Yet another Urban Reign update

Well, I just played a couple of hour-long sessions of Urban Reign again. It's been a year an a few months since I got the game, and I am writing to describe how the game ages under heavy play.

Ben and I still played some Challenge Mode (Hard, Max) with our old standby characters, Shun Ying and Alex. We had lots of fun again. We are continually amazed with how satisfying it is to brawl against the computer. The AI is generally well-designed, and does a good job of making it feel like you're fighting a person instead of a program. Granted, it sometimes shows that it's a computer, like when Alex pulls off 5 consecutive shoulder-barges, then catches you in mid-air after a wall-bounce. But I can see that an extremely good human could learn to pull that off.

We played some 2v2 multiplayer, where each of us had an AI teammate. Again, lots of fun. Good, hardcore competition. We still see things happen that we haven't seen before.

We then tried playing Challenge Mode (Normal, Normal) with Nas-Tii and Ty. Playing this way is a huge challenge. We seldom get past level four or five out of ten with those guys, even though we play on the Normal setting with them. One of the problems is that Nas-Tii and Ty deal very little damage, yet the opponents still gain normal amounts of special power. So, I suppose, the long term challenge of UR is to complete Challenge mode with 1-star characters (like Nas-Tii and Ty) on Very Hard/Max mode. Eesh. I can't imagine how hard that would be... taking on Golem with Nas-Tii?!?

Verdict: UR is fun, and contains unbelievable amounts of replay value. As much as I want a sequel, the game is good enough for me to keep playing in the absence of one.