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My guess is that this whole announcement is geared towards getting Koshiro on board, and they are negotiating fees and artistic boundaries as we speak, that's why he cannot talk ATM. If he was already on board, we would already know. If he was definitely out, he would have said so. That tweet gives hope.
I have a feeling that they are in negotiations. He probably wants more than their budget allows, which makes sense considering his name is practically synonymous with SOR.
But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I luv it =) Never thought I'd see this before Paprium =0
This won't be a popular opinion, but I personally hope Yuzo isn't doing the music for this one. After the pure awesomeness of the SoR 1 music and the rather good tracks for SoR 2, I wasn't a fan of the music for SoR 3 at all. It had a decent track or two, but it wasn't close to the quality of the previous two games IMO. I'd rather see what someone new could do with some of the staple songs from the series, than see Yuzo take whatever direction he was going in with SoR 3 even further.
You really think he'd do that? I always figured the approach he took on SOR3 was more of an experiment than anything, although I have no idea what the hell he's done since then. My assumption is that for something like this, especially so long after the last entry to the series, he'd feel more pressure to stick to that classic sound, or even toss in some remakes.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Coop
Koshiro didn't make most of the SOR3 soundtrack (unlike the first two).
But yeah, even then, he once explained it was a time where Japanese composers in general were doing more experimenting than usual (especially with anything involving techno), hence the whole autotuner thing. That said, mind you, while I'd take SOR1 soundtrack over the others any day, SOR3 also happens to be the game where there's more emphasis on the robots and such than usual so the autotuner tracks do fit the game's mood at least.
Honestly, I hope not. Outside of perhaps the Streets of Rage theme and the level complete jingle, I hope there are no remade tracks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Assman
SoR 3, despite dividing fan opinion musically, kept things fresh rather than playing it safe, and I'd like to see that here too (keeping things fresh that is, not SoR 3's musical style).
Hey now, the character select theme from SOR1/2 could work too :v (and if Mr.X shows up again and gets his theme back I probably wouldn't oppose either)
That said, yeah, for the stages themselves I'd rather take in new tracks.
The tracks I always loved in SOR3 were the boss themes. Especially the tracks during the battle against the three samurai warriors at the end of stage 4, and the fight against robot Mr X at the end of stage 5. It's a very hit and miss soundtrack by Koshiro's standards but certainly not the crapfest that people make out.
http://www.ign.com/videos/2018/09/02...-pax-west-2018Quote:
Streets of Rage 4 feels exactly like its predecessors
Here are a couple more hands-on previews:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...us-back-to-94/
https://www.vg247.com/2018/09/02/str...s-on-gameplay/
The main takeaway here seems to be that it feels like SOR, which is great news. I do worry that they'll ignore all the improvements from the third game, as the previews seem to hint at so far. There's no mention of running, rolling, upgradeable blitz attacks, use of more than 3 buttons or anything else unique to SOR3, but hopefully that's only a reflection of how early a build this is.
The idea of making the health you lose from a special recoverable is interesting, but I think I'd rather just have the meter. It also makes me wonder if your defensive special will still take no health if you don't hit anyone with it.
I can see why they'd want to remove the SOR3 improvements though, people yell all the time at how atrocious SOR3 is regardless of what part of it you're talking about (even the original Japanese version). They're probably assuming that avoiding any new gameplay mechanics from it is a reasonable thing to do, lest they bring in the rage from the fanbase. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to declare that SOR3 is not canon.
Note that I'd be skeptical of what the press says about "feeling like SOR". A lot of the people writing articles may have vague memories of the games but not actually been playing them recently(-ish). And also whatever helps buy into the hype for easy views is welcome.
Note that SOR3 allowed you to do both (if the meter wasn't full then it took the remainder from the health bar). If anything that allowed one to pick different styles (either spam it and make sure to keep track of your health, or get more defensive and land attacks every so often).Quote:
Originally Posted by Assman
I get it, but it's frustrating, especially since this is called Streets of Rage 4, not SOR 2 Part 2, or SOR Mania, or SOR: The Legend of Curly's Gold or whatever the fuck. Those are genuine, unequivocal enhancements that objectively make the game better and would've made the previous games better, but lol Roo, lol robots, lol story, enemies are too fast, US version's too hard, and JP version's too easy, so I guess all the good stuff can fuck right off. Plus, why would you not want to be able to run in a beat 'em up?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
I had the same thought, but was trying to avoid being a downer. Most of these people probably haven't played a SOR game for a couple of decades; for me it's been a couple of weeks. If it feels close enough to them, though, that at least makes it likely that the team is trying to make it feel like SOR.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
Also, something I read somewhere else but hadn't noticed myself, possibly due to how quickly the gameplay goes by in the trailer, is how Blaze's jump kick doesn't knock the enemy down; instead, she combos out of it. That ain't right. Hopefully that was actually the down+B jump attack and they were just using that animation as a placeholder.
It's been many years since Axel used his skills to he trained for this game at this school in Wisconsin. yes, this is a real place.
https://i.imgur.com/PL6Qe9r.jpg
SOR3 tunes are okay to listen to, the problem is elsewhere in the game. Lots of problems in fact.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
Also the best tunes in SOR3 weren't even by Yuzo Koshiro.
SOR3 was bad because the levels were badly built. That is, the enemy placement did not felt diverse enough because every enemy was a basic punk. I mean in SOR2 you had a curve of difficulty for each enemy. Donovan was stronger than Galsia, Signal was stronger than Donovan, the bikers were stronger than Signal, and so on. Also, in SOR2, you only had 3-4 generic punks, while the stronger enemies were more like lieutenants who first got memorable introductions before they became recurring characters (the fight in the van vs the karateka, the ninjas jumping down on you from the pirate ship, the duel with Big Ben in the arena, or Electra in the bar, etc). In SOR3, you have a dozen or so enemies, and the game throws 3-4 of you at the same time, and that's it. There are some exceptions of course, but half the levels just throw random shit at you en masse instead of the weaker punks + a strong unique one, or groups of medium strength enemies etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
That and the AI was retarded in SOR3, and you could not hit off-screen enemies so you had to track back and forth non stop until an enemy came back on the screen. Even though half of his body was visible, your punches went through.
Most of the new gameplay features in SOR3 were readded from SOR1 (team moves, pits, etc), those can be easily kept. The weapon specials are great, they just need a bit balance tweaks to make you more vulnerable during them (have each one leave you open after you perform the move, like Axels moves, and we are set). The 3 star moves were odd. Having powerups like that goes against the arcade style gameplay, and it can throw off your game style by changing your base moves, but some of the moves are just so damn good. Maybe turn them into dashing supers that only get activated if you get a star? The 1 star move is dash+B,B (it's the regular blitz move but with double range), the 2 star could be dash+A, and the 3 star is dash+A,A (since it's an extension of the 2 star anyway).
I'd make three changes to the SOR3 features, though.
One is removing the ability to move during jump. That is you can't jump forward, hold back, and then fly back. If you jump forward, you jump forward.
Two is making the dash a short dash, not a permanent running. Like what Shiva does in SOR2 if you move out of range of his Final Crash. Make it a short dash forward, with a cooldown on the end if you don't do any move. This would make it more tactical, give it a downside so you can't spam it, and most importantly it would invalidate the tactic of abusing the dashing drop kick non stop. You could maybe even make it character specific, Skate could run indefinitely since he is on rollerblades, Axel would have a slower dash forward with a stop, Blaze would have a longer dash distance with less stop, Zan would need a short time to fire up his leg jets before he even gets moving but could run indefinitely (but can only in a straight line), Max would gain speed the faster he runs but can't stop unless you do an attack or a jump. Just some ideas.
And three, I'd remove the super bar nonsense. The SOR2 system was perfect, you had to balance between using a super and losing some life, in order to quickly deal huge damage or knocking down everyone around you, against potentially allowing yourself to get surrounded and walloped to death. It was both a combo breaker and a tactical 1-hit-KO move, and you had to judge when the best to use it. In SOR3, you get surrounded so you use the standing super (no damage taken, since you have the super bar maxed), then another punk comes in and holds you down from the front, and you either get walloped and die or you have to use a super again which eats a fourth of your health since the super bar is empty. SOR3 changed the super bar so it used less life, in BK3 it took a fourth or fifth of your health if you used a super with the bars empty. Still, it's less tactical and more show-without-substance. MAYBE you could combine the two, then you also have to pay attention so the standing A move does not empty the bars if it doesn't hit anything. But, I think the super bars are just unneeded. If you want to be flashy, then the life loss of doing a super won't affect you, but if you use the supers for defense, then the super bars can make you lose more life (in BK3 anyway) than if you took a fixed health loss.
So basically make the gameplay based on SOR2 but add some SOR3 features in, with a fix so they don't become game breakers. I can kind of understand why they made the difficulty in SOR3 so ridiculously high compared to BK3, the new moves were so powerful it felt like you had your god hand permanently unleashed.
This looks just like Double Dragon Neon, a game I admittedly played the heck out of.
https://www.vg247.com/2018/09/02/str...s-on-gameplay/
?Quote:
Expect a big announcement regarding the classic soundtrack too.
I'm going to guess the special bars is going to get as divisive as it always does. Personally, when the only way to use the specials is by losing health the only thing it manages to do is to get me to completely avoid using them altogether. The times where I could make the most use of the specials are precisely when I happen to be low on health, and no, I'm not gonna spend a shitton of time figuring out how to minmax the mechanics just to figure out where it's most optimal to use specials outside a rush, I'm not playing like I'm a professional making money off sponsorships on Twitch >_>
So to me the special bars are more useful. Bonus points for also having taken away the timer (anybody noticed that the bars took the place of the timer? :v)
That said, more specifically on SOR4: does anybody hope that attack-attack-jump-attack when holding an enemy will still work?
EDIT: I swear I'm typoing more over time x_X
I'm playing of Streets of Rage 3 on my Mega Drive right now just to get in the mood. Although, I must admit to using the cheat to get 9 lives for the first time ever. I have never used this cheat previously but as a game it's just too hard, and this comes from me, a guy who can complete Streets of Rage II on mania difficulty! They really fucked up the difficulty balance in SOR3 during the localization process.
Yeah, been messing with the PAL version's ROM to knock out the region check and correct the speed for playing at 60Hz, and I'd forgotten how hard it was. I'm used to BK3, so playing SoR3 required a bit of adjustment. Oh, and damn Jet straight to hell! The final boss can be cheesed pretty easily, but I can't find a similar tactic for Jet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey
Tell me about it! I just lost three lives to that flying prick. Standard punch combos work well when Jet's flying low, but the best tactic is to wait until he does his flying punch against you and then counter it with a flying kick. It takes awhile but it does work. Easier said than done however when he's surrounded by his flying goons! If this was a one on one fight it would be much more straight forward.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silanda
I did it! For the first time in over ten years I saved the police chief, and destroyed Mr. X's robot factory in time (just!) to get SOR3's good ending! It makes me quite nostalgic to think that, twenty four years later, this game is finally getting a sequel (wipes tear away). Here's hoping that SOR4 can live up to the name of the greatest beat-'em-up series of all time! :D
You don't have to minmax anything. There are two specials, one used for defense which makes you invulnerable and clears enemies around you, and one used for offence that does huge damage but leaves you wide open.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
You use the defense one when you get surrounded or held down, in order to prevent enemies doing a large combo on you. You can also use it to dodge projectiles indefinitely (Jack, the robots, Mr. X, or if someone gets thrown at you) - if you don't hit anyone, it doesn't use your life, but you are still invulnerable.
For the offense one, you use it to quickly dish out huge damage and KO some enemies, in order to thin the heard, to prevent them from overwhelming you with numbers. Or just when you catch so many enemies at the same time, that the amount of damage you do is too good to pass up.
This is a concept I could understood when I was 6 years old.
By comparison, the super bars are useless for anything but casual play, because on high difficulties you do need to use specials more frequently than the bar recharges. Sometimes 2-3 times in a row, even. In BK3, that empties half your life bar.
A simple fix would be is to keep the SOR2 mechanic (same amount of life loss as you have there), with the super bars merely acting as a buffer for the life loss. This also means they only trigger on the life loss, not when you use the special, so for ex. you can spam standing A and not lose life as long as you don't hit anyone. Easy peasy.
So wait, are you in favor or against the special bar?Quote:
Originally Posted by zyrobs
Though yeah, I can see that one working if I'm reading correctly. It's actually not that different from what SOR3 does, seems to be more of a tweak to it. Especially since SOR3 already does the buffering part (the life loss is proportional to how much of the bar was left to fill), just not the "don't waste it" part.
It'll be a huge let down if these improvements aren't in the final build, including the weapon specific attacks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Assman
Agreed. I get that there are elements to SOR3 that people didn't like, but gameplay improvements like the ability to run, roll and do blitz attacks were very welcome and I hope that they're added to SOR4.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rapha7
I agree. Maybe there could be more on top of that, based on Capcom games from the mid 90s?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey
While I'm thrilled it's getting revitalized, I have to admit I am not a fan of the art style. I guess it's wait and see for me. I wish they did it more like Sonic Mania. Hell, look at the recently released tease for Ninja Warriors: Once Again. That's how you do it IMHO.
I do prefer the cleaner look of remakes like Duck tales or Wonderboy III. I'm personally exhausted of the need to make everything look artificially pixelated.
That being said, Sonic Mania was very aesthetically pleasing. It looks gorgeous on a 4K TV. SoR4 does have the look of a budget title. But I am pleased thus far with the series' return and am very hopefully optimistic. At the end of the day, I just want to experience great gameplay. If they get that aspect right, you might even catch me saying things like ..."and the graphics aren't too shabby either".
One reason I avoided Double Dragon IV before release was the stupid NES aesthetic. Double Dragon Neon was perfect. I am so sick of sequels and follow-ups to old franchises looking like 30-year-old games. yes, I get it games once looked pixelated. What if Konami made a new Silent Hill but in PS1 graphics. GET IT GUYS CUZ NOSTALGIA!...fuck off. Even tho Yooka sucks at least they tried to make it with modern visuals vs that one Wii U platformer I forget the name of on the Eshop that was trying so hard to have N64 graphics.
I like what Capcom has done with Mega Man 11. Glad they didn't make another NES game. In fact, I love the look of 11. MM11 IMO reminds me of the days when I looked at the art in a manual and thought I hope one day this series can look as good as the art. So it can still be nostalgic but not in a cheap way like OMG IT'S AND NES GAME DUR! MEMBER NES GAMEZ!?
I'm against it the way BK3 implements it. There, it forces you to only use it occasionally, because if the bar is not maxed, you lose a fourth of your health (even if you do a standing super and don't hit anything). Which makes it utterly useless for defensive purposes in higher difficulties.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
Tweak that so it only loses as much health as in SOR2, and so it doesn't empty the bar if you do a standing super that doesn't hit anything (which would not lose health anyway). That way it benefits casual gameplay and doesn't obstruct high level gameplay.
An interview with the creative director of Streets of Rage 4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nage_jPkDDY
If anyone wants another game like SOR there is The Takeover. Different aesthetic but very much SOR with some Afterburner? Some have asked why are the animations so jerky. I'm fairly sure they are aiming for that pre-rendered feel some early 90s consoles games had with fewer frames of animation like Killer Instinct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=95&v=wNLz-Lh6X3c
Fuck that guy, he screwed over all his kickstarter backers by taking money for The 90s Arcade Racer and then making a shady deal with Nicalis.Quote:
Originally Posted by SegataS
And in the end the backers and everybody else got nothing. I will never buy anything by that guy ever.
'Bout fricking time for a fourth Streets of Rage game.
I just hope the fourth installment proudly carries the tradition of mindless fun mixed with outrageous silliness and hilarious bugs that IMHO made all three SoR/BK games the fantastic experiences they were.
hilarious bugs?
Did a few bits
Interview of Cyrille Imbert CEO of DotEmu on Streets of Rage 4 from Eurogamer Expo 2018
by Green Man Gaming roving reporter Jason Coles
Excellent info there! Thanks for sharing it EyeDeeNo76!