Vendetta
and Crime Fighters were insanely violent brawlers, but Violent Storm is
a bit more tame. Everything is much more comical and cartoon-like which may be a
disappointment for fans. Still, the overall package more than makes up for any bizarre
design decisions. The three characters are all useable, even the slowest of the group,
which is generally not the case. Seven levels lie ahead if you plan on accomplishing your
goal.
A tweak to the controls is slightly infuriating at times, but adds to the variety of moves. By pressing back, away, up, or diagonally in conjunction with the attack button, you'll perform one of many assorted attacks. Unfortunately, it's way to easy to do this and perform a move you don't need at the time. Other than this, everything is accurate in this area and you can still beat people when they're down, a trademark of the series.
The characters are large for this edition, especially when compared to the earlier two games. As mentioned above, everything takes on a new cartoony style and the violence level isn't as high, but some blood does remain. There's a gargantuan variety of items to collect from urns to radio-controlled cars. The final stage also has a few destructible Konami coin-ops which should bring a smile to any fan of the company. It's a great touch that adds that little extra to the experience an shows great care for the games visual appeal.
This game is crammed with pop rock, 50's style rock, early 90's rap, and 16-bit styled tunes. It's even more impressive that some of these songs even have lyrics. Sure, the rap is horribly dated, but no other brawler you'll play will have a soundtrack like this. You simply have to hear it to believe it. There's also a ton of dialogue between the characters to move the clichéd story along.
If Konami never released Vendetta, this would easily be one of the top beat-em-ups of all time. This is a great game, but the gameplay was refined in the previous edition. Fans may be slightly depressed about the series' change of character, but they'll quickly get into the gameplay and all will be forgiven.
