There are three options for a good SOR soundtrack:
Koshiro
Kawashima
underground DJs
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bring back the weird first-person prototype they were experimenting with back when the Dreamcast was a viable platform and Ancient had their own TFC server
bring back the person I was then, or at least the person I was when I found out about that kinda stuff
also what about Golden Axe huh
actually if you want a belt scroll RPG why not do something with the Rent-A-Hero license
people who make games stop wasting your time and just send me money and good food and magic powers
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It’s actually… I don’t much like Streets of Rage 2. Bare Knuckle III is a masterpiece. The original Streets of Rage is full of all kinds of fun weirdness that got chopped out in the first sequel in favor of safeness, solidity, and “content.”
(Here’s a good essay! – https://medium.com/@spacetwinks/streets-of-rage-2-bare-knuckle-3-the-invisible-complexity-of-beat-em-ups-and-my-very-unpopular-6d542de8f4)
I like that this game at least seems to be taking a different tack. I don’t know where it goes, but it’s clear that they’re not just doing more of the same, and they have some creative vision going on. So that interests me.
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I’ll settle for beating up plutocrats and cops
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This is Guard Crush’s previous game.
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i think I would prefer m2 making a romhack over this thing.
kinda wish it had been the “streets of rage remake” team doing it sonic mania style
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I was just going to post monkeypaw.gif, but in light of the revelation that Guard Crush was behind Streets of Fury, I’m in. Just please, proper house and dance tracks, no synthwave (DD Neon already mined everything out of the faux 80s aesthetic and it did every kind of musical genre)
Now, for several posts about how SoR/BK3 has the best soundtrack
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Streets of Rage 1 & 2 were by far my favorites (they still are, having replayed them a few months ago), while Streets of Rage 3 felt very different to me. I enjoyed that I got to play as Shiva more than anything (cool character design, fun set of attacks), but that was about it. The game didn’t feel as meaty to play. It felt wiry, like you were punching with noodles or something. The fact that getting knocked down also happened a lot more didn’t help.
So I think we’ll agree to disagree. I don’t really see the game as a masterpiece, in many ways it felt like it wasn’t finished when I played it.
edit: as to the article itself, I think it lost me when it started calling the genre dumb. It’s simple, but I don’t think I’d straight up call it any more dumb than any other simple video game.
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Mind you, Streets of Rage 3 and Bare Knuckle III are rather… different.
I’ve never played Bare Knuckle III, so I can’t really speak to that. Am reading the article though.
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Man I’m primed to read this as Regular Car Reviews now and I was like YES
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none of this is as uncommon an opinion as the author seems to think, and it’s a take i’ve mildly bristled at for a long time. almost everything new in 3 is functionally aesthetic, which is fine, i love that game for what it is too, it’s just that it kind of falls into the depth vs. complexity trap of seeing more options and failing to make a distinction between which ones actually have consequence or meaningfully communicate with the design. it’s taking it as granted that 2 is sort of a baseline and anything added on top of that is a linear improvement, where i think upon close examination 2 was already at a pretty precarious balance and anywhere you go after that has a huge potential to muddle what works and needs careful consideration.
the thing i’d say was the most successfully applied escalation on 2 was 3’s insistence on playing with environmental hazards and complications as a concept. the special meter was very clever too. i have 9999 other micro-opinions but idk. i guess i’m not talking about why 2 is basically perfect because almost everyone already thinks so, though my reasons are probably different.
it’s worth mentioning that i haven’t played either of these games below mania in at least 15 years and have been part of a circle of people pretty serious about cracking them open/digging into them at a high level so i feel like i’m having a completely different conversation about them most of the time anyway.
p.s. yes sor3 soundtrack rules too much and history will judge anyone who still hasn’t figured this out
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the ways in which bk3 and sor3 are different doesn’t change anything about this:
and i think you’re overstating that difference regardless
I probably am overstating it. And I can’t precisely point at what exactly made me feel that way to argue that, “oh, this feels different”, when in so many ways it’s the same game. But regardless, it is still very much there.
oh, i meant that as a response to aderack. sorry for the confusion.
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Well, based on the article I’m willing to give Bare Knuckle III a shot, but it doesn’t do a great job at explaining why the differences in difficulty between the two games are so radically different that the experience is entirely compromised. Aside from saying SoR3 is, “fucking bullshit” a lot.
I think the article also explains stuff that the writer considers not obvious when I think most people understand how important stuff like mobility is when it comes to how a game feels. That said, I like the different kinds of mobility the characters in SoR2 have and I think it gives them, and their playstyle, personality. One of the cool differences between Shiva and the other characters in SoR3 is that his roll is a short hop. I think the characters in SoR2 have personality that is defined by their mobility or lack thereof, and everyone having pretty much identical movement options changes the game, but I don’t think for the better. Part of what makes those different levels of mobility interesting is the need to adapt to characters that are fundamentally faster or slower, whereas SoR3/BKIII erases much of that.
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yeah. talking about skate’s run and not even mentioning max’s slide, which is almost definitely a much better example of what the author is trying to argue about kineticism in the context of a “zoning” beat em up is borderline criminal and kind of reveals the gaps in the author’s critical understanding of the game i think. or at least their priorities.
something that really solidified the difference between these games for me was years ago when i was looking up videos of high level mania runs for both 2 and 3. in 2 you would see meticulous boss setups, iframe manipulation, interesting hitbox interactions, careful use of space. in 3 you would see the exact same thing you would see in sor1 hardest runs: punch loops and knockdowns. it illustrated to me that not only is all the flashy stuff superfluous to what the game is actually asking of the player, when stripped to its fundamental bone structure it was still comparatively unsophisticated next to 2.
again, though. that’s fine. it looks really nice and most of that stuff is fun to do (though i agree with talbain that something feels slight and flimsy about basic striking both from the player and the enemies). it was experimental and weird and Extra and More and i’m glad it exists. gamefeel and aesthetics mean a lot and i won’t begrudge anyone preferring the game on those grounds alone.
just, like, don’t get it twisted tho
i like each of the SoR/BK entries in their own way and i alternate between the soundtracks almost daily (they make great workout music).
anyway, to me, if they are planning to have Koshiro on board and are holding off, i think that’s a misstep. if they decided to launch the project without being able to confirm his involvement, that also feels like a misstep.
overall, i feel like what i’m seeing of SoR4, based solely on this trailer, is…not very Streets of Rage.
but more to the point, i feel like the team making this should be a little more transparent about what they’re doing, if the goal is to win over SoR fans. i mean, it has to be, right? who else would be interested in this?
and on the point of beat’em ups, yeah, i think that the trope of inner-city gang violence is pretty tone deaf in 2018 and there are like a thousand different possible bad guys we could be beating up. corrupt cops, corrupt tech companies, racists…i don’t know. i’m not saying that a new SoR would have to be a lefty dream, but it just feels weird to make a game like this now and try to pretend like we don’t kind of know better at this point in time.
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