the idea of final bosses is inherently anti-capitalist
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god is the final boss in a good deal of jrpgs.
makes you think.
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I’m sympathetic to antagonistic readings but I think it’s a bit too far to say that all beat-em-ups are leftist. I think reactionary is a better descriptor for a lot of ‘em(and one doesn’t necessarily always preclude the other).
it’s hard for me to think of a particularly sympathetic reading, for example, of something like The Ninja Warriors which despite being ‘about’ anarchist robots fighting the military, still plays & sells itself with a blond white woman committing insane amounts of racialized violence in a ‘ghetto’ environment where only the white enemies use guns and the black enemies’ gameplay behavior is identical to the game’s own attack dogs.
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The Ninja Warriors isn’t a beat’em’up, but now that I think about it, NARC isn’t either. I just conflated it with beat’em’ups because of the belt scrolling. I take it back.
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hmmm ok, it looks like they’ve kept it pure
i’m slightly worried that there were quite a few times where there were fewer enemies onscreen than players, but overall i’m feeling more optimistic about this game
Weak music.
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This looks and sounds boring.
The music seems like it’s trying not to get in the way, which is a very different approach from the old games where they had talented people trying to make the best and most aggressive gabber music they could with the Genesis.
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My first thought was that the sound balance was all wrong, which buries the music, which 
.
My second thought is that looks like it will be no challenge at all with 4 people. Regularly seeing like 70 hit combos is…not great.
My third thought is that if you need the player number/arrow indicators for each person, you probably need to reconsider your art style.
My fourth thought is that the scen transition where they walk off the right of the screen, then fall down from above in the next scene, is really awkward.
Really, maybe technical limitations are a good thing?
4 Likes
i’m assuming like most games these days you’ll be able to change the balance and make the music louder. at least, i hope. it’ll also probably sound better when it isn’t compressed into a YT video and is coming through good speakers or headphones. but yeah, pretty standard House stuff. not in love with it, but it’s fine.
my main concerns: the game isn’t cool. SoR was really cool at release and manages to still be cool as a piece of work from a time period. this is just…not cool.
second concern is how much damage all those enemies took. i mean that was Stage 1 and it was an 11 minute video?! that’s way too long for a first stage! it’s neat that they’ve added all these air juggles and team combos, but if it means that enemies take 70 hits as opposed to 5 (again, on Stage 1), thennn i’m super worried about how tedious it will feel to play this game after a while.
BUT perhaps enemy health scales for multiplayer OR perhaps it’s just for the demo so they can showcase the combo and juggling systems.
7 Likes
My god this is it. Technically the art is amazing, but the art design is just dated. I know I’ve said it before, but grizzled-but-still-got-it main character and hot side character and wacky minority tertiary characters is like… wow, what a power fantasy for white boys from the 90s.
4 Likes
I reserve all comment before trying Mania difficulty.
I think the only beat 'em up I’ve ever played with 4 people was Castle Crashers, and I’m not a huge fan of that game. Are any of them particularly balanced for 4 people? Seems really hard to do, especially at the character scale and if you can’t hit your allies.
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This is half of what makes playing SoR 2 with my kid fun, because he doesn’t get that, so it adds an extra level of strategy where I have to beat up enemies while not getting in his way.
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i feel like D&D was pretty good about this, i think, but i can’t really name specifics.
most early beat’em ups would use some form of health scaling or scaling the amount of enemies on screen.
Castle Crashers is just kind of not very good, though.
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the art style feels very “french-japanese co-production”
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The only good thing about that video is this juiced up Homie hopping out of a manhole.
Gonna make everyone play the Homies kart racer next time we meet.
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The anatomy and backgrounds are nice, but overall the art design isn’t technically acceptable. Everything has little dark borderlines like it’s a flash cartoon, but light realistically illuminates curved surfaces so we don’t need lines, but the only light source is this phosphorescent haze that covers and flattens every color on the screen, but shadows are cast BEHIND them, but MORE shadows are baked into the sprites like there’s constantly street lights hovering overhead, but there are no street lights, and any contact between two objects makes FIRE and ANIME FX shoot out!!!
It might look less dull if they made the hit effects take the color of the haze instead of appearing on TOP of the lighting. Why add contrast and call attention to the least important graphics?
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it looks pretty bad
i’ve been playing 1 a fair bit lately and it’s so atmospheric, stage 2 practically reeks of stale piss
i don’t really get anything from this at all
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The thing that stands out to me is the forward walking animation while moving up and down looks real awkward with the higher fidelity graphics
1 Like