It has been an interesting generation for beat-em-up titles, as indie developers have really done a great job of not only keeping the genre flame lit, some have managed to pour some gasoline on it as well. With that in mind, not all new takes on play will necessarily work, but someone needs to take a chance before everyone else can sit back in judgment of the results. The Brawl Bar is an offshoot of the somewhat odd BROK: The Investigator, which paired adventure elements with some brawling for a little flavor. This time around, the focus is on the brawling, but it still does things its own way.

The main thing to know here is that the format for overall play isn’t the genre standard. Rather than playing through a series of missions as you move through waves of enemies on the mean streets, or wherever you happen to be, this follows an objective-based format. So with each mission you may find yourself doing your normal straight-forward brawling, completing some very specific objective using the skills you have at your disposal, or even cases where you’ll be fighting but with some specific set of rules that raise the degree of difficulty. While this absolutely leads to some variety, it can also at times make the experience feel a bit uneven as you move between different modes of play, not all of which are necessarily well-suited to your protagonist’s set of skills.

In terms of your core moves, I’d say this lands somewhere in the middle. While there are certainly a number of titles out there that offer more variety, this at least has its own distinct flavor of play. It does take some getting used to, as simple button-mashing will only get you so far, but once you’ve got your arms around what works I do fear that you’ll tend to fall into patterns of what simply works. What this ends up boiling down to then heavily revolves around what you’re looking for. If you’d rather be challenged with a little more variety that includes action you normally wouldn’t find in the genre, it may make for some novel fun. But if you’re looking for tight, varied, and satisfying play that can run with the big boys in the genre, you will likely find it underwhelming.