The Karate Kid: Street Rumble Review (Switch)

Of all the retro inspired sub-genres to have a comeback recently, we weren’t expecting 80’s nostalgia-based side scrolling beat’em ups with cartoon graphics to be one of them. We’ve had various Turtles games, Double Dragon: Gaiden and there’s the upcoming Toxic Crusaders. You can now add The Karate Kid to that mix. The Scott Pilgrim game has certainly had an influence.

The game does look great though. Locations are initially a bit dull but get better as you progress and take in the familiar locations of high school, beach, arcade and other areas around Reseda. The jump to Japan for the second film offers up some lovely sprite work and though the general designs of characters does repeat, everything individually looks pretty great.

Perhaps a little surprisingly, Street Rumble follows the plot of the first three movies instead of the more recent Cobra Kai series. You get to pick from four characters – Daniel, Ali, Mr Miyagi and Kimiko. Each character has the same basic set of attacks, but they range in speed and strength and have individual signature moves. So, there’s just enough here to make players try a few different playthroughs to find their favourite.

Combat is solid and fluid, with players able to mix light and heavy attacks together smoothly to create their own combos. You can add your signature attacks to this as well, meaning there’s good opportunities to juggle enemies or switch to new targets as required. You can also grab and throw enemies. The overall movement is limited but then that goes for about ninety percent of these types of games. One notable thing is that you can’t pick up weapons, so combat is really about keeping your combo meter going for as long as possible with the moves you have.

There’s an interesting health system in play as well with the player only taking proper health damage when their special meter is empty. This means you can take the odd hit without it causing too much trouble as long as you are on the offensive. Once you lose your three lives in a stage though you are done. Even if you are at the boss, it’s back to the beginning. This is well balanced though but can still be a touch frustrating as some of the stages are a touch long.

There’s also a low level exp grind at play where your characters can level up and gain new signature moves and other bonuses. The main way to do this is via secondary challenges within the levels. These normally come down to beating enemies a certain number of times with certain attacks or not taking health damage. It’s a pretty basic part of the game that lacks much invention, but it gives something for the box tick completionists to do.

Overall, The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is a well put together and good-looking game that plays nicely. The only real issue is that it can get repetitive quickly and some of the levels are pretty long and uninspired in terms of design. For short bursts it works really well and there are some nice systems here. It will be good enough for fans of both the films and side scrolling beat’em ups though. There’s also a lot that could be built and expanded on if they decide to move forward into other Karate Kid properties as there’s a really solid foundation in the design here.

Overall 7/10