Street Warrior on the Playstation 2, from the early 2000s.
(what follows is a VERY abridged/rewritten version of the above video script).
In my quest to find the worst video game ever commercially released, I stumbled upon this one. It was actually sent by viewers after I saw the cover art somewhere and thought: Wow. That’s got to be some intense gaming experience right there.
Step aside, Street Fighter. It’s Street Warrior on the PlayStation 2, released in 2007. These guys on the cover art don’t just fight. They do an insane amount of bench presses by the look of it. They look like balloon animals.
The guys on the front cover don’t seem to appear in the game itself, which is a shame. Although you will get to play as a choice of six similarily roided-up lads.
The storyline in this one is…a lot.
“In the city of West Bay, the crime rate has gone through the roof and the government can’t deal with it. The streets have been overtaken by criminals. The government has hired the best of the best, a strike force agent named Bulldog.”
Thing is, Bulldog runs like a dad trying to find his hatchback in a supermarket car park. And soon as he makes it onto the scene, a bunch of blokes start charging at him. How do they know he’s special forces sent by the government? Maybe they’re just not taking any chances.
The second level is kicking off in an office, like a work do on a Friday afternoon. I actually like the 3D models for the desks and computers. I can see someone put effort in. It’s just a shame the same can’t be said for the character models… that is, until the lad dressed up for a fetish club shows up. He’s certainly a choice.
Even for a beat-’em-up, it’s especially repetitive. There are only four moves: kick, punch, pick up and tombstone. That’s it, mate, that’s all you’re getting. But you can spam the kick button and kick everybody in the dick forever. That does have its enjoyment factor.
After a couple of levels you get a story update, because yes, remember, there’s a storyline.
“The team was ambushed and only Bulldog escaped. The evidence was pointing that Bulldog was responsible for the accident.”
All the updates are written like AI before AI was a thing.
At first Bulldog was infiltrating, and now he’s just going round beating up everyone on behalf of the government. But not now. Now he’s trying to prove he didn’t kill his team by killing a bunch of other lads. So is he a criminal now, or still working for the government?
What is going on?
Then there’s a mention of a character called Snake, which I’m assuming is inspired by Kurt Russel’s character Snake from the 1980s film Escape from New York. If we meet this Snake guy and he’s not one of the most beautiful men ever, this is going to have been a massive waste of time. I wasted brain cells reading this badly written storyline and someone wasted theirs writing it.
Get most of the way through the game and you won’t see a single female-presenting person. Where are the ladies? I could be depressing and realistic and say they fled as soon as anarchy exploded. But I think the designers just didn’t think of anything other than males being able to throw a punch, which is funny, because barely any of the CPUs can.
And no blood, by the way. If there’s one thing you want in a beat-’em-up, it’s some frigging blood.
“Bulldog breaks into Snake’s house to hide, and finds a black notebook: his best friend is the gang boss, and the man responsible for betraying the team.”
Bulldog phones his friend Snake he gets jumped, goes to Snake’s house, and finds out Snake set him up. A character we’ve literally just been introduced to, with no backstory. What a twist.
More and more levels of dick kicking. Your man Bulldog is so good at ball busting he ought to make it a job.
When you FINALLY get to the end boss Snake, you’ll find he looks nothing like Kurt Russell. He’s not even shaggable, really. And for a final boss he’s not tough to kill. The whole game took me under forty minutes and it felt like forever.
And finally, Snake is defeated, and I am here for the thrilling conclusion….but it isn’t so thrilling. Bulldog and Snake have a sad little chat about how the latter was led astray by the idea of money and power, Bulldog gets a bit pissy with him, and that’s it. Well done, you finished the game.
I wasted a good forty minutes of my life for that half-arsed ending. Couldn’t give us an explosion or something? And no blood. Zero.
Isn’t the patriarchy interesting? Over-masculinisation displays men for the male gaze. Characters like Bulldog and the massive men on the game box art are what toxic straight men think is peak masculinity. If it were presented for the straight female gaze, these lads would have much smaller muscles, maybe a bit of a belly, natural body hair, and hobbies that make them interesting to talk to. They’d also go to the doctor long before they’re on their arse with some curable ailment. For God’s sake, stop putting it off, your leg’s hanging off.
I’m grasping at straws for things not to hate about this budget title, but I really like that it ends on a note of emotional maturity, especially after a whole game of “oh, big man, muscle punch, ow, punch face”. I’m starting to think the person who wrote this really put effort in. And effort is what matters. Even if your first attempt is rubbish, that’s what first attempts are for.
The publisher, Phoenix Games, chucked out a lot of rubbish on various platforms, and I am yet to find a good one on their books. Street Warrior is not the worst. I’m willing to bet it was made by about three people, probably very young and possibly unpaid. I think they did the best they could.
I can’t even be that mad at a budget title. Honestly, playing it with a mate isn’t bad if you’re both feeling giggly, since repeatedly kicking blokes in the dick is really funny. The character models are trash except for the gimp daddies, but the presence of a kinky bastard makes up for a lot. The music is actually quite solid, better than I’d expect from a budget title.
I don’t know, maybe this one gets a five or a six out of ten. It’s rubbish but I had a bit of a laugh with it when I wasn’t bored out of my arse.
