Streets of Rage 4

[Terra]

So only the playable characters get the retro look? Not enemies?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I wish enemies also got the retro look as well. At least the ones that are applicable for one.

Then again they should've gone for the old school look in general to begin with if you ask me.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

My guess is the retro characters come with their game's specific rule sets, (although it's hard to tell since I didn't see SoR3 characters running) like you can switch between in the Remake fan game. They don't seem to just be a aesthetic change, since SoR1 Axel is using his SWAT special.

 

[Falksi]

Jesus Christ that looks SO much better.

Why don't the dickheads do this with all the sprite graphics FFS?

 

[Tweed]

Can't tempt me with that slop, Bombergames created the one true sequel.

 

[Vorark]

To think the fans basically did this years ago and for free... SOR4 is only now starting to catch up to Remake.

Good on them for bringing it all back, though.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

As much as I was warming up to how this looks, seeing those Streets of Rage 3 sprites (which I'm guessing they made for this game) does make me wish this game was sprite based all over again. Especially since you could easily get the detail of their portraits on the actual character sprites now, but even without that, if this was sprite based with the detail of the SoR3 sprites and had backgrounds like that The Last Night game everyone went crazy for a couple years ago this could have looked pretty fantastic.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

As someone else brought up, I wonder how the classic sprites will actually work. SoRRemake had this huge modified engine that Bombergames pretty much had to build from the ground up in close replication of the original games to accommodate for all the various mechanics and systems which you could then customize through gameplay options (like having the roll or run mechanic, police calls, etc.) and it all came together extraordinarily well and seamlessly. Also because Bombergames made a ton of extra work like giving SoR1 characters completely new special moves and Blitz attacks, same with SoR2 characters, and it made playing SoR1 Axel much different from SoR2 and SoR3 Axel. I'm in danger of gushing like a bitch over how goddamn good SoRRemake was and is a gold standard for remakes so I'll get on with my point...

Do you think these are just sprite rips that will be janky as shit in the actual SoR4 game or are they going to be integrated properly with the game engine and have the mechanics? Will they have their own SoR2/3 mechanics like the stars Blitz system or rolling/running but at the cost of lacking something found in the SoR4 created characters?

I think back to Double Dragon IV from a few years ago and how it was a big sprite rip MUGEN style game that didn't play very well because of this. The retro SoR2/3 characters they revealed here considerably beefs up the roster but I'm cynical and thinking it'll be at a cost of lower quality and novelty than anything smooth and viable.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Looking at the trailer again SoR3 Axel can run, and since only one of the normal SoR4 characters can run, it seems the retro versions of everyone work under their respective game's rules.

I think these sprites are new one. The sprite for Max's spinning lariat hammer blow move seems to have speed lines / blur added to it now like everyone else's fast moves in SoR2 do, unrelated to the sprite itself it also has a afterimage fx too. SoR4's hand drawn characters are also much bigger than the original sprites of the Genesis games, if you blew them up to the same size as the SoR4 characters I don't think they'd look as nice as these spirits here do. I think that special they show with Shiva is different too.

I'm wondering if Ash and Roo are here too? If you add them in as well, then both sides of the character select screen are balanced.

 

[Tweed]

Yeah, I wanna see them put in Ash and watch the shitstorm that would cause.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

That's why you don't show him in the trailer. He is in Sega Genesis Classics from a couple years ago, since that also has Bare Knuckle 3 in it.

 

[Curratum]

So what moron thought it was ok to mix pixellated lowres player sprites with highres moderl smooth enemies?

 

[Machocruz]

Sheeeit, I would have like the backgrounds to have the retro look too. I do not care for the black outlines and flat coloring of SoR4's backgrounds. Resembles some shitty Top Cow comic.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

 

[Terenty]

How come they havent been sued yet by Boon for literally ripping off Jax?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Unless the Jax-lite has some dope moveset like Max I'll probably never touch him, same with that black girl.

Just seems odd to try new characters in a series you're bringing back from the dead and hoping capitalizes on nostalgia boners. Should've just gone with Max and Skate or Zan.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Oh.

Oh no.

A dyke.

 

[Melcar]

Does she get raped?

 

[Durandal]

Some things I have observed from the gameplay:

• Enemies sent flying will now rebound off the invisible edge of the screen instead of disappearing off-screen and making you wait until they get back in range. It only took 30 years for this to finally get fixed. I swear, this is the only beat 'em up in existence to do this.
• Specials have a much more interesting implementation. Instead of always costing a bit of health when using it like in most beat 'em ups incl. SoR2, or how SoR3 did it where you got a free special on cooldown, here you get to use them more aggressively instead of just defensively. Using specials will grey out a portion of your health, but hitting enemies will slowly recover the grey portion. But if you get hit once, you lose all of your grey health. So if you know what you are doing you can output way more damage, and you get shafted if you don't.
• Each character now has a new aerial special move on top of their neutral and forwards specials.
  
• Picking up food/weapons is now bound to a separate button instead of the attack button, eliminating a major annoyance with the genre where you would accidentally pick up food too early or pick up weapons you didn't want. Though there's still an option to have it bound to attack if you're a purist. There's also a separate button to do back attacks as well.
  
• There's a proper combo and juggle system now. The longer your combos, the more points you get, and the more points you get means you get more lives. It's a welcome improvement over most SoRs where you could keep enemies perpetually stunlocked by rhythmically spamming jabs and slowly whittle their health down, which was fucking boring. Though this scoring system does sound abusable for farming lives if you're a combolord.
  
• Enemies will eventually get knocked down if you try to stunlock them with jabs, so say goodbye to infinite stunlocking.
  
• When you run out of lives, you have to retry from the start of the stage instead of the whole game, so profligates that are averse to the idea of being able to consistently win through 50 minutes of gameplay without losing all lives can rejoice. But you do only start each stage with 1 life, and lives do not carry over. Thankfully there's still an Arcade Mode for people like me which make you do the whole game on one continue.
• Weapon degradation is now tied to how often you hit things with it instead of how often you get knocked down while using it, which is good; this means you can't constantly outrange enemies by sticking to one weapon in a genre all about spacing.
• Some weapons when thrown will rebound off enemies and objects, and can be picked up mid-air. This also includes projectiles that enemies throw at you.
  
• You can switch which character to play between stages.
• Enemies telegraph their attacks way more often, which is actually a major rarity in beat 'em ups since most attacks aren't reactable to begin with. So Y. Signals will glow red before moving in to throw you, and bosses having hyper armor is signified by them glowing white.
• Cherry is the only character able to run, and Adam has a very spammable dash. Quite frankly, dashing would make powerhouses character too broken by letting them use heavy-damage moves without the risk of being unable to reposition as fast when they get cocky, and it helps make the speedy characters stand out compared to the slow ones. In the case of Floyd, the slowest character in the game, it's a bit redundant when he can just GET OVER HERE enemies.
• Adam is the most well-rounded character and probably the best one to make up for his long-ass absence.
• There's online co-op. Nobody can tell yet how good the netcode is, though.
• No playable Ash and Roo (Roo can be seen in the background tending to his own bar). Australians and gays will have to sit this one out.

The weirdest thing is that Blaze, a 30+ yo fit Latina MILF, sounds like a loli for some reason. They should've just brought back her voice actor from SoR2/3 (Yuzo Koshiro).

 

[sullynathan]

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

It's always amusing when a combo system gives you so much leeway between hits that you could get hard knockdowned, get up, go eat a big turkey, then return to pounding face with the hit counter going up where it left off.

Hopefully this has a midnight Steam release so I can tell you all how much I hated it sooner.

 

[Jenkem]

The game will be on par with Streets of Rage 2. Might possibly be the best SoR ever.

Also I normally hate filters but these look pretty good and a way to make the visuals match when using classic characters...

pixel-mode:

CRT filter:

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Jenkem, Nathan, get your disagree, retarded, and shit ratings ready because I'm going to BLAST the fuck out of this game in a few short hours. HAHAHAHAHA!