Great combat in action games

[Turbo Kid]

I loved the combat in Sleeping Dogs for having so many awesome environmental attacks. A lot of action games neglect this

The Batman Arkham games are known for their great combat, but I think the Mordor games took that system and perfected it. Throw in the Nemesis system and giant, epic scale battles in the second Mordor game and you had something really special.

Meanwhile, Mad Max offered a slower, meatier, crunchier, bloodier, brutal, violent, prison fight style alternative take on it

Lots of other games have awesome combat too, I'll let the rest of you point them out

 

[qw90700]

As a person who loves the beat 'em up genre a lot sadly there is no decent such games much for me. While Sleeping Dogs is one of the good ones it still "not that good" for me due to the way you can't customize your combos which is what I think as must feature in any such games. In that regard no game can beat God Hand and then Absolver in that regard.

That being said beyond these games this topic makes me realize I only like a few games' beat 'em up combat: Streets of Rage series, River City series, Kenka Bancho Series (especially I like combat of the PSP game) and Remember Me... No other game rings a bell at all.

So people may say "dude didn't you play Sifu and Yakuza games????" and I would say their combat is boring and leave at that. I did play lots of games in this genre, even some random indie Indonesian or something school simulator-like beat 'em up game that I don't even remember its name but nope. At this time and age when such games doesn't even have customizable combo sets they better don't release these games and I will say the same thing for hack and slash games too. The year is 2025, if you ask for AAAAA price then you better make sure your games won't be "lack of feature" like a NES game. Get your shit together video game industry!!!! lol. Unlike how they believe "these dudes love RPG genre therefore no matter what kind of BS we develop they will buy our games" the reality is it doesn't mean people will buy game mindlessly just because they love the genre, but on the contrary because we love the genre naturally our expectation will demand significantly different in good way games that is nothing like tons of games we played before. I admire anyone who develops games of beat 'em up genre, but just making the game generic combos without any customization whatsoever cannot sell in this time and age for me at all. Such games died for me the moment I played God Hand. Set God Hand the minimum bar you should pass to develop beat 'em up aspect of games, otherwise go work at McDonald's instead because it's what your brain can handle lol.

 

[Matricks]

They cant make these hardcore actions anymore, no talents, sjw and no buyers.

 

[Neb Lleb]

They cant make these hardcore actions anymore, no talents, sjw and no buyers.

Oh, dear. I've found a reactionary.

 

[Pinballbuzzbro]

As a person who loves the beat 'em up genre a lot sadly there is no decent such games much for me. While Sleeping Dogs is one of the good ones it still "not that good" for me due to the way you can't customize your combos which is what I think as must feature in any such games. In that regard no game can beat God Hand and then Absolver in that regard.

That being said beyond these games this topic makes me realize I only like a few games' beat 'em up combat: Streets of Rage series, River City series, Kenka Bancho Series (especially I like combat of the PSP game) and Remember Me... No other game rings a bell at all.

So people may say "dude didn't you play Sifu and Yakuza games????" and I would say their combat is boring and leave at that. I did play lots of games in this genre, even some random indie Indonesian or something school simulator-like beat 'em up game that I don't even remember its name but nope. At this time and age when such games doesn't even have customizable combo sets they better don't release these games and I will say the same thing for hack and slash games too. The year is 2025, if you ask for AAAAA price then you better make sure your games won't be "lack of feature" like a NES game. Get your shit together video game industry!!!! lol. Unlike how they believe "these dudes love RPG genre therefore no matter what kind of BS we develop they will buy our games" the reality is it doesn't mean people will buy game mindlessly just because they love the genre, but on the contrary because we love the genre naturally our expectation will demand significantly different in good way games that is nothing like tons of games we played before. I admire anyone who develops games of beat 'em up genre, but just making the game generic combos without any customization whatsoever cannot sell in this time and age for me at all. Such games died for me the moment I played God Hand. Set God Hand the minimum bar you should pass to develop beat 'em up aspect of games, otherwise go work at McDonald's instead because it's what your brain can handle lol.

I'm very picky about beat em up combat and there's a very specific balance you have to strike of easy to understand satisfying smackin people around', while also having a lot of variety and things you can do. Batman Returns on the SNES is one of favorite brawlers for this exact reason; You can grab people in different ways, have different throws that can hit other enemies, differing types of kicks, the ability to throw people into the background, do a screen clear, stun them with a throwable thing, do the final fight infinite punch glitch, zipline into them, the possibilities are literally endless!

But not only that, the game has the second key to a good beat em' up: Variety. One stage you're scrolling through a shopping plaza fighting guys double dragon style, but the second stage your suddenly thrown into a 2d segment where you have to escape a burning mall by grappling over fires. Stage 3 has you on a rapidly rising elevator as goons jump at you through the windows, havig to quickly hit them before they can get onto the platform, then a few stages after that there's a driving segment in the Batmobile, and the whole game is nonstop variety like that.

It's why so many other beat em ups fall flat IMO, especially 3d ones; They have super basic boring movesets with not much to them yet expect you to clear billions of enemies in just a single stage, yet also never do anything to make the game flashy or interesting to keep ya going. Punching the same 3 chucklefucks over and over again as I slowly inch towards the goalpost has never and will never be fun, plain and simple.


fuck sonic unleashed

 

[Matricks]

This goat was pony bigbudgets beats.

 

[qw90700]

I'm very picky about beat em up combat and there's a very specific balance you have to strike of easy to understand satisfying smackin people around', while also having a lot of variety and things you can do. Batman Returns on the SNES is one of favorite brawlers for this exact reason; You can grab people in different ways, have different throws that can hit other enemies, differing types of kicks, the ability to throw people into the background, do a screen clear, stun them with a throwable thing, do the final fight infinite punch glitch, zipline into them, the possibilities are literally endless!

But not only that, the game has the second key to a good beat em' up: Variety. One stage you're scrolling through a shopping plaza fighting guys double dragon style, but the second stage your suddenly thrown into a 2d segment where you have to escape a burning mall by grappling over fires. Stage 3 has you on a rapidly rising elevator as goons jump at you through the windows, havig to quickly hit them before they can get onto the platform, then a few stages after that there's a driving segment in the Batmobile, and the whole game is nonstop variety like that.

It's why so many other beat em ups fall flat IMO, especially 3d ones; They have super basic boring movesets with not much to them yet expect you to clear billions of enemies in just a single stage, yet also never do anything to make the game flashy or interesting to keep ya going. Punching the same 3 chucklefucks over and over again as I slowly inch towards the goalpost has never and will never be fun, plain and simple.


fuck sonic unleashed

Yes, variety and environmental usage is must in the beat 'em up genre because this is how real life fighting is. For example old James Bond movies are a good example about it.

If we exclude professional fighers and martial artists and focus on the idea of "how ordinary people fight" it's always in the way of generic punch and kicks but also about using whatever they find around as weapon too. Yakuza series tried to do it in "realistic way" for example. But then naturally people push each other around too that damages around. But most importantly their generic attacks depends on what kind of situation they are in and where their opponent is. This is one thing most of games can't nail decently because they don't even care. It feels like trying to play old Castlevania games so to attack the enemy in air you jump and attack forward, but fighting has no such limitation because people can attack every angle in to tons of ways as long as their limbs can reach.

But I kinda "don't ask much" so I don't expect these for I admit how rocket science it would be for people to do so I settle on low and at least ask customizable combos because it's really a must IMO.

As for variety of gameplay in beat 'em up games, yes it is a must too. For example despite how limited Streets of Rage games are I still love them despite I do same moves to attack in same few ways but naturally doing the same thing bores people quickly. That's why variety in levels are must. Also how cool levels look like matters too. Despite how annoying factory levels even look like at least they offer new rules to how you can beat people by trying to walk on conveyor belts and trying to stay away from huge shit presses down and avoid holes and whatnot. I personally would add kick ass soundtrack that player should be able to choose whatever music they want either within the soundtrack or uses their own music.

But video game industry tends to be cheap and just put a generic gameplay with generic level design because they believe gamers play game just to waste time so they would be even okay with walking for 30 minutes... shit doesn't work like that. They gotta ask themselves "if I wanna play this game more than 10 minutes" and most importantly "would I wanna replay this game again". Most games fails in these 2 questions anymore and they are even repulsive to think about them due to lots of reasons I'll skip but I'll hint at how the game doesn't justify price, new generation social issues and BS DRM and Denuvo shit usage to "we'll remove the game from your library any time we want" shit. When the year is 2025 and video game development is so easy now by spending so less time relative to how it was before they have no excuse to release "NES-like games with modern gameplay and realistic graphics" shit, you just gotta step up the game yo. They think we are sucker so we will keep eating ancient pizza they heating up buy just changing its box. Gamers unite and rebel the fuck out!!!! lolol

 

[kuroninneko]

God Hand (USA) PS2 ISO – RGT Repository

God Hand (USA) PS2 ISO Game ID: SLUS-21503. Languages: English. For Sony PlayStation 2.

retrogametalk.com

Urban Reign (USA) PS2 ISO – RGT Repository

Urban Reign (USA) PS2 ISO Game ID: SLUS-21209. Languages: English. For Sony PlayStation 2.

retrogametalk.com

Shenmue (USA) DC ISO Download – RGT Repository

Shenmue (USA) DC ISO CDI/GDI for SEGA Dreamcast. Genre: Action-Adventure. Published and developed by SEGA

retrogametalk.com

 

[Matricks]

Shenmue is overrated, boring, slow, sluggish controls and more like VN than action rpg.
wth can these attrocy got trilogy is beyond words.

 

[qw90700]

Shenmue is overrated, boring, slow, sluggish controls and more like VN than action rpg.
wth can these attrocy got trilogy is beyond words.

I appreciate what they tried to do, and I would consider the series as more like "RPG in modern day" VN by being surprised to consider the game has even having combat to think about lol. The game is boredom simulator for the sake of unwanted realism that is the opposite reason why some gamers plays video games so it was not fun at all to have to check every drawer in the huge AF house to find some document in the initial part of the game just to show their "drawer pulling simulator" gameplay lol. I ain't gonna do that shit, walk a lot and talk to tons of people mindlessly lol. In a way for me Shenmue is "how not to develop a video game 101" series lol. The only worth Shenmue series has is how stupid the game is so it has good memes like this lol:

TBH, the only video game I'm ok with "walk and talk a lot" stuff is Flower, Sun and Rain but no other game nails this aspect!!!

 

[kuroninneko]

Shenmue is overrated, boring, slow, sluggish controls and more like VN than action rpg.
wth can these attrocy got trilogy is beyond words.

You can say what you want about the pacing of the game and the retro tank controls (Dreamcast didnt have a 2nd analog stick) but when you do get to fight the combat is very good.

 

[qw90700]

You can say what you want about the pacing of the game and the retro tank controls (Dreamcast didnt have a 2nd analog stick) but when you do get to fight the combat is very good.

You are right, it has great combat but the combat is like 0.0000001% of the game that cannot justify even thinking about its combat though lol:

It's like thinking about how much water there is on Jupiter's moon!!!

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Oh, dear. I've found a reactionary.

SJW in 2025 is so unreal to me

 

[Netra]

ONI combat system was great.

Oni (Europe) PS2 ISO – RGT Repository

Oni (Europe) PS2 ISO Game ID: SLES-50134, SLES-50176, SLES-50177. Languages: English, French, German. For Sony PlayStation 2.

retrogametalk.com

 

[qw90700]

SJW in 2025 is so unreal to me

Oh they still exist on Twitter (called X anymore) but they just changed their "skin" and their power is so strong enough to make governments change laws by fucking life of most people and they are the prime reason for recent payment processor BS lol.

Reading the X they are not satisfied so they wanna ban Discord, Steam, bring heavy censor and ban for many type of games just because "my kid" argument lol.

 

[Rocket2049]

i'm a fan of the classics, double dragon, Streets of Rage, final fight, Dynamite cop, and some of the River City ransom games
also stuff like Bayonetta, Nier automata, DMC, god of war
ninja gaiden games get crazy, ninja gaiden Black 2 was intense as hell.
the Namco Tales games are always fun to play and combo and dodge and such, especially paired with 4 player co-op it can be a huge blast to play
(tales of arise made me sad for no co-op at all, depsite having a fun combat system anyways)
always a fan of the warriors-like games, (hyrule warriors, dragon quest heroes, fire emblem warriors, dynasty warriors, samurai warriors, warriors all-stars, persona 5 strikers, and Fate/Samurai recently) always fun to murder 100s of enemies in like a few special moves.
all the kingdom hearts games were flashy and fun most times (hate chain of memories, wasn't a fan of the card deck stuff)
i play a lot of JRPGs, so alot of the action ones like, newer Mana games (trials of mana, visions of mana), Scarlet nexus, Star Ocean,
world ends with you original and NEO (NEO has you controlling a party of 6 yourself, not AI, all controlled together )

but to separate this out to its own paragraph,
I have a big enjoyment out of the Ys games, especially Ys 8, which is my favorite game of all time, flashy combos, skill spamming, timed dodges into slow motion, timed blocks to counter with critical hits, I can't recommend Ys 8 enough to be honest, it's a game needed to be played by all.

i'm a huge fan of timing dodges activating slow motion in whatever game does that.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Oh they still exist on Twitter (called X anymore) but they just changed their "skin" and their power is so strong enough to make governments change laws by fucking life of most people and they are the prime reason for recent payment processor BS lol.

Reading the X they are not satisfied so they wanna ban Discord, Steam, bring heavy censor and ban for many type of games just because "my kid" argument lol.

They don’t actually exist in the way internet peeps think, your problem is that you’re looking at the site full of smug contrarians who only care about being right. “I think assault is bad” and you’ll still get people to disagree on mass on the everything app because that’s how it always is. On the opposite end, in real life people lean more towards the humor of 2000s internet and aren’t moping losers like the dudes making threads about waaah I can’t get a gf but I don’t want to put effort into it.

(Also the Collective Shout thing is 100% just a front for complete control over the credit card monopoly + the entire internet and they’re just the scapegoats, like that guy who got sued for the rest of his life by Nintendo because his exact job was to fall guy for a corrupt company known for bricking consoles for cash. Guarantee if they didn’t see use in it, they’d just ignore it)

 

[Numubunde]

i'm a fan of the classics, double dragon, Streets of Rage, final fight, Dynamite cop, and some of the River City ransom games
also stuff like Bayonetta, Nier automata, DMC, god of war
ninja gaiden games get crazy, ninja gaiden Black 2 was intense as hell.
the Namco Tales games are always fun to play and combo and dodge and such, especially paired with 4 player co-op it can be a huge blast to play
(tales of arise made me sad for no co-op at all, depsite having a fun combat system anyways)
always a fan of the warriors-like games, (hyrule warriors, dragon quest heroes, fire emblem warriors, dynasty warriors, samurai warriors, warriors all-stars, persona 5 strikers, and Fate/Samurai recently) always fun to murder 100s of enemies in like a few special moves.
all the kingdom hearts games were flashy and fun most times (hate chain of memories, wasn't a fan of the card deck stuff)
i play a lot of JRPGs, so alot of the action ones like, newer Mana games (trials of mana, visions of mana), Scarlet nexus, Star Ocean,
world ends with you original and NEO (NEO has you controlling a party of 6 yourself, not AI, all controlled together )

but to separate this out to its own paragraph,
I have a big enjoyment out of the Ys games, especially Ys 8, which is my favorite game of all time, flashy combos, skill spamming, timed dodges into slow motion, timed blocks to counter with critical hits, I can't recommend Ys 8 enough to be honest, it's a game needed to be played by all.

i'm a huge fan of timing dodges activating slow motion in whatever game does that.

I didn't finish KH3 but KH2 is still one of my favorite action rpg combat systems. I think it strikes a good balance between being challenging and easily making you feel like a real badass

 

[sneakyguts]

batman arkham games