{"id":17290,"date":"2017-12-29T00:01:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T00:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=17290"},"modified":"2017-12-18T18:09:44","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T18:09:44","slug":"river-city-rival-showdown-3ds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/29\/river-city-rival-showdown-3ds\/","title":{"rendered":"River City: Rival Showdown (3DS)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There\u2019s a popular video game character in Japan named Kunio who has been fighting the good fight for about 30 years now!\u00a0 Kunio is a high school student who is hot-blooded and gets in a lot of fights, but he has a good heart.\u00a0 He mostly stars in a lot of beat-em up games, but also is very athletic and competes in sports titles as well.\u00a0 Many of Kunio\u2019s games have made it to the US, with some graphical and name changes, of course.\u00a0 Some of these include the very first Kunio game, called Renegade in the West.\u00a0 Some of his sports titles that have been brought over here are Super Dodge Ball, World Cup Soccer, and Crash N the Boyz Street Challenge.\u00a0 Even the Double Dragon games have ties to Kunio.\u00a0 But perhaps his most famous game in the US is the NES classic River City Ransom.\u00a0 Over the past year or so, Natsume has brought over some of the more recent Kunio games to the 3DS in the US, and the newest is River City: Rival Showdown.\u00a0 In the game, twin brothers have taken over a neighboring high school and threaten to take over Kunio\u2019s turf.\u00a0 Even worse, Kunio\u2019s best pal and friendly rival Riki has discovered that his girlfriend has gone missing.\u00a0 Kunio only has three days to beat the bad guys and solve the mystery in this 3DS game.<\/p>\n

Rival Showdown plays a lot like River City Ransom and last year\u2019s Kunio revival game: River City: Tokyo Rumble.\u00a0 You\u2019ll tromp around streets, beating up random gangs of bad guys with punches, kicks, and throws.\u00a0 But the game has RPG elements, too.\u00a0 Defeated enemies net you experience points, and when you level up, you can improve your skills.\u00a0 Shops are scattered around for you to buy healing foods, books, weapons, and armor to boost your stats.\u00a0 When you\u2019re not fighting, you can also talk to people to gather information.<\/p>\n

The main difference in this game is that you have a time limit to finish your goals.\u00a0 You can choose to spend your time however you like, but after the three days are up, you\u2019ll have to face the rivals again and view one of multiple endings depending on what you do.\u00a0 There is also a mini-game called Double Dragon Duel (told you that Kunio games have ties with Double Dragon).\u00a0 In the main story mode, you can visit an arcade where people are playing Double Dragon Duel.\u00a0 Well you can actually play that game, which mixes River City beat \u2018em up action with a one-on-one fighter.\u00a0 Through local download play, you can also play both the story mode and the Double Dragon mini-game with two players as well.<\/p>\n

I did have a few problems with the game, though.\u00a0 As a personal preference, I didn\u2019t like the time limit because I\u2019d rather play these kinds of games at my own pace.\u00a0 Luckily they give you lots of time in the game, but I still didn\u2019t like that gameplay decision.\u00a0 It was made especially difficult because goals and objectives are oftentimes unclear, and the map on the bottom of the screen is a little hard to read.\u00a0 The game is also quite tough, even on the Beginner difficulty selection.\u00a0 And I didn\u2019t like that you can only save at Net Caf\u00e9s, not anywhere you want, like in the last game.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a fan of Kunio-kun games, you\u2019ll probably want to try this one out anyway, but I prefer last year\u2019s River City: Tokyo Rumble more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

River City: Rival Showdown is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Mild Violence, Suggestive Themes, and Use of Alcohol.\u00a0 You punch and kick cartoony bad guys that disappear when defeated.\u00a0 The other descriptors are mostly just in the text.\u00a0 Reading skill is needed, and younger gamers may get frustrated at the difficulty and lack of clear goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a popular video game character in Japan named Kunio who has been fighting the good fight for about 30 years now!\u00a0 Kunio is a high school student who is hot-blooded and gets in a lot of fights, but he has a good heart.\u00a0 He mostly stars in a lot of beat-em up games, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17292,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17290\/revisions\/17292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}