Streets of Red – Devil’s Dare Deluxe

Genre: Arcade Brawler

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Streets of Red is an Arcade Brawler where players take the role of a cosplayer at a convention that is suddenly swarmed with zombies. Magically given the powers of your cosplayed character, you fight off the zombies across four locations, each selectable in any order, but the longer you put off selecting a stage, the longer and more difficult it becomes.

Given the incredible potential that the game’s videogame references provide, I have to admit I’m disappointed at the pixel art presentation here, dominated by ugly browns, greys, and blacks, with occasional splashes of blue and red. I get that the idea behind the game was supposed to be “videogame characters versus horror monsters”, but “horror” doesn’t need to mean “bland-looking”.

The gameplay here is mostly pretty typical Arcade Brawler fare, though the game does add in a few Roguelike elements, and tries to add a bit of strategy to combat by encouraging players to use special moves to execute enemies. Unfortunately, the recharge on these moves was slow enough that I often found myself being told to finish an enemy without the capacity to do so, instead wailing blows on them until they simply died a death of a thousand cuts. This was not particularly fun or engaging.

I absolutely love the idea of a game that pits videogame characters against horror monsters, and I love the idea of a game full of videogame references, but somehow Streets of Red takes these ideas and saps the fun and excitement out of them. It’s still a decent Arcade Brawler, but it doesn’t do anything to compel players to keep playing it, and given that there a wealth of other better options on the Switch, I don’t see much reason to try this one.

tl;dr – Streets of Red is an Arcade Brawler that pits videogame character cosplayers against a horde of horror monsters, which sounds like a great idea, but a bland presentation and a poorly thought-out execution system sap much of the fun out of it. It’s still a decent game, but never comes close to meeting the full potential of the sales pitch.

Grade: C

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