There are some fairly customary guidelines in arcade brawlers. You’ve gotta have co-op, that’s for positive. But you’ve additionally gotta kick issues off with a kidnapping. More usually than not, which means getting two mean-looking lads to rescue their dames. Bit naff, innit. River City Girls flips the script, with two ass-kicking lasses saving hapless daniels-in-distress Kunio and Riki, the lads from the sequence’ very first game. They’ve been nabbed by the cops, see, so it’s time to go to city and do some crime.
River City Girls put the long-running brawler in Double Dragon Neon and Shantae developer WayForward’s fingers – and it’s out now.
Leading girls Kyoko and Misako have popped up in Kunio-Kun (River City Ransom’s Japanese title) sequence earlier than – the previous as a combating sidekick, and the latter as a (look ahead to it) soccer captain in one of many franchise’s many sports activities spin-offs. A helluva lot of them are about dodgeball, too. Huh.
Like the much less sports-focused River City Ransom brawlers, Girls is a barely non-linear side-scrolling punch up with a little bit little bit of an RPG twist. Kyoko and Misako will finally degree up, and outlets will promote you a variety of boosts, consumables and new strikes to combine up your mashing. You may even recruit some baddies after beating them right into a pulp, letting them bounce again into the fray in your crew.
It seems fairly good, too. There’s no scarcity of fairly pixels on the market, however River City Girls has an actual vibrant pop look happening. Colourful streets stuffed with hip millennial sorts, with a genre-mandated pop-synth soundtrack.
Still ready for a brawler to tackle a River City nearer to residence, thoughts. Get in there, Stevie.
River City Girls is out now on Steam for £24/€25/$30. It’s revealed by Arc System Works.
