I am very late for a beating with Treachery In Beatdown City
Becoming a games critic is a great way to think about failure all the time. Oh, you're tormented by that terrible time you didn't do enough? Amateur. The unwritten articles, the uncovered games, the abandoned projects: space-time itself recoils at the black hole of their uncountable billions. I should've stuck to shelving. You know where you stand with a shelf.
Treachery In Beatdown City made me feel this way twice over, thanks to a huge "remix" re-release, and thus a second layer of "Argh, I've left it too long now". Well, what the hell, let's do it now. You like smacking virtual jerks around, right? You like unusual designs and experimental genre fusions? You hate microaggressions? Well now. This is an interesting one.
It's a more cerebral Double Dragon where instead of button mashing, you alternately avoid enemies while action bars refill, then pause time to spend them in a Fallout 3 VATS-ish combo menu, ordering unique attacks with many status effects for preparing later moves or bypassing varied defences. The rhythm and balancing take a lot of getting used to, and a little too much waiting, but mean a long tail and more varied options and fights over time.