Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance (PS2/Xbox) Review and Game Explanation.

Hello everyone, my name is Vladislav, and i'm glad to have you here on my channel. So in today's video, we going to take a look closer at "Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance", which was developed by "Cavia", and released by "Capcom" in 2005 for "PlayStation 2" and "Xbox".

So "Beat Down" is a beat 'em up style game, with some "RPG" elements are involved. And i say, as game in beat 'em up genre, unfortunately it was really underrated at time of it's release. Because in fact, this game is really fun to play, even nowadays, well, of course if you up to play some "old" stuff.

So in this video, i'm going to show you all interesting gameplay elements, gaming mechanics, and other good things, that you may be interested in, especially if you didn't play this game before. And let's start with title screen. As you can see, here we have 5 different options to choose.

New game, which is a story mode and main mode of this game, so during video we going to talk mostly about it. Load game, it is obviously how you're going to load your in game progress. Two versus modes, "Normal" and "Custom". For now we will skip them, but we will back to them later in video.

And options, where you can adjust various things, and especially difficulty, which is important. So yeah, that's basically a title screen, and now let's proceed to the new game. And straight away, in very first cutscene, we being introduced to main villain of this game - Zanetti, who is leader of underground mafia organisation.

And our five main characters, who was betrayed by their own gang family. So, in order to escape from dangerous situation, our heroes decided to split up, and that's where 1st interesting gaming mechanics takes it's place. So before proceed in game, we have to choose 1 of 5 playable characters.

And why i called this particular moment interesting, this because, of course everyone of them have it's unique move set and characteristics. But what's most important, everyone of them have it's own storyline, their own motives, which means different cutscenes and dialogs throughout game, and even different endings.

Of course main plot and missions of game, will mostly remain same, but different cutscenes and tonns of other stuff to do, that i going to show you now, is definitely adding great replayability to the game. So after we choose our character, we will appear in a Wharf, which is at least for now, will serve more as training area, where we are going to learn first basics of game, how to fight, and how to use items.

And first, let's take a look at fighting mechanics, because there actually two types of them, that we are going to see in this game. So first type, is your regular beat 'em up, when you have to fight against multiple enemies same time, and that's usually occur, when simply walking on the streets.

And second type, is more like 1 on 1 "3D Fighting". In this type of fighting, you will fight against bosses and certain NPC's, and that mechanic, i'm going to explain more deeply soon. So after we get out of Wharf, we finally ended up on streets of "Las Sombras", which is a small city, that separated by various districts, or areas, in between which, we can freely move, almost right at start of game.

But before, as NPC mentions, we have to go in a Bar, named as "The Hole", which will serve us as a hideout, and where we have to go and chance our clothes at start of game. Because as you can see, on upper left part of screen, at moment we are on "Wanted List" by police and by gang members.

So, as soon as either of them will spot you, you will have to fight with them. And i tell you, it can be very frustrating sometimes, especially when you have mission or quest, that are on timer, or simply low on healing items, yeah. So, soon as you reach bar , you will be introduced to several NPC's, that will give you quests, mission info, some gaming tips, and of course here you can save your ingame progress.

And yeah, so becareful, there is no autosave feature in this game, and it's possible to get even game over screen. After we did chance character clothes, one last thing to do before we may particiate in more gaming activities, is to go in "Police Station" and get "The Blacklist", which allow us to contact other ingame characters, soon as we unlock them.

So upon arriving in "Police Station", our character will end up in jail, that we have to escape of course. And after we do that, tonns of stuff finally will be unlocked. And first important feature will be negotiation process, Most times, by walking in "Las Sombras" areas, we will encounter various NPC's, and some of them may be a regular citizens, some of them may be "Zanetti Gang" members, which you not really want to approach, and same goes for police also, because as they spot you, your "Wanted" meter will start to raise.

And some of NPC's, like mission ones or quest ones, will have that negotiation menu appear, soon as you approach them. So in this menu, you can choose, to ask those NPC's to join your party, rob them for money, or interrogate them for useful information.

But most times, they actually will refuse to do so, and if that happens, you will have to force them to obey, by fighting them 1 on 1. But unlike regular 1 on 1 fight, this time, below health bar, there will be a special negotiation meter, that will decrease as you do damage to your enemy.

And as meter reach zero, just press circle, and negotiation process will start. Of course this time, it will be not as friendly as before, so after battle, once again several option will appear, force them to join your gang, rob them for money, interrogate, or...

Beat Down, yeah! Yeah, by choosing this option, your character will beat his opponent to death, and in result, your police wanted level of course will raise, but most important, this particular NPC will disappear until the end of game, so be careful with that option, especially if you want to build a solid gang from "Blacklist".

Oh yeah, and before we advace, i'd wanted to mention, that it's possible to find and recruit 4 other characters from begin of game, to your party, by fulfilling certain conditions, like have high rank before certain chapter in game. So now we figured out how to build our party, and soon as you get your first gang members, it's best time to go and do some quests, because quests, is a greatest source to get tonns of money, additional experience points, and respect.

And so, all that you need, if you going to play at least on "Normal" difficulty. Well respect mostly you need, if you want to find other 4 playable characters from begin of game. Experience points you will need to obviously level up your character, and as i mentioned at begin of video, there is a some RPG elements are going on.

So after every 1 on 1 battle, you will earn some experience points, and at each level up, you can spend few points to raise character attributes, like a strength, attack power and technique. So yeah, if you going to play this game on "Normal" or "Hard", then consider to do side quests, and level up your character.

So, as i mentioned, that quests is great source of money, but what are we going to do with them in this game? And there actually tonns of stuff that we can buy. From obvious things like weapons and medicine, to character clothing, and other visuals, and that's very cool part of game.

And yeah, i even bet, that at end of game, your character will look no where close to what he looked like at beginning. And so, is there a reason to buy all this stuff? And well... there is, of course apart of simple satisfaction. And first off, your clothes gets dirty and covered with blood, like you can see on screen.

And aside of that, by buying and changing your character looks, your "Gang" and "Police" wanted meters will go down, and that's already good to avoid any unnecessary confrontations. And next, just take a look at this face. Yeah, by fighting against enemies, face of your character will be eventually just destroyed, and you will need to do some facial surgery.

Yeah, aside of that, it's possible to buy jewerly, do haircuts, put some tatoos and stuff like that. Of course nowadays, all this stuff is a very common things in modern games, but it was really fun backdays. And okay, for last, let's back to title screen.

Yeah, remember we have two versus modes. So "Normal" one, is your regular 1 on 1 fighting mode, but this one can be played by 2 players. Of course, this mode was straight away outdated at game release, because why would you play this game as "3D Fighting", when it was already tonns of awesome fighting games like "Tekken" and "Mortal Kombat" been released on "PlayStation 2", and some of great fighting games was released on "Xbox" also.

Next, "Custom" versus mode, looks more interesting. at least on paper... yeah. Because for this mode, it is possible to load your characters from memory card, from your single player progress, and play as them. And so in theory, if someone had their copy of "Beat Down", and did progress in storyline, so those 2 friends, could load their characters from their own memory cards, and that would be at least somehow interesting, to play with absolutely differently progressed characters, and at least i think, that's how this "Custom" mode was designed, that what it's designed for.

But yeah okay, i think i did show you all most important ingame elements in this video, and it is time to conclusion. As i said at begin of video, i think "Beat Down" was a really underrated game for time of it's release, i read on Wikipedia, that game got mostly unfavorable reviews from critics, but as for me, i did enjoy this game during "PlayStation 2" era, beat it many times.

And even now, it was awesome to play this game again, because of interesting storyline, interesting gaming mechanics, tonns of stuff to do, and very satisfactional beat 'em up going on through entire game. But ok, yeah, that was it, that was my "Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance" review and game explanation video.