The classic beat-'em-up brawler was a great way to blow a couple of hours ten years ago. If you got a friend into the mix, there was even more enjoyment found in such titles. Today, technology and videogame uniqueness is too large for such a bland concept, yet some companies feel that it is a genre that still has life. Well for anyone who wants to change the adult diapers of this aging genre, Urban Reign just might be your fix.

From the makers of such great hits like Soul Calibur and Tekken comes this flashback to the old style arcade beat-'em-up. You play as Brad Hawk (nice name), a 6ft 8", 192-pound man? Wait... 192 pounds? Does Namco even know the definition of weight to height proportions? The guy looks like a fairly big guy, but if he were 6ft 8" and 192 pounds, he would be a rail! Okay, you are Brad Hawk, a tough as nails brawler who is chosen by Shun Ying Lee, a hottie Asian gang leader, to take out every member of every gang. As you agree and proceed to do her dirty work, you visit many 'urban' locales such as back alleys, bars, and garages to beat up these gang members. Okay, so it's not Shakespeare, but that's not why you buy beat-'em-up style games is it? You buy them for the fun of whooping every person on screen into a pulp. If that is your thing, then you will get more from Urban Reign than the casual gamer.

Visually Urban Reign is not a technical marvel. While the game does look crisp in progressive scan mode, the textures and character models are from three years ago. Even though it is your objective to kick the crap out of numerous thugs, they really don't differ from much more than simple palette swaps. The only characters that even stands out are the main gang leaders and yourself. The fighters do animate well, with a decent amount of moves and combos at your disposal. You'll be performing punches, kicks, leaping kicks and body slams, until all the foes on your screen are eliminated. The environments have tons of destructible items in them including tables, chairs, pinball machines, crates, barrels, and so much more. Even though you move through one hundred missions, the areas have more levels that look similar than the ones that don't. The presentation varies from mission screens that look as if you are getting contacted from a PC, to some cool slowdown effects when you finish off the final foe of each level. Oddly enough, the game is 'Teen' rated, and for a game that really could have capitalized on some senseless brutality, Urban Reign keeps its punches above the belt with only Mild Language and Violence on its rap sheet. This game relies more on style than substance.

Audio is not much more than your typical street punk fodder. With voice acting that uses slang from ten years ago, to the industrial/metal soundtrack that attempts to get you nice and riveted for each round of brutality. Let's just say there's not much here that takes advantage of the Dolby Digital sound that it utilizes.

Gameplay is fairly basic like any good beat'em up brawler. Circle is your punch, Triangle is your grapple, Square is your evade, and X is your run button. Using a combination of these buttons will perform some pretty cool moves, unfortunately they only add up to about thirty moves all together per character, which means you'll be seeing the same moves repeatedly. Some gamers may be happy to see the endless Tekken/Soul Calibur juggle moves that keep your opponent helpless in the air as you pummel them. Either the A.I. is really dumb, or really cheap, depending on the difficulty setting you choose. Even with the two-player experience, there really isn't much depth to Urban Reign outside of the button crunching you will do for levels on end.

Urban Reign has quite a few gameplay modes to create plenty of blister causing fun. Your story mode puts you through 100 missions; some will have you fighting one enemy, some multiples, and even some fighting multiples in a certain time frame. The story itself is forgettable, so just have fun with it. Challenge mode has you fighting through a series of battles. Multiplayer has a few modes such as Versus, Weapon Battle, and Destruction Battle. You can mix up your matches with option changes like toggling off Knock Out, Damage Amount, Weapon Scramble (hold the weapon till time runs out), Weapon (find a weapon, beat them up with said weapon, and win), and Knockdown. You can square off in these multiplayer battles in Single, Team, and three or four player battle royales. There isn't an online mode, so you are strapped to the confines of one television.

To be honest, if you were not sold in the first few words, classic beat'em up, then there is nothing here that will appeal to you as a gamer. Either you like this genre, or you don't. That is where this game will live or die in the end, as the appeal for such a title is not as widespread as years ago. Keep in mind this is Namco's second foray into the action/adventure genre in the last year, and with neither title standing out as groundbreaking new franchises, I think time would be spent better evolving their current fighters like Tekken and Soul Calibur.