STREET BOYZ
Original Release: 505 Games, 2004, PlayStation 2
A seeming attempt to take advantage of the fact that the Kunio beat-em-ups never got a 3D entry, Street Boyz is too cheap and chintzy to be enjoyable
Street Boyz (PS2, 505 Games, 2004)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
505 and D3 did a whole lot of knockin' off for their budget product line, this was clearly their attempt to knock off the Kunio games in general ... but it did at least move the concept into 3D, something Technos never got around to (at least for beat-em-ups) before they went bankrupt.
It's a janky, low-budget jump to 3D, though. Slow and stiff movement and slidey hard-to-line-up attacks are paired with plain mazelike environments that use repetitive graphical assets to bore you to sleep.
There's an ongoing story, but if you press X to try to speed up the cutscenes it just cuts off the whole thing. We're in a near future where government appears to have mostly collapsed and gangs run everything. Our street punk hero gets arrested unfairly, but then remembers law isn't supposed to exist here and just beats his way out of the police station (the police do have a small army for what is supposed to basically be lawless dystopia).
The story is rarted but the gameplay does not make up for it. As with so many other D3 beat-em-ups, for whatever reason lining up with and actually hitting the foes is extremely finicky. Fortunately, they're all fat on donuts and lazy and really take their time about capitalizing on your flailing. You also have an omnipresent follower guy with a wooden sword who will just take care of foes if you hang back and let him.
The coolest bit of the game is that you can pick up foes and swing them as a weapon, or even hurl them at oncoming enemies ... the downside is your already kinda slow movement speed throttles to an absolute crawl while you're carrying anything.
While the idea of a 3D Kunio "homage" might sound appealing, there's really nothing to enjoy here and it isn't worth bothering with. It's kinda like if they tried to cobble a beat-em-up into the Blue Stinger engine.
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