Tokyo Beat Down, the perfect B budget video game.

  While I always wasn't the biggest fan of the beat em' genre in gaming, I still often indulged in the ability to mindlessly walk a linear path defeating any criminal, social misfit, or telephone booth that stood in my way (and to occasionally eat precooked dinner meats that laid within said telephone booth). But of course, due to the sheer simplicity, repetition, and little room for innovation (besides the phenomenal dungeons and dragons licensed beat em' ups for arcade developed by capcom which is a for another blog altogether) the genre has settled into the retro niche, with a small revival appearing in xbox live arcades and to a smaller extent portable systems.

   That's where Tokyo Beat Down comes in, a relatively unheard of game for the Nintendo DS, that got panned by every reviewer that did hear of it.The main focus is the ridiculous story, an exaggerated parody of 80's style renegade cop shows. The star is Lewis Cannon (where do they come up with these names) a renegade cop that uses extreme force on his criminals which has earned his department the reputation as the "beast cops". His fighting style as described in the manual: a fine-tuned balance of kick-ass, whoop-ass, and bad-ass. You start the game walking down the street about to apprehend some criminals, using extreme force that is of course required in this sort of affair. The crime committed was actually a "dine-in-dash' and the chief penalizes your excessive force by "lowering your stats" and makes Lewis have to collect scrolls in game which restore his power. This is questioned in game, and there is no answer. Fifteen minutes in I'm confused as hell as to what I'm actually playing but happy all the same I found something this random in the bargain bin.

  Then come the actual game play segments. Luckily enough they aren't a complete chore to play through, but you definitely are just playing them to get to the next zany segment with Lewis. It's typical beat em' up nonsense, punch, kick, occasionally use a gun (which is explained to use only rubber bullets, Japanese regulations of course). This game does nothing you haven't seen before in another game made 10 years ago, and in fact it does somethings even worse. There is no point at all in the jump or block function, and the time to equip a gun is way too slow. Despite these flaws its not too painful to play through when it comes to budget titles.

Most of the jokes come out of nowhere and are completely unexpected, and the cast of characters are likable. There's a grizzled veteran cop who is sensitive about his weight, and a rookie cop who tries to convince Lewis violence isn't always the answer which ends up in hilarious results. Then there's the file room save game lady who barely has any lines and looks extremely generic, making me wonder what the point of her was at all.This game is worth playing because everything besides the game play made me smile or flat out laugh. It doesn't advance the genre by any means, but its some enjoyable bargain bin goodness.