Beat \u2018em ups were and are my thing. I just think that the concept of going left to right beating people up is enjoyable and less brutal than first person shooting which is a good thing, probably? It\u2019s relaxing, exhilarating, doesn\u2019t demand a strong commitment in time or skills. That\u2019s good entertainment.<\/p>\n
I think that type of game would be great in lots of ways these days: a beat \u2018em up where you go after cat-callers and rapists a beat \u2018em up where you play the new Ghostbuster cast, a beat \u2018em up where you punch politicians in the face before escaping the white house I mean, the list is endless.<\/p>\n
I was there when they were popular in the arcades. A few notes on what they need to have in order to become a classic.<\/p>\n
Look at Battle Circuit, the last Capcom beat \u2018em up in 1997: you can play a woman in leotard, a Fantastic Four looking skinny dude, a carnivorous plant<\/em>, a little girl riding an ostrich and a cyberdude. Maybe that\u2019s a little extreme but you get the point, representation and diversity are important because it makes your potential audience happy. Don\u2019t just have a dude and dudette, with the dudette being \u201cfast\u201d and the dude \u201cstrong\u201d. We\u2019re way passed that. Mix it up and go nuts on character design.<\/p>\n The beat \u2018em up golden age is the 90s. 16bit graphics, 4096 colors. So I\u2019m always kind of annoyed when I see that most beat \u2018em all avoid that style for another \u201c8bitHD\u201d style, monochromatic and sad. The 16bit, Paul Robertson style is where it\u2019s at. Bring me some colors, bring me some dynamic.<\/p>\n Audio is insanely important. Punches and kicks need to make you smile and feel like you\u2019re actively beating the fuck out of those punks. Streets of Rage does beat \u2018em up sound effects admirably. You need that high pitched, slap sound. That\u2019s the feel good, hilarious, crucial part (Castle Crashers lets you abuse the slap sound as much as possible). SMACK THAT BITCH UP. Mid 90s is when we started getting sampled voices everywhere, so you would end up in a satisfying flow of punch and whoosh sounds, short screams and other digitalized cues with a punchy soundtrack that all together made the experience what it was. You need those whoosh sounds when you\u2019re not hitting anybody, it helps solidifying the experience. Mother Russia Bleeds fails quite hard on the sound side when it could elevate that game soooo much.<\/p>\n It has to be perfectly possible to beat the game on easy almost first try. It\u2019s about having fun, not about spending hours you guys. Once again Streets of Rage and Castle Crashers do that perfectly \u2013and that\u2019s really hard to do- you can beat the game on easy or ruin your fingers on hardest. Health bars on all enemies is an awesome convention because it discreetly teaches you how to optimize your moves to get rid of them: two punches and a head butt or one uppercut and a kick in the face? And of course on bosses, it makes you realize how long it\u2019s going to take, as well as putting pressure on you once you know you\u2019re about to win. Not giving that precious feedback to players to force them to be as perfect as possible regardless<\/em> is bad design. I don\u2019t play beat \u2018em up for a damn score or \u201cbe the perfect beast\u201d, I play them to have a good time.<\/p>\n I think beat \u2018em ups can be serious in the theming \u2013if you want to- but must use some kind of comedy in the delivery. I mean, it\u2019s like any entertainment: violence is fine but you have to justify, wrap it into something that makes it less about just violence. I\u2019d love to play a beat \u2018em up where the plot is just you and your friends going to the beach and you end up in a riot beating up cops, rioters, scientologists and priests, destroying SUVs and fixies, sucker punching idiots on their phones, trying to go through to get there before sunset. The end would be like Inside\u2019s end and that game would be the shit.<\/p>\n Beat \u2018em ups could be so many things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beat \u2018em ups were and are my thing. I just think that the concept of going left to right beating people up is enjoyable and less brutal than first person shooting which is a good thing, probably? It\u2019s relaxing, exhilarating, doesn\u2019t demand a strong commitment in time or skills. That\u2019s good entertainment. I think that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2191,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions\/2191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}AESTHETICS<\/h3>\n
DIFFICULTY<\/h3>\n
IT\u2019S NOT THAT DEEP<\/h3>\n