Mother Russia Bleeds

Remember when scrolling beat’em’ ups like Final Fight, Double Dragon or Streets of Rage ruled the day?

Well, welcome to Mother Russia Bleeds.

Developed by Le Cartel Studio and published by Devolver Digital Mother Russia Bleeds feels like a love letter to those games of yesteryear.

The story is straight out of a cheesy 80’s action flic and revolves around the soviet government, secret experiments, drugs, hallucinations, and, of course, lots and lots of fighting. And yes, it’s as weird as it sounds, and it’s fantastic.

If you ever played a 2-D scrolling beat-em-up, you’ll be right at home here. Three buttons plus a special move, and that’s all it takes to get the ball rolling. And boy does it get rolling pretty fast.

The action is almost non-stop, the violence is astonishingly brutal - being very reminiscent of Hotline Miami, another game by Devolver Digital - and it’s all punctuated by some visceral sound effects and by a more than decent soundtrack.

In the typical scrolling beat’em up fashion, you have four characters to choose from, each with its own set of skills speed, stamina, raw power, or you can pick the middle lane guy that is the most balanced of the bunch. Whatever you choose, you’ll have a blast.

The game can be played solo or in co-op mode, with the difficulty being slightly higher if you choose to play with a friend or even with a CPU ally.

The story mode can be dealt in a couple of hours once you get the hang of things, and there are some plot twists that make a second going almost an obligation but the replayability is there and replaying the game does not feel like a chore at any point - plus, you don’t have to do it… but I would advise you to.

After you’re done with the story mode, you can always play the game in survival mode where you’ll have to face increasingly difficult waves of baddies, and finally, you can play boss rush mode where you’ll face off against the games different bosses.

Between you and me, from this last two, survival mode is what keeps me coming back to this game. It’s just awesome sauce!

So Mother Russia Bleeds. It’s one of my favorite games. I love the pixel art style, I love the simplicity of it all, from the story to the controls.

The fighting feels solid in a throwback to the good old days kind of way, and just the overall aesthetic of this game is just right up my alley.

I’ll be the first to tell you that this is not a game for everyone. That’s for sure. It’s incredibly violent, it’s messy, and it’s very stupid at times, but it’s a fantastic game that I would recommend in a heartbeat to someone that’s a fan of games like Hotline Miami or to someone that’s just a bit nostalgic for the days when you’d spend an afternoon plowing through some bad guys, spending quarters at some old seedy arcade somewhere.