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Post by spidershinobi on Feb 4, 2018 22:56:56 GMT
I know, this isn't the early 90s anymore, I shouldn't expect great beat'em-up action from this decade, but holy crap! How are these developers missing the mark this hard?
Now I'm aware that most of the talent that would have been there for a 2D beat'em up moved on to make similar games in 3D, and the genre got split into more subgenres to the point that people call some of them "character action", but I have no issue with that because there are a lot of good ones in those divisions.
Still, what happened to the good 2D beat'em ups? The last one I played was Dragon's Crown, actually. Since and all around that game there hasn't been anything, and these games are still coming out. Wha happen?
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scipioafricanus
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Post by scipioafricanus on Feb 5, 2018 0:21:42 GMT
Genre peaked at Streets of Rage 2.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Feb 5, 2018 1:37:51 GMT
Genre peaked at Streets of Rage 2. Nah, give Shadow Over Mystara a shot. I would choose that (even over Guardian Heroes) for the genre's peak in the 90s. After that, for 2d, I really can only think of Dragon's Crown, which I haven't even played. There were some games like Scott Pilgrim and a few indie ones, but they're more throwbacks to the 90s instead of using the more powerful consoles to advance the genre. There are some in the "mixed-genre" category, like Bloodrayne Betrayal (which is quite good, more or less a 2d Bayonetta + Mega Man X) and, as I've heard, Guacamelee. My favourite, until now, is Shadow Over Mystara. It's such a great game.
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Post by winnersdontusedrugs on Feb 5, 2018 2:20:39 GMT
There's not a whole lot to the 2d beat-em-up genre, I don't know how a professional dev team could fuck one up in 2018. Have you guys given Double Dragon Neon a shot? I know that game released a few years ago but I enjoy that game. It's the most recent one I played at least. If it helps, people are still making stuff for OpenBOR and Streets of Rage Remake to this day, although alot of it is of dubious quality.
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Spirit Bomb
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Feb 5, 2018 4:27:10 GMT
Genre peaked at Streets of Rage 2. Rage 3 is far faster and more complex than Rage 2. It was objectively an improvement in terms of gameplay. To answer your question Spider Shinobi, the genre itself is extremely unambitious. Innovative beat em ups like SoR 3, Guardian Heroes and Viewtiful Joe are very few and far inbetween. All of the most popular beat em ups (like Simpsons arcade, X-men, etc.) are little more than button mashers and are more akin to party games than an actual combat-oriented game like they're supposed to be. I gave up on the genre after playing Streets of Rage 3 and realizing that the large majority of beat-em-ups that came after, especially the most popular ones like Castle Crashers, are highly regressive and casualized in comparison.
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Dan E. Kool
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Feb 5, 2018 18:29:46 GMT
I'm sure I've said it before, but the 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up is my favorite genre. (And SoR2 is my favorite of them all, goes without saying). I don't know why this genre disappeared, but there are so many quality games from back in the day that it almost doesn't even matter.
These days I see a general distaste for the beat-em-up, with people calling them shallow and even dull or boring. I don't know if that's a general consensus, but maybe devs are afraid it won't sell? I know I'd buy one if done right. SoR 4? Comix Zone 2? Anyone? Just me?
There is one game coming out that looks promising:
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scipioafricanus
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Post by scipioafricanus on Feb 5, 2018 23:22:26 GMT
I'm sure I've said it before, but the 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up is my favorite genre. (And SoR2 is my favorite of them all, goes without saying). I don't know why this genre disappeared, but there are so many quality games from back in the day that it almost doesn't even matter. These days I see a general distaste for the beat-em-up, with people calling them shallow and even dull or boring. I don't know if that's a general consensus, but maybe devs are afraid it won't sell? I know I'd buy one if done right. SoR 4? Comix Zone 2? Anyone? Just me? There is one game coming out that looks promising: I'll be in line right behind you for Comix Zone and Streets of Rage.
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Dan E. Kool
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Feb 6, 2018 22:01:24 GMT
An interesting video.
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Feb 7, 2018 3:21:45 GMT
People was giving crap to Double Dragon 4, but I like it a lot. It perfectly keeps the spirit of NES era beat 'em ups. I guess people was waiting for something more in the like of the SNES era, which are already a different kind of beat 'em ups. Either way, beat 'em ups in general are games that are more fun with people than alone though.
Beat 'em ups are not dead, they just evolved into Musou games by merging with the hack & slash genre. Marvelous and Omega Force are the leading studios for the genre.
I finished the newer Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game and it wasn't very good, so I'm awared of the modern dark side of the genre as well.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Feb 8, 2018 3:26:42 GMT
Double Dragon, that's a series I could never get into. Though DD Advance was pretty good.
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Feb 8, 2018 18:18:06 GMT
Double Dragon, that's a series I could never get into. Though DD Advance was pretty good. I like 1-4. And for the first 3 I would say only the NES versions. I don't like the Sega versions, not even the arcade versions. Which is weird for pretty much everything else it is always the other way around, the Arcade versions are almost always better than the console versions, but not with those 3 games. I also didn't mind Double Dragon Vs. Battletoads, it wasn't hard for me because at the time I had mad skills, LOL!
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Post by spidershinobi on Feb 8, 2018 20:44:07 GMT
Oh! I didn't know we have this in common, Dan E. Kool! But this is one of the problems of it being one of those genres that peaked and then fell out of relevancy super hard: actual knowledge about them is scarce. People, even here, say that beat'em ups are shallow, but if I am to compare the good games of most genres very few of them are actually shallow. It's like picking a game like Castle Crashers, comparing it to Persona 5, then immediately calling beat'em ups shallow and/or bad. But of course that would be the impression! If you decided to pick Castle Crashers, then please compare it to Final Fantasy X or Diablo III instead! That said, this isn't a genre that should ask the player to know about a multitude of buttons or functions, and on the surface a beat'em up should appear as simple to pick up and play effectively even though it's often hard to do so. On that, I'm totally with winnersdontusedrugs on being baffled at the difficulty game designers have at creating this type of game. Btw, Double Dragon Neon isn't bad, but it is crazy underwhelming. I must disagree with stratogustav too. Musou couldn't be farther from an evolution of 2D beat'em ups, for they barely share similar mechanics or optimal goals in gameplay.
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Feb 8, 2018 23:04:17 GMT
I must disagree with stratogustav too. Musou couldn't be farther from an evolution of 2D beat'em ups, for they barely share similar mechanics or optimal goals in gameplay. It's the same think but hack and slash. What I mean by that is they satisfy the craving for beating up a bunch of enemies over and over again, but in a more modern gameplay setting.
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Post by spidershinobi on Feb 9, 2018 19:52:03 GMT
I must disagree with stratogustav too. Musou couldn't be farther from an evolution of 2D beat'em ups, for they barely share similar mechanics or optimal goals in gameplay. It's the same think but hack and slash. What I mean by that is they satisfy the craving for beating up a bunch of enemies over and over again, but in a more modern gameplay setting. Yeah... But in most of the better musous doing that doesn't get you anywhere. I feel that they've branched into something different enough to touch that border between action and strategy games.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Feb 10, 2018 1:44:45 GMT
I only played Hyrule Warriors, and that one definitely felt like a mix between a strategy game and a heavily modified hack and slash game. I do agree with spidershinobi that it's in its own genre by now. It's not just the strategy elements, but the hack and slash or beat'em up part, being based around each attack having a huge area of effect to deal with an ever increasing number of enemies, makes playing it too different to what beat'em ups are supposed to be. It feels more like an evolution of Gauntlet than Streets of Rage, that's what I mean. Looking at the 2d map of a Musou game definitely makes it look like Gauntlet, enemy generators and all.
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