There was a time when "brawling" games were all the rage. I'm talking about games where you took control of a lone hero out of a certain selection and then swatted away at a number of nameless, talentless thugs as you worked your way to the higher-ups of a criminal organization, in an attempt to "clean up the city" and make things right. Actions speak louder than words, I suppose. Games such as Streets of Rage 2 and Final Fight were legendary for this genre, and other games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons became popular names in the arcade for their given ability to provide multiple gamers opportunity to beat up many a foe with familiar faces. Who knew Lisa Simpson could kick so much ass with a jump rope?

But lately, the genre has been on a downhill run. Beat-em-up games that get released in this day and age have been downright sucking, or at least failing on some kind of kinetic level. Why? What could possibly be the downfall of the "brawling" game as we know it? Well, there's a number of things that come into play.

The first is unnecessary complexity. When the old saying "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" is brought into play, it means something. Much of the problem with today's brawling game is that game developers try to make it so much more than what it is. Spikeout from Sega is probably the closest to success in terms of gameplay, as it kept it simply on a beat-em-up level, allowing the pick-up of many an item, like a girter or a crowbar as a weapon. Too bad that it failed on the presentation front, with ridiculously bad voices and characters that looked downright "fruity" in their street gear.

But things could have been a lot worse- and have been. Final Fight Streetwise arrived on the scene earlier this year, from the same team that did the awesome Maximo games, and it was just completely broken. The gameplay was uninteresting, even sinking you to the level where you were stomping rats. Worse yet, you had the ability to "recruit" new help, a feature that didn't really add that much to the gameplay.

Even Ninja Turtles is guilty of overcomplication. When the first game arrived for the current-generation consoles from Konami, gamers found the gameplay repetitive, and some crucial moves, like jump attacks and other combo moves, had to be unlocked as you went around. Still, the first game was a triumph compared to the next two, where the combo gameplay was broken down even further to the point it was almost inoperable. Attacks came across as stiff and uninteresting, and mini-stages involving shuriken throwing proved to be stale.

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