Streets of Rogue

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG / Roguelike

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local, Online)

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Review:

Streets of Rogue, which has nothing to do with the similarly-named Streets of Rage, is a Top-Down Action-RPG with strong Roguelike elements, along with some Two-Stick Shooter elements, and even a little sandbox-style gameplay. It’s a game that casts you as a covert resistance fighter in a dystopian city, going from one “floor” of the city to the next with specific goals to complete, but allowing you to go about those goals at your discretion.

One of this game’s greatest strengths is how flexible much of the gameplay is. Players can treat this game as an action game, a stealth game, an RPG… there’s potential here for all of these elements to be the focus of a player looking to lean in more of one direction or another. You have to go a building and steal an item from a safe – do you go in guns-blazing? Do you lure out the guards and sneak in while they’re distracted? Do you bribe some local gang members to cause a ruckus and slip by while the guards are occupied? Break into the back through the window? Toss lit cigarettes into the air filtration system, smoking everyone out of the building? Hack into the security systems? These are just some of the options this game allows for.

That said, not all of these options are available for every building you want to enter, and often your resources will be limited. During each play-through, you only have your starting equipment and whatever you can scrounge, rob, loot, or barter for on the way, and different buildings will pose different challenges.

These are pretty lofty ambitions for a game, and Streets of Rogue frequently rises to the occasion, allowing players to truly play the game their way… but during my time playing the game, I found that frequently the game seemed to be nudging me towards simple brute force violence. If there’s no computer to hack, no vents to sabotage, no convenient back room window to bust into, and I can’t afford to hire goons to fight for me… welp, I guess I’m gonna’ be killin’ again. It’s a bit disappointing that the game dangles a delightfully varied box of tools in front of you, but then often seems to require you to deal with nail after nail that you’ll be using the same hammer to pound on.

The presentation here is good, with 16 bit-style graphics that are somewhat nostalgaic, decent lighting effects, and an overall visual look that makes it easy to assess the area quickly. It’s just a bit unfortunate that so much of the environment looks really samey. The game also has a pretty good soundtrack with some memorable tunes, as well as a wonderful sense of humor.

Overall, Streets of Rogue is an excellent game that meshes multiple genres and gives players a lot of options how to play… most of the time, anyway. And while I wish the freedom it gives to players was one that players could feel more consistently, when this game works well, it’s fantastic.

tl;dr – Streets of Rogue is a Top-Down Action-RPG Roguelike that gives players a few goals in each level and lets the player decide how to best go about completing those goals. When it works well, it’s fantastic to have so much freedom, though it feels like the game occasionally pushes players towards simple brute force violence, undermining that sense of freedom. Still, this is overall a fun game with a lot of variety.

Grade: B

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