When 2D gaming was king, the streets ran red with brawlers. You couldn’t swing a sharp stick without hitting a musclebound high-schooler out to save his kidnapped girlfriend from local gangs of unreasonably skilled martial artists. Then 2D gaming went dormant, and notable brawlers all but ceased to be, with only God of War to mark their passing. Now that the rise of casual gamers has emphasized portable systems and downloadable content, tiny games are big again, and brawlers like The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai have returned to wreak their bloody vengeance on our thumbs. Despite the superficial similarities to erstwhile brawlers, The Dishwasher inherits more from God of War than Double Dragon, and is all the better for it.

Once upon a time, Valve and Sierra had a happy relationship where Valve would develop games and Sierra would publish physical copies and sell licenses to cyber café players. However, after a royalty dispute, Valve began to move toward its now wildly popular Steam distribution platform, and the developer-publisher relationship strained until it cracked. Soon, [...]