Final Vendetta Review (Nintendo Switch)

If like me you're a fan of the beat em up genre, you really are spoiled for choice at the moment.  Final Vendetta is the latest offering from UK indie studio Bitmap Bureau, paying homage to the likes of Streets of Rage and Final Fight. Two of my favourites growing up.

The story of the game is about as deep as you’d expected, and want. Your sister is kidnapped this time, and you select one of three playable characters with traditionally varied stats, to brawl your way through 6 locations across the city to get your revenge on your own or in local co-op.

The game has your standard controls, attack, jump, double tap any direction to dash into or out of the action, and also a few new twists. It’s common to have a special attack, usually pressing jump and attack together, to clear enemies in your immediate vicinity at the expense of a chunk of your players health. Final Vendetta has this but with the addition of the Super meter at the bottom of the screen. When fully charged you can unleash the attack without the penalty.

There’s a separate special attack button which has various different functions. For example with hitting the special button while standing over a downed opponent lets you stomp a mud hole into your foe which as satisfying and it is comical.

There’s also a dedicated block button which I’m not used to in this type of game, and I keep forgetting it’s there to be honest and have to remind myself to use it when I’m getting my arse handed to me…. Which happens a lot!

The game is pretty difficult, even on the easy setting. I wouldn’t say it’s exceptionally difficult but certainly on par with harder games in the genre from back in the day. There are no modern quality of life aids either. 5 lives on hard, 7 on easy and when you're dead, you're dead. No continues, no level select when you restart, it’s back to the begining. You’re going to have practice to see the later levels in the game even on the easy setting.

The pixel art style really is striking with its huge character sprites detailed animation, but for me it was the sound track that was the most impressive feature. The music pays homage to the era with a variety of 90’s influenced beats from hip hop to hardcore, and with tracks from Featurescast, Utah Saint’s and Krafty Kuts, and it really does drip with quality. Being a life-long fan of the UK rave scene, I can honestly say this one of my favourite sound tracks of all time! It’s a bold statement I know but just listen to a few of these tracks and you’ll understand where I’m coming from…

There are a 4 different game modes, arcade, survival, boss rush and training, with the latter three being locked until you complete the arcade mode… I get this for the other game modes, but I’ve no idea why you would lock the training mode. As I mentioned earlier, the game is pretty difficult, and I’d imagine the training mode would be really useful. And again I’m not sure why you would even need the training mode when you’re good enough to completely the game. Maybe I’m missing something obvious but it did hit me as a strange design choice this.

I think the best way to describe Final Vendetta is it’s the game you remember playing in the 90’s. A lot of the time your memories of classic games are kinder than you’d like to admit. If you actually revisit them, the graphics aren’t as good as you remember and the games don’t play slick as you thought.

Final Vendetta is quite a bare bones experience. There are no upgrades across multiple plays, no levelling systems, collectables or any of the modern mechanics we just assume are bolted on to all games these days. But the replay-ability comes from the tough but fair difficulty and the satisfying game play.

My only real disappointment is the lack of online co-op due to my personal circumstances living in a differencing country to most of my gaming friends. But I understand adding net code for online play isn’t a case of just flipping a switch and this does stay true to the concept of preserving the authentic 90’s experience.

I feel sorry that this was released one day apart from the Turtles: Shredders Revenge game in the same genre as I think the licence alone took most of the attention, but despite the obvious similarities, they are actually two very different approaches to the same concept. While Shredders revenge is great and offers a lot of the features I mentioned about where missing, Final Vendetta is more authentic if you want that real 90’s throwback. It’s one of those cases of needing to check out both rather than choosing one, and as they are both priced affordably it’s not going to break the bank. And again I can’t emphasise enough how much you need to check out the sound track if you like 90’s rave music or just appreciate a great game soundtrack in general!!!