Considering that Streets of Rage 4 is one of the handful of games I have ever given a perfect score on my review, it is easy to say that I was excited when Dotemu, Guard Crush Games, and Lizardcube announced the Mr. X Nightmare DLC. Now that I have had a chance to dive into this DLC, playing a few rounds of the new Survival game mode, and get to know the new characters a little better, I have to say that this game is just getting better!

The characters they brought into the roster were great choices and I have really been enjoying how unique their fighting styles are. Plus, this DLC was downloaded at the same time as the free content update, so I’ll be sure to include some details on how that also improved the game’s overall quality.

New Content

With this DLC, we have been given three new characters to play as. Estel Aguirre, Max Thunder, and Shiva. While I have never been a big fan of Max, I had to give Estel and Shiva a thorough playthrough. To do this, I took both characters through the Survival mode and checked out their tutorials to get a broad case on what they can do.

Estel is a very direct fighter that is good for short and medium-ranged attacks. Just as you saw from when you fought her, she has some heavy kicks that do a crazy chunk of damage and her added abilities that weren’t included in her AI are pretty awesome. Leaning into her badass cop personality, she has a variety of attacks that are useful like the cop-style takedown tackle, sucker punch downward (an unlockable move that is similar to the Commissioner’s attack), and the choice between a flash or regular grenade.

Shiva is more of a close-action fighter where his punches are kept close to his body. But once you land the first punch, well-timed button pressing can lead to a damaging combo. Most enemies, including some of the harder to kill ones, are able to be managed easily with his combo attacks thanks to the mixture of being able to fight on both the ground and the air. He is the only character that has a standard eight-hit combo that can be executed by landing the first half on the ground, jumping, then landing the rest in air - with the option to end it by slamming them into the ground. This doesn’t even go over his martial arts style heavy hits and blitz attacks.

Max can be good for close and long-range, depending on how you use him. His long-range style brings him into the enemy’s close range, so it might even be better to say that he can aggressively close the gap between himself and enemies. From there you can land some mighty blows through shorter combos that just do serious damage. His grab attack can be repeated though as the wrestler side of his character does have some crazy moves once he has the chance to clasp his hands around an enemy.

The survival mode is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You go through round after round and try to last as long as possible. There are two options though: randomized and weekly. The weekly option will update by the developers and provide a consistent set of rounds so players know what is coming after the first go through, unlike the inability to know what lies ahead with randomized.

After each round, players are presented with their choice of power-ups to collect. When you play single-player, these power-ups just stack more and more, making your character feel more and more indestructible. I’ll let you know now, you are always one good enemy attack timing away from losing. If you play this on co-op with another player, the power-ups will only affect the one who collects it. When I played this with my friend, we just took turns collecting a power-up each round.

Keep in mind that if you die during a co-op session in survival, one of the power-ups will become the option to revive your teammate. This is not a given at the end of a round, so one player dying will come at the cost of a power-up choice. My friend and I handled his by having whoever survived the round and revived the other got the power-up in the next round.

After you reach the end of your run on survival, the amount of experience you earned will be applied to the character you played as. These points will go towards the new extra moves that each character has been given. As you unlock these moves, they can be selected when you are picking what character you want to play as, regardless of what mode. This will allow players to have a bit more of a unique take on their character’s moves as they will be able to change one of up to five different moves the fighters already have to another move instead. It also clearly states what move you are looking at changing on the list, so you are never confused as to which move is being swapped out.

Other than the new characters and survival mode, the main thing I noticed from the update was the list in tutorials. This was part of the free update, along with some overall gameplay fixes, and now there is a tutorial breakdown for all of the main characters in the game. If you ever want to know how to optimize your favorite character’s move set, these tutorials will help with that. After a little time in tutorial to learn their moves, the new color palette’s that each character got won’t be the only thing making you look cooler as you clean up the streets!

Conclusion

The mixture of the Mr. X Nightmare DLC and the free update that all players were given has done nothing but improved this amazing game even further! Now there are alternate moves to choose from, new fighters with completely different styles, new color options for each character, and a fun game mode that really challenges even the best players. This was definitely the best DLC option for the team to make and I am very pleased with what all is included for the low price of $7.99 USD. Fair, fun, and better than before!