A game that scores a few merit points for ambitiousness and then little else, Beat Down: Fist of Vengeance tries to be a role-playing game (RPG) for free-roaming 3D-fight game fans.

You play out a cliché story of mob-wannabe characters wandering around a non-descript ghetto, picking up gratuitouly violent gang members, chatting with potty-mouthed denizens that may or may not offer up some useful tidbit of information about the point of it all, managing your attributes and changing your clothes way too often in order to free-roam incognito.

But mostly you're just fighting, which is the better part of the game (sometimes you can just beat the living pride out of someone, rather that the living tar, so they'll do your bidding or give you money or more info), but even then, unexceptionally so.