Who doesn’t love a classic scrolling beat-’em-up? From Streets of Rage to Final Fight. Numerous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. The classic The Simpsons arcade game. The genre is litered with classics. However, modern examples of progression in the genre are fewer between. In this Last Beat Enhanced review, we’ll discuss how the game attempts to exactly that modern ground breaker.
From the off, Last Beat Enhanced wears it’s inspiration in its sleeve. The bad guys are called ‘Mad Stroke’. The visuals resemble Double Dragon. You have a special ability to get you out of trouble, but it costs some of your health. Much like in Streets of Rage. It’s not ashamed of the ideas it borrows – as it rightfully shouldn’t be, as they all now lie somewhere between homage and genre staples.
Where Last Beat Enhanced does offer innovation is in that of its combat system. The titular ‘beat’ refers to a counter that increases with every successful attack landed, but resets upon taking a blow. Nothing unusual about that, you may think. However, maintaining a combo will increase the multiplier for points, which acts as in-game currency. This currency can then be spent upgrading your characters between levels – adding longer health bars or a faster special recharge – subsequently improving your chances on later levels.
Unfortunately, that’s about it. Last Beat Enhanced does feature some level variety thanks to vehicle segments, and the co-operative gameplay is good fun. However, there’s nothing else here that you haven’t seen before.
That’s not to say it’s bad. Not by any means. It’s just that, as stated in the intro to this Last Beat Enhanced review, innovation in the scrolling beat-’em-up genre is hard to come by, and here we see too little up against a resurgence from the likes of Streets of Rage 4.
The game features eight levels, multiple characters to unlock and even a hidden secret at the very beginning. And this is all perfectly enjoyable. However, there are better examples of the genre coming from all corners at present. Diehard fans will not be disappointed, but if you’re only going to buy one scrolling beat-’em-up this year, there are numerous better options out there.
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