STREETS OF RAGE 4

I'm skeptical for now, not gonna hype myself up for it to possibly suck.

Sounds like Sega isn't really involved in this other than licensing out the property?

Wow, it looks like fucking horse shit. Streamlined character designs and animated in flash. Pass.

It's a shame because Streets of Rage 3 had some of the greatest art direction of any game I've played. The sprite work in 3 looks a million times more impressive than this "HD" shit.

How come Axel has aged but Blaze hasn't ?...

Even with the different artstyle, some screenshots look quite good:

I've already watched the trailer a handful of times. To say I'm excited would be an understatement. I really never expected another SOR to be made.

Obviously there isn't much gameplay footage to see yet, but I like the tone of the trailer and an "aged" Axel is interesting to me. The art style is actually looking good imo. I've seen others wishing that it had the pixel art of say Sonic Mania, but I think the hand drawn style ala Wonder Boy is really good. We'll have to wait and see how the animation is, which is more important than the style to me. Of course, the real level of my excitement will come down to the music...




This is a positive as far as I'm concerned.

I think they were barely involved with Sonic Mania, too, as it was developed by the fan-turned-developer Christian Whitehead, PagodaWest and Headcannon - as far as I understand, Sega was financing and marketing the game (and probably overseeing it). At the same time, they were developing their own Sonic game, which turned out to be not as well received: Sonic Forces.

And then I remember that Sega isn't involved with Shenmue 3, Monster Boy and wasn't with Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap.

So yeah, at this point I'm more inclined to trust revivals made by dedicated fans than Sega themselves. Not that Sega is bad as a developer (the new Yakuza and Valkyria games show that there is some spark in them), but, for some reason, they just don't know what to do with their older franchises. Of course, we don't know if they aren't overseeing the project as in Sonic Mania's case or if it was just licensed.

About the artstyle: I think it's beautiful and the screenshots look great, as the entire trailer does. My only objection would be that it's a very different direction in comparison with the original games. So it's like the case with Zelda: The Wind Waker - it's a great looking game that wasn't accepted by its fanbase for looking so different. I think it's a valid criticism (after all, the art style is part of the series), but I'm willing to accept the new look (as it's also good) if there's a good game underneath.

What worries me is how they'll handle the music. I hope they can bring Koshiro back or at least find someone who can live up to the task.

Arc System Works' Double Dragon IV was very poorly reviewed, and that game was true to the core with the originals.

Somehow no one remembered that Double was supposed to be slow paced, and it is a completely different type of brawler than something like Final Fight for example.

It sucks, but the reality is that people involved video game press are mentally incapacitated when it comes to beat 'em ups, and that's why we don't get more games in the genre.

So even if they would make a brand new Streets Of Rage with 32 bits pixel art from an internal studio of Sega, such as the people that makes Yakuza for example, the dumb fucks in video game media would still shit on them, specially knowing it is Sega publishing.