Urban Reign puts you in the shoes of Brad Hawk, tough-as-nails street brawler and Matrix-wannabe who may or may not have a heart of gold. Part wrestling game, part old-school beat-'em-up, part Tekken meets Boyz n the Hood, Urban Reign is a textbook example of a game trying to be too many things at once and ending up as very little of anything at all.
On the other hand, it also tries to be "hip" and "edgy," causing the whole effort to fall relatively flat on its face. My point is: Urban Reign, for better or worse, hearkens back to the days of games passed, days where "Winners Don't Do Drugs" was emblazoned proudly on the attract mode of every game in the arcade. Games like Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, and 80 other games all inevitably made by Rockstar personify improper behavior, endorsing violence and drugs instead of, for example, fighting drugs by punching them in the face with a rocket launcher. Nowadays, the focus seems to have shifted more towards pure violence, sex, and shock value, leaving behind the subtle, sometimes confusing or cheesy nuances of games like NARC (the old arcade game, not the recent PS2 mess) and Streets of Rage for games that, instead of fighting the bad guy, allow the player to become the bad guy.
Long ago, the big offenders in video games were drugs and gangs, especially in the early '90s, when anti-drug awareness was at its peak.
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