The side-scrolling beat’em up is one of my all-time favorite video game genres.  My nauseating love for Streets of Rage 2 has been well-documented, but really, any of the classics appeal to me: Final Fight, Golden Axe, TMNT, Guardian Heroes and, most recently, Castle Crashers.

So any time a new installment is announced I get excited.  Is it possible for developers to recapture the magic those old-school brawlers had?  The latest entry is The Warriors: Street Brawl.  I took the demo out for a jaunt.  My reactions after the jump.

Man, I guess it is a lost art to put together a fun side-scroller.  This is what I realized after my demo run with Street Brawl, which has some good things going for it–the source material is, of course, awesome, the presentation is slick and it definitely feels vintage–but in the end, I opted to pass on the purchase and continue pining for the second coming of Axel, Blaze and Max.

The character animation is floaty, the attacks are uninspired and the AI is brutal.  It’s just not terribly fun.  To be fair, as I continued to play it, my entertainment factor rose by a few degrees and the addition of buddies in co-op might help, but I certainly wasn’t enamored enough to mandate an exchange of Microsoft points.

What is the winning formula for a successful beat’em up?  Whatever it is, these Warriors, alas, don’t appear to have it.