwork to get their hands on your game. Do it wrong and it will fall into the dustbin of obscurity. The AssKickers looks to scratch the 2D side-scrolling itch that has been missing as of late. Sure, we have had things like Streets of Rage 2, Golden Axe and Double Dragon show up on our home consoles, but nothing that takes the nostalgia of those old brawlers but combines them with current gen graphics. The AssKickers does a great job at looking the part of a brawler, but control and fundamental gameplay issues foul up what should have been a no brainer.

Gameplay in The AssKickers is fairly simple, with the player choosing one of three characters and them moving from either left to right, or right to left, through six stages, all the while beating up different enemies. There is a loose plot that centers on forms of the establishment, and their need of reform, but at the end of the day, the plot is about as thin as a Kate Moss dress. Besides, when has plot ever had any significance on any of these beat-em up styled games?

The characters that you choose from include two different guys and one woman, but the choice does not really matter, as their move sets are very similar, and besides changing the names in the text, you will never find a need to go back and experiment with the other characters, beyond maybe wanting to see their special moves.

The AssKickers does present itself well, with nice, clean looking graphics, and a great color palette, but the enemies are very repetitive throughout each of the stages. In the first stage, you come across a grand total of three enemy types and after a while, you get tired of seeing the same enemies over and over. There is no reason in this day and age to have to limit enemy types, especially when you consider the resources available to programmers on the PC and Mac platforms. Nostalgia is nice, but don’t limit the game for the sake of that said nostalgia. Give me more enemies, and make them distinct from one another.

However, the biggest flaw in The AssKickers has to be the main combat mechanics. To put it simply, combat is never fun at any point in The AssKickers. Combat consists of a jump, and a punch/kick button, and special attacks that can be unleashed when you fill up a power meter. Animations for the attacks look clean enough, but the response from when you push a button to when it happens on the screen seems drawn out, with a copious amount of lag. It’s also hit and miss when it comes to hit detection. Sometimes, I would be right next to someone and my hits would miss completely, while other times, I would miss a jump kick by a mile and yet, it would register as a hit. Special attacks are intensely difficult to perform, again with consistency being a problem. Also, the screen for the game seems to be larger than the resolution of most monitors, and routinely, enemies would walk off-screen, only to blindly attack from off-screen, leaving me defenseless from said attacks. This became a far too often occurrence, and left me with a sour taste in my mouth when I would die in a level due to a blind attack that I could not see coming .

While The AssKickers looks good and tries to capture the essence of beat-em ups from days long since gone, it completely misses when it comes to the core mechanics that are required in a game of this type. Sure, it is budget priced under $10, but all you get for that price is a huge batch of frustration over what could have been, rather than what was actually created. There is a demo available, and I would try that before making a purchase. But as it stands, The AssKickers is ready to tap out before the fight even starts.