Team 17 and Makin Games announced that their new cooperative beat-’em-up title, Raging Justice, is due for release at some point in 2018 for the Nintendo Switch, Steam, PS4, and Xbox One.

The game features the typical eight-direction, side-scrolling beat-’em-up gameplay that was popularized throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s for arcades and home consoles. They even managed to slap some diversity on there, teaming up the tough black chick with an older white street brawler to keep the shrill harpies from shrieking on social media.

In a way it reminds me of the old 3D beat-’em-up game from Mucky Foot Productions that came out in 1999 for the PSX and PC called Urban Chaos, which featured a black female cop teaming up with a white street brawler to clean up the streets.

In Raging Justice the game centers around Rick Justice and Nikki Rage, hence the name Raging Justice. The duo head through the city to clean up the mean streets and right the wrongs that the law either won’t address or can’t address.

The gameplay is classic beat-’em-up style with combos, grab moves, lawnmowers and weapons. You can check out the gameplay in the trailer below.

Like most games in the genre it features a bevy of grotty looking thugs, hookers, and brutes that would fit right in with Antifa if they switched to a soy and Tide-pellet diet.

The reactions to the trailer from the comment section seem about par the course for how the quality of the game’s content comes across in the video. The two main characters aren’t particularly appealing at all. If Makin Games was gunning for the diversity angle they really missed the target here, since Nikki Rage is neither waifu-bait nor fap-bait (not that the two are mutually exclusive).

Rick Justice also just looks oh-so-generic.

The fighting system is also passable par, which isn’t really the sort of thing most people would find enticing for a beat-’em-up title. It lacks the grungy gore of games like Mother Russia Bleeds and the finesse and quality of Streets of Rage Remake. Hopefully before it fully releases they’ll be able to give it some spunk and life to spruce up the aesthetic appeal a bit, especially as far as the two main characters are concerned.