Raging Justice (Nintendo Switch) Review

Have you ever played Final Fight? Then you have played Raging Justice. That means that this is great, right? Not in the slightest. In all honesty, Final Fight and its ilk were never as awesome as most remember them to be, which is one of the reasons why the genre sort of disappeared somewhere in the late '90s, as even its most famous representatives were quite repetitive and afraid to innovate… and this is exactly like that.

The concept is simple. Pick one of the fighters, and then punch, kick, and trashcan your way through the One Million Clones Gang; the dumb simpletons that most would expect to find in 1989's Golden Axe. The way this copies the beat 'em ups of the past poses the question of why should anyone play this instead of their favourite brawler, especially since the one at hand carries over the same bunch of flaws that plagued those oldies.

Raging Justice is repetitive - like, insanely, unbelievably, astonishingly repetitive. Playing with a friend will soften the blow, but this remains an annoyingly sleep-inducing experience. It could be argued that repetitiveness sort of goes with the territory, and that it's actually the immersion where the fun is at, but no, immersive this is not, especially since the controls are so stiff, that you will never feel like the tough street fighter you are supposed to be.

Raging Justice is also quite boring to look at. For starters, its love for the past led to this adopting pseudo-3D visuals akin to Killer Instict, albeit in HD. The difference is that the art style of Killer Instict was striking - this is not. Moreover, the ragtag of gang members that players will have to fight with are identical to the ones in Final Fight; the generic thug, the super-obese one, the prostitute, and so on, making it clear that the developer hasn't even tried.

The whole thing is just that, then? A clone, which, judging from the controls, is not even a good one? Well, yes, that's exactly what this is. The only "innovation" is the 'bad cop/good cop' mechanism, which basically allows for the arrest of goons rather than simply kicking their behinds, gaining a nice little health-replenishing burger in the process. Whereas tasty junk food is usually the solution to most of life's problems, a burger is not enough to do justice to, well, Raging Justice.