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These posts reminded me I hadn't played Streets of Rage 4 yet. So, I did. It was pretty smooth sailing on Hard until the final stage, which was a difficulty spike and took several tries. Though if lives carried over from stage to stage I probably would have had enough in stock to weather the endless stream of bellyflopping fucks and the final FINAL boss. There's so much street turkey in the game that I almost felt guilty not leaving some for the Mike Haggars out there trying to demolish gangs on truly sparse resources. They're full heals, too, so even if you play sloppily and take a lot of punishment you'll soon be reset to functionally the same state as a player who avoided it all.

But as I replayed stage 12, knowing there was no threat to my survival until the big mob in the castle, I started paying attention to the chaining system. It's something different to strive for when facing the basic enemies, and full chains give satisfying score boosts. There doesn't seem to be stage-long chaining, or at least it requires some tech I'm unaware of. I'm sure I haven't maximized damage in all situations yet either - wall splat!

If we're comparing 4 to Remake, I like the aesthetic of the newer game better. SoR's such a shameless rip of Final Fight that having its own art style helps give it its own personality (even if characters are still using moves straight from El Gado and Bill Bull). Bosses, I definitely liked Remake's better.

I like the music in SoRR better, but other than that I can't go back after all the new ideas of 4.

Just the fact that enemies can't skate outside the playable area alone is a game changer.

I love how SoR4's recharge system encourages the player to use their desperation moves as a regular part of their combos and not purely "desperation" moves (and if you still want an equivalent mechanic, that's what star moves are for).

It's a little unclear at first, but I love that the combo system is based on enemy hitpoints drained so you are not punished score-wise for using the environment to your advantage. Tossing multiple enemies into pits consecutively is actually GREAT for you combo! And the slow heavy-hitters are not at a score disadvantage.

And while I was a little iffy on the art style at first, I love the animations for Blaze, she really feels like she's spinning and whipping around at full force in a way those remake sprites never communicated.

Agreed on Blaze, but now that I've done a second playthrough on "hardest" and tried all the characters, I'm giving MVP to Cherry. There's so much invincibility on her side throw that I used it on an expectant father and was just coming out of the i-frames as his kid graduated from college. Bounce off heads and ride shoulders to take out mobs without even touching the ground. And with an actual run she's always where the enemy doesn't want her to be. When I fought the Y twins again, THEY were outnumbered.

SoRR wasn't really trying to reinvent how the original games worked (the way some fanmade stuff like OpenBOR does). SoRR's design philosophy has always been to try and combine all the best elements of the first three games into one package, without trying to change how they felt and played. It's a perfect bit of nostalgia, but it's appropriate that the official SoR4 experimented with new things as each of the previous official games had.



You mean the original sprites from SoR2 and SoR3, right? Blaze wasn't redrawn at all in the remake, except for her SoR1 version which was basically redrawn to be upscaled to SoR2/3 character height. Her design in SoR4 is really slick, though her voice acting I could do without and I'm always worried by her SoR4 choice of hoop earrings, it seems like they'd get ripped out easily in a brawl. ._.

SoR4 gave me the urge to go through the non-remake SoR2 for the first time in a long time. Ah, being able to infinite most opponents just by slow tapping. Enemies that throw you are usually doing you a favor, giving you invincibility and potentially damaging their allies while not harming you in the slightest. The simplistic fighting is eventually interrupted by enemies that just doesn't follow the rules, like the Punch-Out rejects. With no safe approach you need either an idiosyncratic tactic or to spam your special. Some enemies are annoyingly reluctant to engage. I actually got a time out against the stage 5 miniboss / stage 1 boss redux when he kept on dancing away, blocking, or using his useless throw.

Back to SoR4 - as usual, games with chaining systems remind me why I don't like chaining systems. Here there's the additional aggravation that having it broken doesn't just drop the chain, it zeros it, giving you no points at all for what you've already done. It's too harsh a punishment and doesn't really drive play in any interesting way. Don't get hit is your goal in all circumstances already.

The problem with playing for survival is that surviving 11/12 of the game is virtually guaranteed. Still, the easy parts of SoR4 are more fun than the easy parts of SoR2 due to the faster pace and combo potential.

Got my arse kicked by Max last night. He basically seems to be able to interrupt absolutely every attack I have?

Yeah, I don't think you can make Max flinch without consuming a star move. He telegraphs his attacks quite heavily, though, so hit & run with a few strikes from your normal combo. During the first phase he's stationary while doing his spin attack so you can stand a short distance away until he stops twirling and then smack him. You can also mash out of his throw during the first phase, there's no need to retreat if you see him flash red. He can't dash vertically without a bit of an angle.

It's a little trickier after he's down to half health, just remember he'll now do three dashes in a row / move four times during his spin attack to avoid prematurely going offensive. You can't mash out his throw anymore, but a defensive special will stop him from grabbing you. It might be better to just eat the damage on occasion until you're confident you can avoid his other attacks and make back your recoverable damage. There's a small health and full health in the arena, you can outlast him. And of course, if you're not going for a high score then saving all your star moves for this will get you through his more dangerous phase faster.

someone on the forums was even nice enough to slap together a flatpak for linux users: SoRR 5.2 Flatpak.

LRG are doing a physical run of Fight 'n Rage. Isn't that the game everyone loves?

Double Dragon Neon just got released on the US eShop.



I bought it on Steam a long time ago but haven't played it yet. I heard "mostly" good things about it, thoughts?

Double Dragon Neon is just WayForward masturbating over the '80s. That a playable (in the loosest sense) game existed after the wank session is incidental.

It's been while, but I enjoyed it on 360 way back when. Hard to remember what there was to judge it against at the time though. Castle Crashers maybe.... hated that.

Castle Crashers is a lot more fun in multiplayer where the sheer chaos is enjoyable. In single player you're basically air juggling most things to death, with air juggles only failing to be infinite against medium (half a dozen hits or so usually) or heavy weight enemies (couple hits at most). All the characters more or less play identically aside from their magic too, and all weapons are cosmetic and stat buff in nature, which gives it a bit of a sameyness...

Agreed. Castle Crashers isn't really a tight beat'em up by any means, but it's all good fun. It's hard to hate it.

Thoughts on the new River City games? River City Girls?

Looks cool on AGDQ but i don't really know what i'm looking at in terms of gameplay, i just see cool art, combos and juggles.

Not played RCG myself, but there's a good post from BurlyHeart here, followed up on here.

I think of RCG as mainly a delivery vehicle for memes and guuurl power, with the combat not going beyond "serviceable." You fight just four sedate enemies at a time. Stat improvement's linear and enemies scale with you, so what's even the point of RPG elements and a quasi-explorable world?

Still, there's some good dot art and music, and it's not like I have good things to say about many of the other Kunio games either. Rival Showdown for 3DS was the most fun for me, though the people annoyed by the time structure in Dead Rising and Majora's Mask should probably avoid it.

That's the kind of stuff that sells a game for me.

I tried one of the other 3DS Kunio games (Tokyo Rumble), and it was pretty damn boring.

There's a bunch of IGS brawlers / vs fighters on the Pandora I picked up, any recommendations on where to start? Any reason to play these above Capcom's stuff?

Final Fight LNS Ultimate between this and Streets of Rage Remake, it's incredible what these guys have done. The roster on LNS Ultimate alone is unreal.

KoV1 has a rough start but overall it's the easiest one to get into, they are all good except for the first Oriental Legend which is kinda jank.

I wouldn't call Oriental Legend 1 "jank". It's a harsh game which severly punishes you for not knowing the intricacies (which are a lot) and not being used to fighting games-style commands, some stupid balance issues as well and really ugly at times, but it's a deep and fun game.

There is effort put into it for sure, but considering how polished IGS games became it's just painful and not much fun to play imo, OL2 is also quite hard but much more enjoyable.
As for the special moves, asian players probably just use macros for them anyway lol.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World is being re-released today as a complete edition with both DLC's included on all major systems (PC of course is through Ubisoft Connect)

I didn't pick it up prior to its delisting before so I haven't played it yet. Heard good things about it so I am definitely interested in giving it a shot later today.