The more I play Spikeout the more I don't like it as much as I thought I would.
You are only given 1 life per stage and once you die, you start from the beginning, no checkpoints. If the difficulty was balanced I wouldn't had mind it, but no, it's not balanced at all. Normal feels like Hard and Easy feels like Normal, lol. Enemies are cheap as well and can even break through your combos. Bosses do insane damage no matter the difficultly, but it's best to kill them quickly as the other enemies run away from you once the boss is defeated, which is kind of funny BTW. The difficulty spikes are all over the place in this game.
I like challenge, I mean, I love Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Battletoads and such, but at least make it fair and balanced. If the stages were short I wouldn't mind, but no, the stages get longer the more you progress. You could be at the end of a level, but die all because of a boss or a cheap attack and have to start all over from the beginning.
Combat is nothing special and there aren't much variety in the move set. You have 1 standard attack(plus 1 standard combo), 1 strong attack(plus 1 strong combo), grab moves and a charge move, that's it. They could had done more with the combat as it gets repetitive after a while. I mean, you don't even have sprint and jump attacks, lol.
Controls are questionable. Grab enemies with the left thumbstick automatically instead of a button? Ok, odd because sometimes you'll accidentally grab an enemy by walking into them when you just want to punch/kick them. Double tap up on left thumbstick to sprint? Ok, very odd as you have all these buttons. To pick up weapons, you do this, and I kid you not: Push down on the left thumbstick and press x and y at the same exact time. Wow, no single button, you need 2 and the thumbstick. You can't bring your weapon once you clear an area, and if you get hit once with the weapon you drop it and it disappears forever. WTF, I expect that in a late 80s/early 90s game, not an Xbox game that has Dreamcast graphics.
The Battle Street Mode is basically the Story but with no cutscenes, customization like choose characters you unlocked, choose stages you unlocked, multiplayer for up to 4 and have continues. This is more fun than the story mode, and yet, you need to beat the stages to unlock them for this mode, lol.
It's a shame, I wanted to really like this, but man does this game have problems.
Otogi! 
