Crime has always been at the center of Steel Haven, a Metropolis on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
A massive surge in criminal activity has swept through the back alleys and darker pits of the city.
The mindless and disorganized gangs that once plagued Steel haven for years have seemingly rallied together...
Underneath a single banner, they have begun to usher in an age of terror upon the streets like it has never known before...
A massive surge in criminal activity has swept through the back alleys and darker pits of the city.
The mindless and disorganized gangs that once plagued Steel haven for years have seemingly rallied together...
Underneath a single banner, they have begun to usher in an age of terror upon the streets like it has never known before...
The TakeOver is a 2016 Retraux action game developed by Antonios Pelekanos from Dangen Entertainment for the Nintendo Switch, with aesthetics and gameplay inspired by old-school Beat 'em Up arcade games from the past like Streets of Rage and Final Fight.
Set in a futuristic, crapsack version of the United States, in the crime-infested Wretched Hive known as Steel Haven, three ex-soldiers retired from SpecOps - Ethan Rivers the protagonist, his girlfriend Megan Brooks, and their mutual buddy Connor - are trying to make an honest living in the city, with Ethan and Megan being the adoptive parents of a little girl named Vanessa which they picked up from the streets, believing Vanessa had lost her family to the ruthless gangs plaguing Steel Haven daily. Life is rough for the quartet, but they are happy until the unexpected happens.
One evening, Vanessa was abducted, taken from her bedroom without any ransom notes or demands left behind. Ethan and Megan - and Connor Grayson, deciding to assist the two - sets off into the Steel Haven underworld to locate Vanessa, but they eventually discover a nasty reveal regarding the truth behind Vanessa's paternal lineage.
This game is ported to the PlayStation 4 in 2021.
Do not confuse with Takeover.
The TakeOver contains examples of:
- Action Dad / Action Mom: Ethan and Megan, two of the playable characters, a pair of ex-mercs who adopted Vanessa in their backstory after finding the child in the streets. When Vanessa is kidnapped by gangsters for unknown reasons, both of them (and Connor, Ethan's friend from the military) immediately rips the Steel Haven criminal underworld a new hole to retrieve Vanessa at all costs.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: One stage has you being pursued by a bulldozer whose front blade is taller than an adult man. You'll need to run down an alleyway, beat up mooks that tries stopping you, and desdtroy barricades in your way or be crushed and lose a life.
- Anchors Away: Shark Tooth, the boss of the vessel stage, uses a massive anchor attached with a chain to fight you.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Freya, leader of the Steel Haven gang and Vanessa's true biological mother who kidnapped Vanessa in the backstory is the insanely powerful Final Boss at the end of the game.
- Balance, Speed, Strength Trio: For the three heroes, Ethan, Megan, and Connor, in that order.
- Bar Brawl: The second stage is set in a Bad Guy Bar, with Ethan, Megan and Connor beating the snot out of multiple mooks to extract information on where Vanessa is being held. Feel free to grab bar stools as improvised clubs.
- Batter Up!: The all-female Half-pint mooks use bats as weapons.
- Battle in the Rain: Most of every outdoor level, be it in the streets or on board a ship, is in the middle of heavy rain.
- Behind the Black: The third boss, The Baz, uses a whip to lash at you from a distance. What's even more annoying is that during battle he tend to leave the screen and slap you out of the screen where your punches couldn't reach - you'll need to lure him to the "middle" of the stage to fight him.
- The Baroness: Freya, the game's Big Bad, a ruthless crime baroness who wants to dominate over Steel Haven. She's also the last boss of the game and the true, biological parent of Vanessa.
- Boss Rush: Before confronting Freya, the previous three bosses Gatling, Shark Tooth and Koga, will attack you in three separate areas, one at a time, and you'll need to re-fight them before the Final Boss.
- Bottomless Magazines: Your firearms in the chase levels are turrets which holds infinite ammunition. During the mutant island stage you are given a machine-gun that doesn't need to be reloaded, either, allowing you to shoot your way through dozens and dozens of mutants.
- Crowbar Combatant: You can collect absolutely massive crowbars as a melee weapon. It has far greater range than fists or baseball bats, and easily breaks skulls with each swing.
- Dark Action Girl: There are recurring female mook enemies, like the leather-clad Vile enemies, the bat-wielding Half-Pints, katana-wielding Raven mooks, and of course Freya herself.
- Deadly Remote Control Toy: Every now and then, RC cars strapped with bombs will roll into the area and explode when within your vicinity. You'll need to jump to avoid getting blown up, but their detonation can harm unfortunate mooks.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In the good ending, if you chose to spare Freya after interrogating her, she will demand you to finish her off in her last moments. As you leave to collect Vanessa, she then remotely activates her office's Self-Destruct Mechanism…Freya: You get back here... finish this! You can't just walk away from me!
- Dual Boss: At the end of the island stage after slaughtering what seems like a hundred mutants, you must fight a pair of werewolf-like beasts, Cerberus and Lykaios, both at once.
- Dual Wielding:
- Slash and Grim, two of the mook varieties, use dual combat knives to slice and dice.
- Koga the samurai use twin katanas with far deadlier effect.
- Vile enemies dual wield axes.
- Expy: Ethan and Megan are copies of Axel and Blaze respectively.
- Fin and Fender fight like the Y. Signal, except they can't throw, nor have a slide kick.
- Friend to All Children: Connor joins the mission to rescue Vanessa, and if the cutscenes at the end of the good ending is any indication, he is the Cool Uncle to Vanessa too – one of the last shots is a family photo of Ethan, Megan, Vanessa and Connor, with Vanessa happily using Connor's muscular arm as a swing.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Freya used to be, in her own words, a "faceless gang memeber" in the city. When she had Vanessa, she felt she was becoming weak and sentimental. She then abandoned Vanessa and left the city to study and train, becoming the crime lord who returns to takeover Steel Haven.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The mutants in the island base falls under this trope. For most of the game you're battling human enemies, and then you barely escape an exploding ship and end up on an island filled with deformed monstrosities seemingly from out of nowhere, which the game at no point hints at. What's even worse is after slaughtering what seems to be a hundred mutants, ending with you infiltrating a dojo, the next stage... and the monster-filled island level is quickly forgotten and never addressed for the rest of the game.
- Group Picture Ending: In the Good Ending, Ethan places a picture of himself, Megan, Connor, and Vanessa on his desk.
- Guns Akimbo: Gatling, the second boss, use two machine-guns at the same time, and every now and then Gatling will try shooting you from both sides by pointing his guns at the left and right side of the screen.
- Happily Adopted: Vanessa is aware that she is not the biological child of Ethan and Megan, but is more than happy to accept them as her parents. Which is for the better since Vanessa's biological mother turns out to be Freya, the power-hungry criminal kingpin of Steel Haven, who returned to kidnap Vanessa so she can have an heir to pass her criminal empire over.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: The method used by Ethan and Megan to interrogate, Gatling, the second boss, in the immediate cutscene after defeating him. Ethan pins Gatling to the floor via gunpoint and demands answers, and as Gatling taunts Ethan, Ethan then responds by firing a shot at Gatling, point-blank… into the floor a few inches from his cranium. Gatling promptly chickens out and tells them their hideout is located at Steelhaven harbor, and that is all he knows.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Katanas are the fastest and deadliest melee weapon players can collect, excelling in range and dealing even more damage than firearms. There are also katana-wielding enemies, including Koga the boss.
- Kick Chick: Megan has a lot of kick based attacks.
- Mecha-Mooks: The Sentry robot mooks, mechs armed with Gatling guns and grenade launchers in the Steel Haven factory base. They are Lightning Bruiser-type enemies as well, despite their size, thanks to having wheels allowing them to strafe all around the players, making them difficult Elite Mooks.
- Mini-Boss: Hell-Raiser, the flamethrower-equipped enforcer who can take plenty of punishment compared to the lesser mooks, who shows up to fight the heroes at least three times.
- Missing Child: Megan returns home to discover Vanessa, the daughter she adopted with Ethan, missing, having been abducted by Freya's goons. What's even worse is that there are no ransom notes, no demands, and it's up to Ethan and Vanessa to find out the truth themselves.
- Multiple Endings: Two of them, depending if you chose to kill or spare Freya after defeating her. The following cutscene have Ethan holding his gun on Freya, and the player being asked if they would pull the trigger or not:
- Golden Ending: Ethan chose to spare Freya, as Megan demands what Freya wants with their adopted daughter. Freya then reveals the truth of her past, that she is Vanessa's biological mother, formerly a lead enforcer of the Steel Haven criminal underworld, who abandoned her daughter after believing having a child would be an obstacle for her rise in the underworld, but would now like to reclaim Vanessa. Ethan and Megan refuses, however, and leaves, leading to Freya blowing herself and her headquarters in a last act of spite, but the heroes managed to extract Vanessa in time, with Vanessa asking Megan, "Mommy, what does that scary lady want with me?"… The End.
- Bad Ending: Ethan pulls the trigger. A horrified Megan asks Ethan what had he done, as he had killed the only person who knows where their daughter is being kept… just as Connor alerts them that more guards are coming. Ethan, Megan and Connor are forced to flee, with the final scene being a scared Vanessa crying in a dark cell, believing her adoptive parents have abandoned her. The End.
- Mutant: The island base turns out to be a hideout for Freya's laboratory, which creates legions and legions of deformed, humanoid mutant monsters who swarms upon you once you bypass the regular human mooks on the beach area. These enemies take up the remaining two-thirds of the island stage, with their unique death animations (either by cranial explosion or their upper bodies blowing up above the waist) and after slaughtering multiple dozens of them, you then cap the level with battling a pair of mutant werewolves.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: Megan lets her uniform zipped-down to her navel and shows lots of cleavage. Same with the Ravens who yield katanas.
- Never Bareheaded: Connor is always seen with his military beret, in every single scene. Even in the high-speed chase down a tunnel where Connor is manning a turret outside of a fast-moving truck, his headgear stays on.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: Cerberus and Lykaios are a pair of genetically-created, werewolf-like monsters guarding Freya's island stronghold, as two bosses fought together.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the Bad Ending, Vanessa sports these when she comes to the conclusion that her parents forgot about her. Perhaps a hint of some unknown power that she possesses, or to signify her Start of Darkness.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: The entire game's plot is kicked off when Vanessa, the adopted daughter of two of the heroes gets kidnapped.
- Samurai: Koga, the boss of the Hidden Dojo stage, clad in typical red samurai armor and armed with two katanas simultaneously, despite the availability of firearms.
- Secret Character: Completing the game once with any character allows you to play as Jackson. Completing the game with Jackson unlocks the "Fight Relay" option, which allows you to switch characters using the jump button.
- Shockwave Stomp: Ethan and Connor can both execute powerful shockwaves by punching the floor with their fists as a special move. Freya, the Big Bad and Final Boss on the other hand does this non-stop in her penultimate battle.
- Shout-Out: The game's official promotional poster (as seen above), where Ethan grapples a mook while above him, Megan jump-kicks another, seems to be based on the poster of Sister Street Fighter (with Ethan and Megan in the places of Shinichi Chiba and Sue Shiomi). Compare here
◊. - Spin Attack: For the good guys, Connor can spin himself around with his fists outstretched to pummel surrounding mooks. For the villains, Shark Tooth and Koga can do this as well, respectively with their anchor and samurai swords.
- Spy Catsuit: Worn by Megan in the entirety of the game, befitting her past as an ex-military Special Operative.
- Sumo Wrestling: The stage in the dojo have Sumo Wrestler enemies as Giant Mooks. They show up later guarding Freya's headquarters.
- Taking You with Me: The bosses attempt this more than once, in the subsequent cutscenes that plays after their defeat.
- Shark Tooth, after being defeated on the upper deck of his ship, then remotely triggers the explosives hidden in the boiler room, just as Ethan, Megan and Connor are searching the interiors of the vessel for Vanessa's whereabouts. The heroes quickly beat a hasty retreat and jumps off the deck as the vessel explodes behind them, and ends up on a nearby island where the next stage takes place.
- Freya, in the good ending, after she was defeated by the heroes. Revealing Vanessa's backstory and where she hid her biological daughter, as soon as the heroes left, Freya then remotely activates her hideout's Self-Destruct Mechanism to kill herself and everyone else, but luckily the heroes managed to retrieve Vanessa and leave in time.
- Throw a Barrel at It: Barrels are a recurring obstacle in the game, which can be picked up and flung at mooks. Some of the larger enemies can pull this off on the players too.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Ethan The Hero, with his bestie from the army Connor, and his girlfriend Megan, are the three main characters.
- Unpleasant Parent Reveal: It turns out Vanessa's biological mother is Freya, the game's main villain and criminal kingpin of Steel Haven, who abandoned Vanessa in the streets after giving birth to her due to the responsibility of having a child being a distraction to her rise in power. Now that she is at the top of her criminal empire, upon learning her daughter was adopted by Ethan and Megan, then plots to steal Vanessa back from the two heroes, regardless Vanessa wants it or not, with the intention of grooming and raising Vanessa as her worthy successor.
- Unstoppable Rage: When the "RAGE" level atop the screen reaches maximum, unleashing the "RAGE" meter will douse the screen in a red visual filter, allowing the player(s) to lash out with double the speed and strength, dealing massive damage on enemies for several seconds.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: Two of them, respectively on a truck (equipped with a Gatling gun) and a jet plane, where the player(s) get to commandeer their vehicles to speed to the next location while gunning down enemy vehicles in their ways using the turrets they're granted in just this level.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Connor, the muscular military commando who's a friend of Ethan and Megan. Choose him and he spends the entire game annhilating mooks wearing only ACU pants, boots and his beret.
- White Mask of Doom: The Ravens are ninja-like enemies and wear oriental-style white masks.
