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Streets of Rage/Bare Knuckle will never get a sequel.
- Thread starter Silky
- Start date
Guardians 2, Battle Circuit, Guardian Heroes, Sengoku 2, Sengoku 3, Alien Vs Predator....
Alien vs Predator
Final Fight 3
Die Hard Arcade
Dungeons and Dragons: Shadow over Mystara
Warzard
Battle Circuit
Captain Commando
Turtles in Time
Marvel: Infinity Gems
Fighting Force
Streets of Rage 3
Spikeout
Sengoku 3
Armored Warriors
Urban Reign
God Hand
Anarchy Reigns
Phantom Dust
Guardian Heroes
Dungeon Fighter Online
Castle Crashers
Scott Pilgrim
Charlie Murder
Dragon's Crown
Muramasa
Viewtiful Joe
Okay. Having blown through about 25% of these, there didn't seem to be anything deep about the combat in any of these games. Quarter circle motions and command set moves do not count as depth to me.
Frame time variance, balance, emergent systems/tactics are hallmarks of depth in fighting games.
You're looking for character action games, not beat'em'ups.
I'm not looking for anything. I'm responding to the poster who called out someone else for liking fighting games and not seeing the alleged depth in brawlers.
I agree that there is a lot of depth in character action games, they are the logical evolution of brawlers (and why, in my opinion, brawlers rightfully died out in the modern age).
I think the real challenge for some upstart brawler evolver dev would be to somehow combine the depth of a CAG within a classic brawler co-op design. Anarchy Reigns probably comes the closest.
Dr. Kitty Muffins
Member
God Hand was supposed to be the rebirth of this genre. I hope a top tier developer someday takes another stab at bringing it back.
MightyHedgehog
Member
There's nothing 'alleged' about the depth in those games because they're as deep as they need to be for what they are. The genre varies in what kind of focus you want, but you have to remember that these games were typically meant to be played co-operatively, appeal to a wide range of player skill levels, and finished in relatively short periods of time, not multiple hours of a single playthrough but a single hour if that. Every time I see someone shrug off these games because they don't have the range of options that a fighting game or single player 'character action game' has, I'll argue that they're exactly as deep as they need to be for the experience they're offering. No one is keeping detractors from moving on to the various offshoots of the BEU if they don't find what they're looking for within the classic set of games from its peak twenty some years ago.
Cow Clicker is as deep as it needs to be for the audience it services. That statement is irrelevant to whether the depth is comparable for the audience of one type of game to another.
All I was pointing out was that chastising someone for not seeing the depth in brawlers when they liked fighting games is a non sequitur. I then wondered whether I was missing out on some brilliantly deep brawlers I had never played and found out that, nope, brawlers are pretty much exactly how I perceived them.
Not that there's anything wrong with them being at what they are. I just question whether someone could actually get "good" at something like Streets of Rage 2.
MightyHedgehog
Member
What's to question? There are people who never could finish it on Normal, those that could do it on Hard, and those that can 1cc it either way. There are also ways to make it damn near impossible. I understand if there are those that think them as baby's first brawler and demand more as it's seen as extremely rudimentary, but these games are meant to be quick and easy to get into and have fun. Adding more depth to them, as it generally goes in action games, only works against that aim.
what is getting good? system mastery? sure, with beat 'em ups you have to learn certain techniques and patterns, like you would with any action game, but of course it's not going to be as in depth as that of a one-on-one fighting game. but then again, what genre is? is someone that can speedrun Super Mario getting "good" at the game when it boils down to more rote memorization than twitch reaction to "new" hazards? is it only getting "good" when you endlessly study frame data and devote most of your free time to considering system nuances? obviously, very few genres require that much of a player.
i posed the question i posed because the births of beat-em-ups and the 2D fighters are intrinsically linked and they do share some similarities.
SoR is not a fighting game, so you can't just copy and paste the depth description from one genre onto another. They share similarities but are vastly different in many ways.
SoRRemake is perhaps one of my all-time favorite games, and one area of depth for the genre that the series does so well is how crowd control is handled. With each character there are a number of things one must keep in mind when attacking groups of enemies while defending your rear and flanks. Pretty much all beat 'em ups are built around this concept, but SoR tops 'em IMHO.
Soooo much fun to play and very rewarding to attempt to beat them on the harder difficulties with no continues. Add to that the added layers of depth with local co-op and you have the recipe for near perfection. I am a HUGE fighting game fan that was born in part by my love of bear'em ups.
That's crazy as Normal isn't too bad. In fact I beat the game on all difficulties!!!
This I agree with.
This I do not.
I don't believe in any "perfect design theory", but I do believe that the "easy to learn, hard to master" design ethos is possible.
JetSetRadio
Banned
I couldn't handle the disappointment.
Weltall Zero
Member
God, I've played all of these except for a handful. Most of them to completion. Thanks for the list, though, I'll check the ones I didn't know about; it's hard enough to find beat'em ups anymore. :/
Can you beat any of the above brawlers without continuing once? There's people who can; these people are "good" at them. Not sure what's arguable about that.
Obviously enough most of them won't have the depth of a good VS fighting game or a P* character action game; they're a different genre with different strengths (for one, cooperative play). Your comparative argument makes as much sense as saying that since Go is a deeper game than Street Fighter, the latter has the depth of tic-tac-toe.
Host Samurai
Member
Godhand is more of a character action game to me than a beat em up. Instead of sword attacks Gene uses melee. I never really got a beat em up vibe from that game.
A new beat em up these days needs HD sprites and branching paths. I can live without the RPG systems. Final Fight 3, SoRR & Peace Keepers are all fucking great BEU's
A new beat em up these days needs HD sprites and branching paths. I can live without the RPG systems. Final Fight 3, SoRR & Peace Keepers are all fucking great BEU's
MightyHedgehog
Member
I've met many who could never finish it on normal. There are some folks who are just not that good at action games or these ones, anyway.
The ease of it, though, is totally not a weakness, IMO, as it's a strength of arcade-born genres that got tuned for console play. How else could they still be revered if they couldn't be eminently playable by newcomers and replayable by older players decades later? Their ease of access, short play times, and focus on replayability is what makes them classics, not their age. I feel like there is this kind of disconnect with newer players and the arcade game because of the distorted expectations that comes from being conditioned by the AAA console schema or the one-on-one fighter depth being seen as making the old games obsolete when they don't offer the same thing, anyway.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Well, consider that many of us who love this game and many like it feel it to be one of the best of the genre if not at the top of the genre for its specific mix of depth and challenge as well as for its obvious aesthetic timelessness. The game is easy to learn and hard to master. Once you do, though, of course it will have given up all of its secrets and then likely ceases to be interesting or deep. Not every game type needs to keep evolving through escalation or face some kind of obsolescence, though, as many of us simply want a modern day equivalent and, unfortunately, there are none in sight. To be a beat 'em up of the type we want, it has to limit itself or become something other than that game. That's where the 'character action games' and other related types that have come after fit in, but they're not BEUs.
There are people that pour a million credits into these games and actually believe that a single-credit clear is impossible. They're clearly worse than the people that put in hours and beat the games without dying.
That's not my argument. Go back and read where it stems from.
It's like saying that since Go is a deeper game than Street Fighter, the latter has the depth of Street Fighter.
A better example would be to compare something like Virtua Cop with a controller to Counter Strike. If someone's favourite game was competitive Counter Strike, would you be surprised they wouldn't find the type of depth necessary to be enthralled by Virtua Cop?
How far do you want to take this? There are people who are unable to progress beyond a single screen of every game that has ever been made. That is not proper argument for the design space of a given game (or genre).
Think of it like a linear graph plotted by every possible input combination and a successful output coming out the end. On the far left side, there is a game where you press any input and you achieve a success state. On the right side, something so complex, no human mind could comprehend. Brawlers, exist much further on the left side than fighting games. Many genres exist further to the right of brawlers, RTS games, 4x games, some strategy and RPG games, competitive FPSs, among many others. Saying someone can see the merits of design depth/complexity of fighting games as compared to RTS games makes sense. Saying that they should see it in Brawlers doesn't.
It's a comparative, not absolute statement.
I hope to never see you complaining in any thread about Call of Duty, pay-to-win, cinematic AAA gaming, or, pretty much complaining about any game not being good.
I'm comparing them because fighting games are predominately played competitively and brawlers are primarily played on a conveyor belt of AI goons.
I have also never said that brawlers are for idiots or that they are less than any other genre. But recognizing their lack of depth is not something I'm going to abstain from. That's just what they are. And that's okay.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
There's a part of eve that would love Streets if Rage 4, but then the other of part wonders how that sort of gameplay would hold up today. I mean, there's no way you could sell it as a full cost retail game.
Way too shallow. Even with multiplayer and co OP.
Way too shallow. Even with multiplayer and co OP.
Sixfortyfive
He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Arguing about "depth" in a video game is almost always an exercise in pretentiousness, this instance included, but I still can't help but wonder why you're measuring a score attack game and a versus game by the same metric.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Would you still pay for this game if you didn't have a previous attachment to it or the genre assuming its reasonably priced? I've met quite a few folks who loved playing it for the first time, and BEUs in general, via emulation and they asked me if there were more like it. I've met plenty who didn't care much for old BEUs down to issues related to its age. I think there's a pretty healthy audience out there for a game about being forced to run a gauntlet and be able to beat the odds by busting heads, but it's hampered by retro audio-visuals and the classic issues of repetition. With the right kind of hindsight and the right wrapper, making some concessions to modernity and its gamer, I think it would totally sell. Some of the most popular games and biggest sellers today are arguably not much more complex than SoR even if they appear to be light years ahead.
skatebored
Member
As simple as these old sidescroller beat-em-ups may seem, I feel this is probably the first gen where you could actually pull Streets of Rage off in a 3D engine without losing the original series charm.
Just don't make it Bare Knuckle Neon. Too many games play that OMG totally 80s/90s! angle and completely miss the target on what these games actually felt like to experience at the time.
Just don't make it Bare Knuckle Neon. Too many games play that OMG totally 80s/90s! angle and completely miss the target on what these games actually felt like to experience at the time.
PhantomZone
Member
Would love a new take on the beat em up style, if it was a new SOR that would be awesome. I have an appreciation for the genre - first exposed to it with Final Fight and TMNT. My favorite in the SOR series is 2 - just adored the character lineup and the bgm (especially the end sequence).
I thought the re-imagining of TMNT 2 that came out on the XBLA some years ago was decent, even though the majority hated it. I never played Double Dragon: Neon :-/.
I'd love a new Final Fight as well just quietly haha.
I thought the re-imagining of TMNT 2 that came out on the XBLA some years ago was decent, even though the majority hated it. I never played Double Dragon: Neon :-/.
I'd love a new Final Fight as well just quietly haha.
This criticism doesn't really work with Streets of Rage as it was a console game first and I suspect that might be one reason it feels better balanced then most beat-em-ups that were indeed made as arcade credit eaters.
XxSlasherMcGirkxX
Member
All of those supposed remake/sequel ideas have beyond bad art. This baffles me to no end as the concept isn't even that hard to pull off. Streets of Rage Remake (the fan one) is the perfect SoR. It nailed everything. Why SEGA didn't just give bomber games a small amount of money and port it to consoles with online play is beyond me. It's not like they are doing anything with the franchise.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
It doesn't get released because Sega has *gasp* standards for this game. All the artwork and gameplay I see shows ridiculous design and gameplay that resonates early Unity engine release.
Forever the best beat-em-up series IMO. The Genesis games are so, so good.
And all praise to Yuzo Koshiro for the music.
And all praise to Yuzo Koshiro for the music.
Dark Ninja
Member
Im surprised that Capcom didn't make a new Final Fight using the Street Fighter 4 engine/assets. They pretty much have a large majority of the characters already done
KennyLinder
Member
What's up with the non-japanese versions of 3?What did they change from the Japanese version?
whiteninja
Member
I'd love something more of 3d beat em up. Like spikeout, dynamite cop, god hand or fighting force. Has there been anything recently like this that isnt a tps or musou type game?
Agreed they all look terrible, I'm glad none of them where greenlit.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I'd rather keep my fond memories than see them ruined with a crappy sequel or remake. That game is from another era, leave it be. I'm happy it went out on a high note.
uncledonnie
Banned
Man, this is the one that really hurts.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Koshiro just makes a SoR4 OST and MAYBE someone makes a beat-em-up around it; the important part is out of the way.
So his entire composing career?
I'm almost glad they can't go and make a new one, so they don't screw up the virtual perfection of the first 3.
You think you're going to get that pixel-perfect engine for combat with a ton of different moves/grabs/holds/combos? With a bunch of destructible stuff and different weapons/parts of the environment you could use to fight with? With well-balanced characters, and that MUSIC from prime Koshiro? Without nickel-and-dime DLC for incomplete missions/game difficulties/move sets/secret characters/endings?
Never happening.
This series was an ace from a bygone time when you could simply scroll and beat people up for $50, and that was more than good enough. That time is gone, guys and dolls.
So his entire composing career?
I always saw Spikeout as the true successor to Streets Of Rage, shame the arcade version was never ported to consoles. I really don't like any of those concepts shown in OP. They really don't seem to capture the spirit of the SOR series in particular part 2, the best of the series. Also it just wouldn't be the same without Yuzo Koshiro providing the soundtrack. The music was a big part of why i loved the game so much.