By: Don (@opobjectives)

• Treachery in Beatdown City
• Developer: Nuchallenger
• Publisher: Nuchallenger
• PC, Switch
  

After the opening cutscenes of Treachery in Beatdown City finish rolling, Lisa Santiago beats the shit out of a racist. The racist in question rudely complains about the state of the bathrooms at her home boxing gym and demands that she clean them. It should be noted that Santiago is not an employee of the gym. She’s just there to blow off some steam after hearing that third-term President Blake Orama has been kidnapped.

Instead of defending her, the musclehead gym manager apologizes to the racist. Even after Santiago confronts him about that, the manager continues to take the racist’s side. So he gets his ass kicked, too. Then Santiago beats up an abusive cop who has changed jobs to work as private security. Her friends join her on a journey to meet Santiago’s father, the chief of police, at city hall. They are needed to rescue the president from his ninja terrorist kidnappers. They are waylaid every step of the way.

It might be possible to play Treachery in Beatdown City without marinating in the politics and complaints of its creators at Nuchallenger, but one would have to be willfully oblivious and obtuse. The private security is operated at the behest of Mayor Moneybags, a thinly veiled stand-in for Mike Bloomberg. Rent-a-cops, all with dubious backgrounds of beating protestors or taking selfies with prisoners, are frequent enemies. So are punks with liberty-spiked mohawks and trust funds, crusties with allowances, a biker gang that has switched their operations to running the equivalent of Fiverr, and a host of other obnoxious, egomaniacal types. The protagonists of Treachery can’t go three stops on the world map without getting into a rumble.

I get the sense that all of the creator’s grudges, whether they are systemic or petty, are on display. And I can’t quite decide if that muddying of moral waters works in Treachery’s favor or not. These are politics in which wokeness mixes with a sardonic refusal to take oneself too seriously. Sometimes, the protagonists of Treachery are, themselves, stupid, obnoxious, or oblivious. They prefer to punch out cyclists riding down sidewalks than step aside. A major plot point involves one of our heroes trashing a motorcycle, Street Fighter-style, that’s been parked on the sidewalk instead of the street. A recurring enemy initially tries to sell a mixtape to one of them, only to get pushy when the protagonist replies that he does not have his wallet in his wrestling pants. I’m not so sure that merits having his face pounded into the asphalt over and over again.

As for that asphalt-pounding combat, the gameplay of Treachery is a fun mixture of brawling animations and turn-based combos. Whether intentional or not, it most reminds me of Parasite Eve, with its combination of a refilling active time bar for attacks and real-time movement. With well-paced progression for new moves and well-placed save points and boss battles, the mechanics come together for an innovative spin on the genre.

Altogether, Treachery in Beatdown City delivers on its premise. It’s a brawler that borrows the styles of 80s games inflected with urban panic and updates them so that they, for the most part, punch up. Similarly, it veers away from the mechanics of those games to enable a more accessible combo system than one that relies on input strings. As a repeated screen reminds players, “WINNERS DON’T MASH BUTTONS.” They do, however, mash racist faces.