Urban Reign

Plot

In Urban Reign you take the role of Brad Hawk, a brawler who is hired by the leader of the Chinese Gang to find a kidnapped gang member. You fight your way through the streets of Green Harbor, a fortified city in the U.S., and as you do so, the true background of this whole thing reveals itself.

Gameplay

Urban Reign presents a unique style of gameplay, and when you get the hand of it, it's really satisfying.

Health System:
The character's health is represented with the typical Health Bar and with a diagram of each sector of the body, being divided in three parts (Head, Upper Body, Lower Body). This "Body Diagram" lets you know what the status of each body part is and also gives an idea of what each player should do; For Example : The player that has his/her head heavily damage will realize that he/she has to defend more that zone, and his/her rival will focus his/her attacks on the head. The character's parts are colored differently depending on how much damage they have received: Green is OK; Yellow is Hurt; Red is Broken. The more damaged they are, the more damage the character gets when hit in that specific sector.


Attack/Defense System:
Urban Reign's attack and defense system is simple and comfortable. You don't need to memorize specific combinations to make a billion hits combo, and you can create your own combos if you have a little creativity.
To attack you have a Strike Button and a Grapple Button, and both have variations to make different move if you input a direction at the same time you press the Strike/Grapple Button, making these moves having effect on different zones of the opponents body. For Example: If you press the Strike Button your character will throw a punch, but if you move the analog stick up and press the Strike Button it will make a specific move on the opponents head (a Roundhouse Kick, etc.)
Avoiding and Reflecting attacks is the same, you tap the Defense Button (or whatever you want to call it) to Avoid your enemy's attacks and neutral grapples, and you press it and input a direction to Deflect it. For Example: If you want to deflect a grapple that is applied to your lower body, you have to move the analog stick down and press the Defense Button at the same time, and at the right time, because it won't work if you do this later or earlier than the grapple.


Special Attacks:
Under your "Health Bar" there's a "Special Arts Gauge", which indicates how charged you are to make a specific Special Move. There are four different types of Special Arts, which are: Neutral SPA (a burst of power that is useful to set you free when cornered); Strong SPA (kind of a one hit Special Arts that makes a lot of damage); Combo SPA (as the name indicates, it's a long Combo that inflicts a lot of damage); Status Effect SPA (it changes your Character's Stats; increases power, invulnerability, new moves, automatic deflection). NOTICE: There are some characters that don't follow that specific "rule" and have two Combo SPA or two Strong SPA.
Special Arts can't be blocked but can be countered in case you have a longer Combo SPA than your opponent, or you can simply avoid getting hit by the special by using Neutral SPAs one after the other.

Main Characters

There is a big cast of characters when it comes to the multiplayer factor of the game, but only a few of them are important in the main core of the game:
 
Brad Hawk
Brad Hawk is the main protagonist of the game. He's a brawler-for-hire, not the most sociable person in the world, but the best when it comes to fighting.

Shun Ying Lee
She is the leader of Chinatown and the Chinese Triads. Hires Brad Hawk to help her prove that she's innocent for kidnapping the Zaps member KG.

Dwayne Davis
Leader of the Zaps. Lost his family when he was young so he takes his homeboys as his new family, specially his closest homie KG.

Glen Kluger
The leader of The Hell's Legions, a biker gang from the Downtown. Hired by Dwayne to help him take out the Chinese Triads.

Kadonashi Shotaro
The GrandMaster of the Kadonashi Dojo. He came from Japan and created his dojo.

Jake Hudson
He was an amateur wrestler but he gave up because of an injury. He became a brawler-for-hire, just as Brad.

Grimm
An ex-boxer who reached a pretty high world-ranking. He was asked to beat up Brad by his Westside Gym friends and also paid by Glen to do so.

Chris Bowman
A Capoeira practitioner from a middle-class family. He doesn't tolerate any person who laughs about his middle-class background.

Dae-Suk Park
A Tae-Kwon Do Master. A loner who's partial to gothic fashion. Due to the fact that he's always alone and always acts alone, it is impossible for others to read his mind.

Tong Yoon Bulsook
A Muay Thai champion from Thailand. Despite being a lone-wolf (like Park), he accepted money from Glen in exchange for fighting against Brad and Shun Ying Lee.

Alex Steiner
An enforcer from Green Hill. He was a Football player and an Amateur Wrestler back in his school days.

Douglas McKinzie
The leader and creator of the Shadow Platoon, a gang composed by a group of military renegades.

Napalm 99
A prisoner who formed a gang after getting out of the joint. His gang is known as The Outlaws, and all of the gang members except him have the name of the cell they were held in.

Golem
A former wrestler who killed an opponent in a match and since that moment he participates in underground fights.

Lin Fong Lee
Shun Ying's younger brother. Possibly the responsible of his father's death.

Shinkai
Leader of the Mushin-Kai Yakuza, and an excellent swordsman. He was hired by Bordin to put Green Harbor to chaos.

Bordin
Major of Green Harbor and responsible for the trouble that was caused in the city.

Bonus Characters

Marshall Law and Paul Phoenix, from the Tekken franchise, are playable characters in Urban Reign with their signature moves intact.