Streets of Rage 4

Isn't he involved? I thought he was, considering he also is doing the menu music for the Mega Drive Mini.

 

As it's out, thread name changed to Streets of Rage 4. Thought we could discuss here.

How do people feel about this? I was initially very disappointed, but i have to say the game has grown on me. Now i'm just a bit disappointed. I think it's a good game but kinda spoiled by little things that make it feel a bit un-tuned and it makes me wonder what the devs were thinking.

I've seen a lot of people complain about the movement speed in the game and that there is not run for most characters. The devs went for a SOR2 style but to me the balance between player speed and enemy speed feels all wrong. It also feels unresponsive at times because the recovery frames of moves you do lock you in for a bit too long and you can't cancel out of them into other moves. This coupled with the aggressive enemy AI will lead to the player getting hit when they feel they shouldn't.

Another weird design choice imo is that loads of enemies have been given hyper armor on moves. It makes the game seem unresponsive when enemies decide to power through whatever you're doing to hit you. Fighting some foes can become a bit of a boring waiting game as you wait for them to become vulnerable, land a few hits and rinse and repeat.

Last big issue with the game is that the hitboxes are all over the place. Enemies attack on diagonals when you can't. Some enemy attacks have tracking, so it's even harder to dodge with the slow walk speed. There is nothing as heart breaking in a side scrolling beat em up as pressing attack and whiffing, then getting hit by the enemy you was going for and they haven't even moved.The consequences for getting hit are quite big in this. You can be bounced all over the stage, into hazards and other enemy attacks. You can no longer cancel your hitstun with the defensive special either, so if a bad guy gets yo you have to eat the entire thing. So you have to preemptively use your defensive special, which now always takes a chunk of health which increases as you raise the difficult. Only sometimes you can't because of the recovery of your moves including the defensive special.

On the plus side though, hitting people in the game feels good, and the combo system in the game is interesting and adds quite a lot especially if you're playing the game for score. Score attack seems like the name of the game as the levels are completely distinct in story mode with you being unable to carry lives or stars to the next stage. If you want the classic streets of rage experience you can play arcade mode, which is more traditional, but is locked to 1 credit no continues.

I'd give the game a frustrated 7.5/10

 

Yep. The frustration is around what i feel are odd design choices, not difficulty. To be clear i'm 30 hours in and working on 100% achievements. Mainly just some S ranks on hard and 5mill cumulative score to go.

Again, to be clear, I know this. It's just that this is a system i feel doesn't work with the recovery of characters and the pacing of the game very well. You can get put in positions where using the defensive special is a huge risk because it isn't invulnerable it's entire animation. You can have an enemy attack you from off screen. And if you're playing on higher difficulties sometimes taking all that recoverable damage just isn't worth it. Neutral jump is often better.

They really don't in my opinion. They've actually all been buffed for some reason and the SOR2 characters seem nerfed. The differences in the game system don't change for them. They have the run an the roll, which is nice. The reason they can feel so much better sometimes is that the game actually has SOR3 enemy pacing, which is why i find it so strange most of the 17 characters move so slowly.

Imo Floyd still feels good because of his jab range. SOR1 character also have massive range and good hitboxes. Other than that you're mainly fighting against enemies who can literally run rings around you. I don't think the game needs run and roll. It just needed to be better balanced with movement speeds.

 

Yeah, pretty much how I feel. I've also seen a lot of people saying it's perfect and that it's the best side scroller ever, but I just feel people are intentionally over looking the game's flaws because it is called Streets of Rage.

My biggest annoyance is that it could have been a lot better with some tweaks, or rather, not tweaking things that already existed. It feels like people had a bunch of 'great' ideas that they slapped in and no one in charge asked how all these different factors come together.

I feel like a play through on the retro soundtrack will tell you everything you need to know about how much the devs understand Streets of Rage. It's great that it's in there... but it's all over the place. It's like that with the entire game,

 

For better or worse the game is harder than every other Streets of Rage game at the equivalent difficulty setting, outside of Mania which isn't that different from Hardest in SOR4. I'm not counting SOR3 here as it was messed up. Just BK3.

One of the issues i have with the game is that it isn't as instantly intuitive as SOR1 or SOR2. In SOR4 playing well is just rote memorisation of enemy position and whatever tedious way you beat them safely. Older SOR games were quite casual and are easily played through at default difficulty without knowledge of spawns, enemy tactics, stacking, etc... You could just play them and beat them. At the time of writing only 45% of players on steam have the achievement you get for beating the game. Not very Streets of Rage like at all.