I finally bit the bullet and bought the Switch version of "Streets of Rage 4" last night. I played it for a couple of hours, and it's... so-so.

I keep hearing people compare it to "Sonic Mania", but it's not at all: the "Sonic Mania" guys took the approach of, "let's just do more of what made those games great in the first place." Someone not well-versed in the technical aspects of the hobby might actually mistake that game for one of the originals, so closely does it emulate the art style, soundtrack, and gameplay.

No: the accurate comparison is to "Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove!". Rather than "more of the same" ala "Sonic Mania", it was decided to make radical departures in terms of just about everything, from graphics to audio to gameplay, to the point where the new release only vaguely resembles the originals. And just like the new "TJ and E", it hits on some things, but whiffs on lots of others.

Of course, I'll do a full review once I play through the game completely a couple of times. But for now, I'll say that for all of my teeth gnashing, the art style isn't as bad as I thought it'd be: it's more "Comix Zone" than "Rayman Legends", in the sense that there is a lot more detail present overall, which gets almost totally lost in compressed YouTube video footage.

The core player movement and fighting mechanics are pretty good: not as tight as 2, but better than 1 or 3. Where the game starts to fall apart is in the level design: the game throws insane numbers of enemies at the player, and because the sprites are so large, all of this action is crammed into a tiny play space. It's interesting that "Back in the Groove!" made the exact same mistake-- I wonder what it is with that? Rather than feeling slow and deliberate like the original games, it feels "button-mashey" and hectic.

You can tell that the designers realized this, but rather than do a careful re-balancing, they just started throwing more and more food items all over the place. At one point during my play last night, there were two apples and two turkeys all visible on the screen, at the same time, in single-player!

The game also leans way too much on "invincible throw" enemies and other cheap-shot style antics, which are simply obnoxious: the "throw" enemies will "flash" for a couple of frames, then steamroll towards the player at top-speed and perform an un-interruptible toss, which can also not be "dodged" out of upon landing. Your only hope is to be in a position to jump over them, which is usually impossible because you're fighting the other eight enemies on the screen!

The music is a total whiff: it's boring and forgettable at best, and even has dubstep in it at worst. Apparently there is a menu option where the developers mapped some of Yuzo Koshiro's Mega Drive songs to each stage-- but that just feels ham-fisted and wrong. The character designs are also whiffs: why do they all look like they put on a hundred pounds? I've noticed video game characters getting fatter as people in real life get fatter: it reminds me of the fat logic phenomenon, "I'm just big-framed!" obesity normalization.

Just like "Back in the Groove!", "Streets of Rage 4" isn't a bad game, and it's cool to see strange new remixes based on vivid childhood experiences. But these two games also come nowhere near supplanting their original source material.