Spikeout: Battle Street Critic Reviews

The online and System Link support is the real draw as it comes off without a hitch.

Look, kids- if Spikeout were a movie, the year would be 1987, Michael Dudikoff and Caroline Munro would star in it, Richard Lynch or Henry Silva would be the main bad guy, it would run on cable six times a month, and you'd be glued to the tube every single time it came on just for the action scenes and ridiculous ending.

The Live play is done much better than it has any right to, especially when one considers the likely shoestring budget given for this.

Ultimately Spikeout: Battle Street is a decent and mildly refreshing old school beat-em-up, but it could be better.

7 / 7 / 7 / 7 - 28

At its core, Spikeout is what "The Bouncer" always wanted to be, but never was, a fast, action-packed brawler with little pretense to being anything else.

If you've beaten "Streets of Rage" twenty times and need a modern-day equivalent, look no further, because this is an amazingly fun multiplayer game that brings back that old-school feeling with 3D class.

The gameplay remains somewhat fun as you mix up combos and techniques, alone or with a friend, but the difficulty level is questionable and some parts of the game came up lacking.

Only truly hardcore fans will need to own their own copy; as competent and polished as it is for the genre, it's also a throwback.

The four-player Xbox Live mode may offer some thrills for devoted brawler fans, but everyone else will want to stay away from this stale relic.

The single-player mission, graphics, dialog, music, animation, AI, and level design are all so shockingly retro in all of the worst senses, that one wonders if this game weren't really designed about 20 years ago and just recently uncovered from some sort of lost chest of unwanted arcade titles that never got the green light.

With a game relying on Live so much, neglecting the offline gameplay quality only makes matters worse because if people don't buy it there aren't people to play with online. Double edged sword Sega, learn from it.

The game itself is lousy.

The animation is well done and the various blows look like they actually have some impact but since nothing changes from point A to point Z, it won't matter after awhile.

The problems of the game are uh, rooted in its arcade roots. The content is worthless and clumsily executed.

This genre still has potential, but Spikeout just doesn't tap it.

If you're a huge Dreamcast or Sega fan then the online side of Battle Street may warrant a rent. But, for the other 99.9% of Xbox gamers, we'd say leave the past in the past.

Levels feature numerous boss battles and a stream of identikit foot soldiers, but merrily send the player back to square one when their lone life is over and make the singleplayer story mode an agonising exercise in self-abuse.

In the end, it feels more like an after pub game than one that you'd spend a whole summer mastering. Simple, easy and ultimately boring, you should pick it up for a fiver if you can.

The environments that you'll be fighting through are your typical urban fare, and they all look bland and devoid of any life. The character models are pretty blocky, and the fighting moves you'll see all look very stiff.