BIL wrote:It's a classic 2D beat 'em up with a bigger library of useful moves, a more versatile combat engine, and a much more visceral sense of speed and impact than the norm, all of which were facilitated by polygonal graphics.
If you can praise it for deriving certain solutions from Virtua Fighter, I can as well criticise it for not sorting out the issues I have with the genre as the technology was finally up to the task. You don't hear me picking on Streets of Rage along those lines in the Remake thread as that game is one generation older and was designed with different technical limitations in mind.
BIL wrote:Your complaint "it's not meaningfully more 3D" is what's missing the point. It's meaningfully more *2D* than watered-down games like Dynamite Deka 2 and Zombie Revenge.
I was referring to such statements:
LoneSage wrote:Since this is basically DD with a fresh face of paint, it goes without saying that this could be the best 3D b'eu ever.
This may very well be the last and best
2D beat 'em up ever, but 3D? Where?
BIL wrote:Guardian Heroes is a good game, but it doesn't play like Kunio/D.Dragon/FF so much as a sidescrolling action game with three planes. Much the same goes for God Hand and full 3D. How much of oldschool belt-scroll design was intention vs necessity, I don't know or really care - its absence in Deka 2 and ZR wasn't a plus. Those games lack the intensity of both oldschool brawlers and modern full-3D ones.
I can think of at least one way to keep the combat essentionally the same as in DD and get rid of the chessboard movement, even without employing the fourth button. Haven't played DD2 and ZR, but neither looks like I believe the job should be done.
BIL wrote:Everything else you wrote is armchair player material, sorry.
Not really. Would be if - rather than playing something I like better - I kept explaining why this game is not worth playing, which is not what I'm doing. Actually I played Dynamite Deka today. On Easy with continues, but something about those Golden Axe references stops me from feeling bad about it (and I haven't even tried on Tyris Flare's costume yet). It's a fun game alright, even if I'm playing it wrong.
BIL wrote:Picking up weapons? Get used to the controls and darting over to grab one won't be a problem (it's a risky move by design, with enemies on their feet - also learn which weapons are actually worth picking up). Lining up with enemies? Space yourself properly and you won't have difficulty connecting roundhouses with jawbones - there's a fair amount of leeway.
Everything's hunky-dory on paper and as long as the blob shadow or the square thing turning green tells me I'm standing in the right place to pick stuff up, I can't even complain it's "cheap" or "unfair". The thing is, I don't like it. It's never been the fun part of those games for me. Thus every classic 2D beat 'em up is a game of two halves in my book, one half spoiling another.
There's more such old mechanics I'd like to see reworked in remakes. For instance, I don't know how the Sega Ages Alien Syndrome remake fares, but I like the premise of brand-new control scheme. To find no improvement (or "improvement", depending on your standpoint) of the sort in Dynamite Deka was a bit of a disappointment.
BIL wrote:The QTEs are all within obvious cutscenes, and they're easily predictable (clock someone = P or K, otherwise = J). It's not RE4 where "P+J" will suddenly flash during a fight, or randomly selected multi-button commands will occur repeatedly in the same cutscene.
I don't mind QTEs in either (in RE4 on Professional I sometimes do, but that's another story). Just wanted to get that out of the way before somebody claims these to be the proof of Dynamite Deka's historical significance.