In 1992's Streets of Rage 2 Eddie Hunter, better known to his friends as 'Skate', wore a yellow vest and red rollerblades. In a pinch he could roll into a tight little ball and, like a bowling ball striking a huddle of ninepins, send a crowd of bruisers wheeling through the air. Skate referred to his signature move as the 'Dynamite Headbutt.' Classic Skate.
In 2016's Mother Russia Bleeds, Boris wears a soiled bandage for a shirt and wanders shoeless. When he has withdrawal pangs, he is able to syringe chemicals from the convulsing bodies of the addicts that he's battered to the ground and inject the fluid into his neck. Boris refers to the drug, based on Krokodil, a real drug that, in the final stages of use, strips the skin from its user's flesh to expose the lurking bones, as Nekro. Classic Devolver Digital.
The publisher, in conjunction with French developer Le Cartelis is, in other words, banking on grimness and shock to bolster its bid to revive the long-departed scrolling beat 'em up. In contrast to Streets of Rage's Saturday morning TV take on street fighting, Mother Russia Bleeds' cast of characters are scab-pocked down-and-outers. The game's stages are lined with drug users, its streets run by small-time gangsters wearing tracksuits and gap-toothed grimaces. Your opponents don't disappear from the playfield when defeated. Instead, they shudder in a wet pool, perhaps while a passing pig sniffs at their crotch. Coupling a vintage video game aesthetic with the ultra-violence of films such as Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher series to tempt modern audiences is a trick that worked for publisher Devolver Digital with Hotline Miami. Yet Mother Russia Bleeds unlocks whole new rooms of depravity. It is, after all, a game in which you can punch the head clean off a man's shoulders, and then use it as a weapon to strike another.
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