The streets of Las Sombras are no place for... well, anyone, really. It's a city teeming with even more gang activity than Los Angeles, upon which the area seems loosely based. Your 'family' is one of the strongest, so when your fearless leader, Zanetti, learns of a rival deal he sends some of his best people to show them who's boss. You're one of those people, and when it goes sour you'll no longer have Zanetti's influence to protect you as you figure out what's going on and who's crossing who.

The setup mirrors that of the 70s classic The Warriors: A handful of gang soldiers is stranded with no help and not much idea where to turn. But Beat Down is set in a modern city, and these thugs wear suits. The five characters are your tools to discover who set you up to look like traitors.

You'll be fighting and talking a lot as you progress through the story. On top of fighting, you'll wander around and take on missions to build your power (recruits and money). The more you walk around and talk to people, the more recognized you become. Drawing attention to yourself as you try to build a gang empire under the nose of Zanetti, other bad guys and the police is bad, so you'll have to spend money on different clothes and even plastic surgery to hide out. Over time, the cycle repeats itself and the whole process of staying hidden while you grow in power gets incredibly cumbersome. Ultimately, the system discourages you from talking to people or exploring areas unless you have to, which is the opposite of the intended effect.

Most of the time, it's about fighting... sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. The five original characters in your group (three guys, two girls) all have different styles - some quick movers, some brutes. You have buttons for punch, kick, grapple, and block. Tapping a strike quickly results in different combos, and other buttons can be used to throw or disarm. The weapons do a lot of damage when you get one, and as you progress you'll learn new combos.

In random fights (you can fight people all over if you like), you'll fight alone and can choose to slap people around for information or just take their stuff. But most of them have no information worth getting. The fights that move the story along are also one-on-one, while random street battles involve groups - your people against theirs. Your cronies are about as intelligent as you'd expect - not very - but they take up enough space to let you do most of the work without getting piled on. For the planned battles, you'll have a particular goal, like getting information from the person or just beating them down.

The structure could have produced a good variety for fights, but it's relatively easy to just mash buttons and bore your way through most encounters. The more combos and weapons you use, the more gory the scene gets - there's lots of blood and the usual endless amount of bodies to pile up. But the more you play, the more the memories of Double Dragon come flooding back. Of course, it looks better than that, and there are other things to do, but the way you'll spend most of your time - fighting - isn't all that different.

It's a very dark game, which fits with the dark lives being portrayed. There's not a whole lot of detail to any of the character models, so you'll depend on tattoos, hair color and other obvious features to tell the players apart during the story. And the story, while containing enough twists and turns to be noteworthy, isn't going to have anyone on the edge of their seat because you don't really get to know these shallow figures enough to care about them.

Fists of Vengeance toys with the idea of being a deep adventure game, but the features and ideas fall short of being realized. Building up a powerful gang from nothing under the watchful eye of the man sounds like fun, but the process in Beat Down is shallow and tiresome. If you go in expecting a strategic experience with complex mechanics you're bound to be disappointed. But if you enjoy gory, one-dimensional slugfests on the mean streets, you'll have fun for a while.