Put about 45 minutes of play time into the game, here's my initial impressions.
I think Urban Reign is pretty damn cool so far. Good storyline/cinema presentation,
awesome soundtrack (reminds me of Tekken 3 mixed with great themes for fighting
in general, be it movies, games, whatever...very nice), and great game play.
Visually it looks like Tekken 4 to me (but a bit more impressive since there's multiple
characters on the screen), and has the same type of cinemas using the in-game character
models. Voice acting is actually decent enough so far, but some of the various
thugs will give you a chuckle. The main character is voice by the same actor that
was Spike Speigal in the Cowboy Bebop dub...I keep thinking of that show now when
I play as him.
I don't think the game's A.I. is cheap at all, just challenging. You can't block,
so you HAVE to master the counter button. Countering is also easy for
anyone that knows not to button mash. Also since you are mainly fighting 3-4 other
guys at one time, you can't just blindly charge into the group and mash away...you
have to use strategy. These are all things that you'd think would be obvious to
everyone, but there's just too many button mashers out there playing these games.
The best way to describe the game play is to say it's a fusion of Tekken and Soul
Calibur together in beat-em-up form. You have one attack button, a grapple button,
a counter button, and a run button. You can attack in various ways, like combos,
juggle starters, moves that knock away multiple enemies, knock downs, etc. You
can also do super attacks, and messing around in practice mode, I noticed that some,
if not all, the weapons have their own super attacks as well. You can also do some
nasty-looking grapples, run up walls (and come down with attacks OR grapples), and
use the environment for more damage (throw guys onto cars, into chairs/tables, etc.),
as well as focus on certain areas of the body to weaken them faster.
When you pick up various weapons, your character's combos change. I tried using
the main female character (the Chinese girl), for example. She has some of Ling's
moves from Tekken, but when you have a Chinese sword, she gets some of Xiangua's
attacks. I also like that different swords have different attacks...the katana
does not handle the same way as the Chinese sword. Most BEU game don't do this.
I think Urban Reign is basically like an improvement on what Def Jam Vendetta offers.
It's a combination of arena fighting and a beat-em-up games together, only with more better character design and no shitty music. (And I like some of the Defjam artists, but EA Trax must die) Law and Paul Phoenix from Tekken are unlockable characters, BTW, and there's also a Muay Thai fighter that might as well be Tony Jaa, from what I have read. I still have yet to get to the missions where you get an A.I. partner, so I don't know how that works. I do know with a partner, you can do some really cool team grapple attacks, since the CPU has already hit me with a few of them.
Oh, and the game does offer two player co-op. The catch is that you can't do it
in story mode, but in the free/challenge modes, which let you play through the story
missions with any character. However, you have to unlock these modes by beating
the game first. You could play 2P co-op versus mode matches against the computer,
though.
So for now, I think Urban Reign is a bit underrated. Good game in my book so far.
)
The characters seem to have a large amount of moves from Tekken characters, too.