Streets of Rage 4

[big_smile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... _bgPefCyfA

It's from the team that made The Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap and it seems like the new game will have a similar art style.

Not really sure what to make of it, especially as Ancient doesn't seem to be involved. Had this been released a few years before Mania, I'd be over the moon. But now that Mania has shown there's still a market for modern 16-bit games, I'm rather disappointed that they aren't taking that route, particularly as, although the new art style is pretty, it doesn't immediately evoke SoR.

[Gaz]

With the success of Sonic Mania I really hoped we see some revivals of Sega's old school franchises. I didn't think it would actually happen though. Lizardcube did a great job with Wonder Boy(although that was more of a straight remake) so I look forward to seeing what they do here. I feel like there's not enough to judge this yet though. I'm a bit suprised they're not doing another deliberately retro 16-bit style game but I do like the new art style.

[Jingles]

I really enjoyed that Wonder Boy remake! Dotemu's art and animation quality is great and they've really got a solid in-house "style" that makes their work stand out. That said, the Wonder Boy remake had very little in terms of new gameplay content, so we'll just have to see whether these guys can build interesting levels and enemies on their own this time around.

The characters look absolutely terrific. It's lovely that they didn't chicken out on Blaze's sex appeal (panty shot in the trailer!), and Axel's Buddha belly is hilarious. That weirdo at the end fits in very well with previous boss designs, too.

Personally, I'm very glad SoR4 doesn't use pixel art. Aping previous instalments in a franchise is cute and all, but gets old fast and is hardly unique or clever in the contemporary gaming industry.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

I'll eat up just about anything made my Omar Cornut. Although beat-'em-ups aren't really my thing, as I generally find them tedious.

It is a relief, at any rate, that it's not yet another rasterpunk game.

[G.Silver]

I'm really iffy on this until more is known about it. It's weird that they're working so hard to ape the look of SoR2 in terms of the characters, but even if Yuso Koshiro is involved, the music in the trailer does absolutely nothing to evoke the feeling of it. I really liked Monster World but part of that was in how they'd reinvented the look of it and made such huge improvements in animation, and here the changes aren't that drastic, it just looks like HD SOR to me.

Compared to Mania, I feel like with Sonic there was more of a need to go back and show how good a traditional 2D Sonic could be specifically because there are so many other Sonic games out there, while the brawler genre is something where progress and reinvention is a little more critical. I imagine they're keeping any gameplay changes on the downlow until they want to build hype again, if anything significant is planned.

[big_smile]

https://www.vg247.com/2018/09/02/street ... -gameplay/
^ Hands on preview.

There's a new juggling mechanic. The special moves work like Sor2 in that use lose energy to use them. But, if you keep fighting without getting hit, you can get the energy back. I always thought SoR3 handled the special moves perfectly, but this actually seems like a better approach.

I am still not sold on the artstyle.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

The art style looks alright, but the music IS a large part of the appeal of Streets of Rage to me. No Yuzo, no buy.

[Gaz]

A video has been released revealing the composers for SoR4

Thanks to the help of Brave Wave Productions, a music label that brings the work of Japanese game musicians to global audiences, Streets of Rage 4 will feature original music from:

- Yūzō Koshiro (Streets of Rage 1, 2 & 3, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Revenge Shinobi, Shenmue I & II,...)
- Motohiro Kawashima (Streets of Rage 2 & 3, Shinobi II, Batman Returns,...)
- Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Kingdom Hearts I, II & III, Legend of Mana, Parasite Eve,...)
- Hideki Naganuma (Jet Set Radio & Future, Super Monkey Ball, Sega Rally 2,...)
- Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl,...)

I'm glad they've got Yuzo Koshiro back. Seems like a great line up.

[big_smile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... TZajRoULlQ
^ New character Cherry Hunter, who is the daughter of Adam Hunter.
This is supposed to take place 10 years after 3, and Cherry's already a teen, so she must have been born before the original SoR?

Plus confirmation of a Switch release, which was bound to happen, but it's still nice to see.

[Opa-Opa]

I've played it at PAX East and it feels great, just like the originals. There are a few new mechanics that really fit into the game. The art style kind of bugged me in the trailers but after playing it I'm all in. You can really see they love the originals and want to do it justice.

[big_smile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5meiRP ... e=emb_logo
^ New Retro mode which lets you play as the classic characters (in their 16-bit sprite form) together with classic music and sfx.

As much as I've been excited for SoR4, all the new changes have been off-putting, as they just don’t fit the style of the originals. This retro mode brought back all the nostalgia chills that I was expecting from the main SoR4 game. Although I wish they had a full-on pixel mode (like they did for Wonderboy).

[Segaholic2]

I'm really excited for this! I love the originals, and my favorite is SoR2 of course. I like the classic characters reveal though the pixels and modern art design clashes a bit, but oh well. And the classic soundtracks are a sweet bonus. Can't wait!

[big_smile]

I like the classic characters reveal though the pixels and modern art design clashes a bit, but oh well.

It's too bad they didn’t have the budget to redo all the art in pixel form. Although to be honest, I think once I am playing, the art won't be an issue.

[Segaholic2]

I saw someone on some other game forum posted a picture of the game with a CRT filter on with some of the pixel characters in the game, and the two art styles seem to blend together really well using that filter. So if that filter is available in game maybe it won't be such a big deal.

[big_smile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo
New battle mode trailer. And a released date: April 30th!

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

Having played this game now, it feels...really hard. Even on Normal it's hard not to lose lives, and everything feels really zoomed in. It's definitely tailor made for multiplayer; I had more fun playing with two people than alone.

I also turned on the "classic" soundtrack option right away, because the new music is kind of lame.

[G.Silver]

Difficulty really pins down my big issue with the game, which is that it feels like in order to do well you have to exploit the game's systems in ways that don't really feel intentionally designed. For instance, the guys with shields can be real tough to figure out initially, and some characters (like Adam) have moves that make them easier to deal with, but most of the time the easiest way to deal with them is to walk up, punch a couple times, then walk away to dodge their attack. Or the karate guys later in the game--maybe it's just me but it seems like the only way to deal with them is to grab and throw them immediately when they're guarding, because they counter everything else.

It seems like they wanted to design enemies with clever problems to overcome, but since they basically limited everything to SoR2 style mechanics, your responses are often really limited to stuff like that and it just feels awkward to me, whereas adding an evasive move like SoR3's rolling, or a defensive guard or parry would have really opened things up for those types of enemies. I guess the idea is that good players will focus on using their invincible specials as counters and then not get hit, and that can be an exciting gamble since you can recover the health cost of those moves if you can keep from getting damaged yourself, but then that means playing really conservatively and relying on only the safest attacks, which just isn't all that fun to me.

[j-man]

Picked this up recently to play with the missus, and we've had a great time so far. You guys hit the nail on the head regarding the difficulty - sometimes this game makes me feel like a total chump! More so than usual, anyway.

One standout issue for me is actually the game length... maybe I'm just more acclimatised to modern sensibilities, but it seemed to whip by at record pace. In fact, the difficulty was the only thing slowing it down for me! I'm not sure if it's actually a quantifiably shorter experience than the older titles, but some stages especially seemed quite brief, and a little lacking in depth of gameplay (environmental hazards, and so on).

Overall though it's a cracking title, and I'm in love with the art and sound design. Let's hope more retro revivals use a similar aesthetic in future... I'm looking at you, Sonic Mania 2!