Breakneck City Review

Breakneck City tells the story of Sidney Flintlock and Justine Jacobs who are on a revenge path after a vicious gang tries to burn down their favorite video shop. Sidney and Justine are looking to bring down the evil gang to justice by busting the heads of anyone who will stand in their way of getting their revenge.

Breakneck City is a 3D polygonal beat’em up where players can play as either Sidney Flintlock or Justine Jacobs. Characters can punch, kick, jump, and jump-kick their way through waves of enemies. Our heroines can also pick up various weapons dropped by enemies.

As with any typical beat’em up, you progress through a level and beat up a handful of enemies before the area unlocks and allows you to progress forward. Rinse and repeat. Afterward, you’ll go head-to-head with the level’s boss.

As with most beat’em up, you can also pick up weapons dropped by enemies and whack the cronies to your liking until the weapon breaks. You can also punch or kick enemies into items from the environment such as chairs, garbage bins, and steam pipes; just to name a few. You can also pick up health items to regain some health.

The game does feature unique low-poly graphics and pixel art textures in a 3D-like realm reminiscent of the PS1 era. Each level has a unique theme to them to avoid design repetition. The camera gives a look from afar of the battlefield. Enemy diversity is fine and nothing special. As for the soundtrack goes, it’s easily one of the worst scores I’ve heard in the last five years. Easy. It does sound like the development team had a fight with a keyboard. And lost.

Where do I begin? Combat is clunky; the character takes quite some time to wind up their kick attack that it leaves you open to damage. The camera is also problematic; it’s easy to lose track of your character when surrounded by enemies. Also sometimes the camera is actually behind the enemies coming at you meaning you can’t see yourself; only your health bar is being drained because you don’t know where to attack. And when surrounded by three enemies or more, expect to be bounced around to death.

Breakneck City is the prime example of a game that’s either a joke or clearly, hasn’t gone through a thorough quality assurance process. The combat mechanic, the most important aspect of a beat’em up, feels random, unresponsive, and clunky. Given that it’s in a 3D environment, not being able to target a single enemy when surrounded makes things unnecessarily frustrating. Double Dragon Arcade is better than this. Had it been the first ever beat’em up, sure it would’ve been competent. But considering the variety of better, and deeper, beat’em up experiences, do not waste your time and money on this.