After two months of crying and denial, we got round to playing Beat Down: Fists of Vengance. The strategy of chavving your games up for fun and profit has finally reached Japan and, as you could probably predict, has come out like a kitten that's shat itself on your bed. It's adorable, but it's still disgusting and has to be shut in the fridge until it learns.



Join "A Street Fighting Man Raven," "Clever Fighter Aaron" and the inevitable six foot black guy "JASON G" as they struggle to defeat Chester, Wallace, Fatima, Eugene and Ignacy. It's like when you were sixteen and too embarassed to show your friends Final Fantasy because the main character was called Cecil, all over again.

Capcom's biggest secret weapon for making the game feel "Street" and "Cred" and "A lot of other things in quote marks to denote that we're making a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle while saying it" is the incessant repetition of the phrase "WE ARE ON THE BLACK LIST" which is clearly the "Street"-est thing anyone in Tokyo has ever heard.



Sorry, Japan. You do not have gangs like America has gangs. You do not even have gangs like Walton on the Naze has gangs. Please leave this nonsense to EA and Rockstar and go back to making happy games about hedgehogs and mice and mushrooms and rape and destroying the world with a giant beachball.