Developer: Soft Machine Publisher: Virgin Release: 08/18/00 Genre: Beat em up
The original PlayStation has games for everyone in every genre. You like fighting games? Well god damn son there is an embarrassment of riches. Sports games? There are titles for obscure sports like Rugby and Lacrosse. Are you jealous of Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie? It took a little while but the likes of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot were good substitutes. But side scrolling beat em up fans had slim pickings and what was available was mostly awful unless you like imports. Crisis Beat tries to offer a 3d beat em up experience to remind you of Streets of Rage. But while its combo system is cool the game the rest of the game is not.
On Christmas Eve of 1998 a cruise liner named the Princess of the Fearless is hijacked by terrorists led by Lt. Colonel Whigren. Their objective is not initially clear but in the chaos four passengers manage to escape the terrorist’s clutches. This ragtag group comes together to not only save the passengers but to also foil Whigren’s plan.
Crisis Beat was released in Europe at the tail end of the PlayStation’s life and two years after Japan. The years were not kind to this game and only highlight its many flaws. It has a bare bones localization with subtitles in its cutscenes. But calling it localization is a stretch. The dialogue reads like they used Google translate years before that was a thing and has awkward sentence structure and plenty of typos. Not that it matters, even if the story was properly translated it would not save this game.
The playable cast is a random bunch with nothing in common. Eiji is a New York police officer on vacation who just so happens to get swept up in the chaos. Julia is a supermodel on a shoot who is unlucky. Yan Fei-Hsu is a teenager working part time on the ship and lucky enough to escape. Keneth is a Russian kick boxing operative and the only one who is purposely following the terrorists. For story reasons the characters are paired and it affects multiplayer. In two-player mode you can only play as Eiji and Julia or Yan Fei and Keneth initially. Once you beat the game it unlocks free mode where you can mix and match but there are no cutscenes during gameplay. The pairing system is stupid as it only affects the first level and boss for each group. It adds nothing to the game and is annoying.
The best way to describe Crisis Beat is Under Siege in game form. Mechanically the game is dense for a beat em up. You have two attack buttons, one for punch/high attack and kick/low attack, a dash/quick step button, and a separate button for your all-range attack. By mixing your two separate attacks you can perform combos of varying lengths. While everyone has one or two combos that are the most damaging the system is free form enough that you can create your own. In addition there are grapples, throws, and you can flip objects in the environment to damage multiple enemies. Speaking of the environment, the lock-on counter system uses hot spots in the background to send enemies flying for massive points and usually kills them in one combo. Bottom line, you have plenty of options.
Your arsenal of attacks would be fun to play around with if the terrorists were more committed to the cause. Whether they are soldiers, brawny goons, or ninjas they lack any aggression. Even though they attack in groups of four or five they are content to stand by and wait for your attack. Most of the times you get hit will be from an off-screen bullet when they finally decide to do their job. Attacks inflict little damage and the few times I died it was because I was playing around with the combo system. Even the bosses behave in similar fashion. The one exception is the final boss. In his second phase he gains numerous attacks and can perform reversals and grappling moves. It is very cheap but also a glimpse of what could have been if the AI were better.
Raising the difficulty does not make the terrorists smarter, it only increases their life bars. It makes an already tedious game more monotonous. The pacing is all over the place. Each level is a series of interconnected rooms within a restricted area. Some are small and others large. The bigger rooms drag on too long with too many repetitive waves despite the game’s best efforts. The fun of flipping tables and drums is short once you realize it is better to spam the one combo each character possesses that kills most enemies in one flurry.
In Closing
Crisis Beat is close to being a good game. The mechanics are sound but the game surrounding them is lackluster. The brain dead AI poses little challenge and you will choose expediency over experimentation to get it over with as soon as possible. It is a damn shame as there is the making of a solid game underneath the baggage. You are better off playing Tai Fu or Panzer Bandit to get your brawler fix.
