Ridiculous definition of Ik, it’s just a way of using the end of a bone system to move the entire bone chain as opposed to rotating each joint manually or through script.
These are action games, 'fighting games' usually refers to the genre of game where you are primarily fighting against another player, such as street fighter and tekken. I mean yah other games focused on fighting have been called that before, but pretty much after the first era of beat-em-ups in arcades, PvE games havent really been referred to as fighting games anymore.
I still remember the day that game released. I couldn’t put it down for weeks. That was the first PS2 game I remember convincing me that we were in the “next generation” at that time. It made the wait for MGS2 a lot easier.
@@omgyeti2049 I always enjoy hearing people talk about which game you played on the PS2 that made you realize we are in a new generation. For me it was when I first got a hold of Final Fantasy X and saw that blitzball cutscene in Zanarkand for the first time
@@FAMCHAMPI think it’s because most Hack N’ Slash are unlike DMC. You are better trying Character Action games to find stuff that have interesting mechanics like Metal Gear Revengeance or Scarlet Nexus. Even though the former SHOULD be considered Hack N’ Slash and the latter an RPG.
@@jurtheorc8117 Devil May Cry, Sonic Frontiers, Muck, Elden Ring, Sonic Adventure 2 (i added a platforming mechanic inspired by SA 2), and probably more in the future when my game's development will progress
Dev here as well kinda, I’m always thinking of something that can take the genre further but it’s hard. For me Punishing Gray Raven has innovated the genre the most with its ping system. Nioh and Rise of Ronin implemented stance based combos where with the press of a button you can have a different moveset mid combo. Honkai Impact 3 started the trend of playing as 3 characters that can swap during battle. Stellar Blade has a large amount of defensive tools to mitigate damage and punish the enemy. Vindictus has all sorts of characters with different mechanics. I like Vella, she has a counter stance that lets her slash through an enemy while being attacked in the stance. Vindictus had an interesting thing where attacks didn’t auto track or soft lock an enemy, you kind of had to strategically whiff the air in order to land your power attack on the enemy safely. Freeflow combat is different though imo. I like to think of it as cinematic combat where it’s just a lot of enemy interactions and pressing a button to counter and takedown an enemy. Games like Sleeping Dogs, Ghost of Tsushima, Sifu, SPINE, Assassins Creed II~Black Flag. As an indie those are harder to make because you have all these specific enemy interactions, you need some sort of animation pairing system, and the combat unfortunately isn’t as complex or challenging as a usual hack and slash since all you have to do is press a button to takedown. But hack and slash and action games have been able to implement takedowns as like finisher moves or like Stellar Blade, as a move to use when the enemy’s balance bar is depleted.
While free flow is revolution and fluid. Its easy to mess up, as in some openworld games with freeflow melle eventually became spam counter to win. They simplified it to the point where you just had to continually counter to avoid getting hit and then you could attack without risk. And the removal of complex combo systems resulted in loads of AAA games feeling the same.
The thing in the arkham games the counter dosent do any damage so you still have to fight the enemies to win combat encounters, a small but important thing that a lot of other games miss.
Shadow Of Mordor is the classic example of a free flow combat system that basically ruined the game once you unlocked enough moves, because you could just spam the same four buttons over and over and win every single encounter with zero effort.
Ac4 and shadow of mordor are examples of this. Works fine on flat terrain. But that's usually never the case. Hand to hand combat on ships in ac4 is super jank at tends to stop working at points. And in shadow of mordor, elevated terrain is a great way to break the combat to your disadvantage
Now I wanna mention an interesting what if scenario. During the development of bully back in 2005-2006, someone at Rockstar developed in his free time, a new context sensitive combat system which changed combat moves and combo chaining depending on the player or enemy's state, for example: if the enemy was on a regular position, jabs and hooks would be thrown, if the enemy was below a certain height, uppercuts would be thrown and so on. His combat system also featured a "brawling mechanic" which made it so that you couldn't spam combos and counters, since stunlocking was almost completely removed, have you seen people fighting IRL? where both parties land hits until someone gets knocked out? literally that, enemies would also have the capacity to counterattack just like the player. This combat system never made it past the developer's workstation but I wonder, what if Bully had released with this combat system? would we see more games with a similar system to what I described? Me personally I really prefer the idea of a game where fighting actually involves strategy instead of combolocking and counter spamming.
The satisfaction that free flow combat provides is immediate and requires zero to no skill, it became an instant success and an inspiration for mainstream videogames like Spiderman. The way it magnetizes player to their targets so the player doesn't have to think about positioning is great for casual players but to me this solution is downright insulting as an avid fighting/action gamer. Ninja Gaiden Black can be punishing, a bit finicky in its soft locking and awkward with its camera but once you manage to understand the system and how it behaves, to me it is the pinnacle of action videogames (It sequel even more) but we strayed away from such brutal game design no action game nowadays scratches that itch.
If you're up for some games that don't have the magnetizing thing and are more in line with older styles of gameplay, like DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, 3D beat-em-ups, here's a list of games that may be interesting. Some are of fairly recent years, most are still in development. They won't hit the level of intensity as Ninja Gaiden but i still want to spread word to give the little guys a chance and just... help out different types of combat styles. - Soulstice (personal favourite. *Not* a Soulslike) - Clash: Artifacts of Chaos (personal favourite. Zeno Clash prequel but there seem to be some God Hand inspirations in the combat) - Immortal: And the Death that Follows - Genokids - Enenra Daemon Core - Gori: Cuddly Carnage - Mightreya (a game by the dev of Assaulst Spy) - Kings of Hell (fair warning, looks cartoony but is quite spicy and has El Swearing) Hope there's stuff to your interest in here!
I 100% Batman Arkhum Asylum and that was pretty difficult for me, it's not easy chaining combos to achieve the challenges highest scores and dodging when few enemy hits can kill you
Games with free flow combat are not inherently easy, they just tackle difficulty very differently from other games. 2 important things about free flow combat is that: 1. Almost at any point of in the game, you can avoid any incoming attack if you press the right button(s) 2. Once you get into a combo, distance is not a big factor anymore. But as soon as the combo stops, so does the magnetism. These 2 things mean that as long as you can keep up the combo, you can maintain fight with a bunch of enemies (the fact that they don't attack all at once also helps). And these games do exactly that. Throw you in a room with a bunch of enemies, some even with specific ways to defeat/counter, so you can't just spam and blam your way out. In a hard encounter, you are essentially multitasking with a variety of enemies, some of them being quite different from the rest. Meanwhile, if I am not mistaken (since I haven't specifically played Ninja Gaiden, but a few games with similar reputation), ideally, an important part of the gameplay is to lure out enemy one by one so that you don't have to take out all at once. In fact, fighting multiple enemies at once is highly discouraged. There's a reason why gank is a term used to refer to these fights. Overall, fighting an overwhelming number of enemies (not just 4 or 5 enemies) is bread and butter of free flow combat while even the concept of this is not entertained in games like Ninja Gaiden.
The thing is, are you really fighting 10 enemies if only 2 of them are active at a times or are you just fighting a small group while knowing all the waves you have to fight at once ? Free flow combat strenght is in its ease to use. Doesn't mean you won't get difficulty but it's not the focus at all. The magnetism allows to keep your combo going easier yes but also and mainly make it so you can't just throw a random punch in the air since seeing Batman fighting a fly isn't really super heroish. And the ability to cancel anything into a counter is in the same veins, Batman don't get hit by random thugs so he can counter at all times, you (almost) never take risks. But the important thing is to know what you want the player to feel. Is it mastery over Batman or feeling like him ? If it was the first then it would fail completly since the games cover most mistakes you can do and you loose control of him very often (when he is switching target, when you start a counter, finishing moves, ect). It also comes with it's own set of challenge, because it's overly animated, you need enough space, making a lot of the fight happening in very similar arena. No cool fightscenes in a giant stairways or in a thight corridor for Batman, gotta be in a big enough spherish arena. If the rooster of enemies isn't strong enought it can become extremely repetitif and down right boring. And the enemies design themselves is hard. If he doesn't force the player to change his fighting style, what even is his point ? But since the free flow is actually quite stiff with it's rules they can also just force the player to do 1 set of actions for this enemies and that's it. for example shields ask you to double press X/A coz that's what you have to do. You can also loose to much freedom making the player feels like the fight are closer to QTE than actuall fight. In AC the best options you had was wait for the attack, parry and times your next attack to chain one hit kills. While it looks cool it also become incredibly mind numbing. Batman way to handle that was quite... dumb. Enemies would need to take a giant beating before going down forcing you to rely on finishers and since the normal punisher takes forever and (if my memory is right) you can't counter while doing it you will be seeing the same 5 specials takedowns again and again making it extremelly repetitive. Funilly enought the last man standing got his life reduced so much that he goes down after one heavy hit. Making Batman feels very inconsistent in his strenght. Tldr: Free flow is about empowering the player.
As an Arkham and Spider-Man fan there’s a few points i don’t agree with ,Free flow isn’t the standard for combat in games because it’s very animation heavy , meaning it requires you to be in a specific scenario and location , you get a cool takedown animation near a wall but what if you didn’t want to execute a takedown , It also lacks combo strings because the purpose is fluid movement between targets so you’re limited to basic inputs the more free flow your system is getting repetitive after a while. The best and most popular systems are combat that allow more player input , challenge and creativity . Which is why I found your statement of saying the Arkham games system were better than previous systems when those previous systems were Devil May Cry and classic GOW ,hack and slash games that are a different genre of combat not worse . DMC in particular that only added quality of life improvements as the series continued to DMC3 and DMC5 and is still regarded as one of the best combat system in gaming . As far as what the standard is the Souls formula is a little more accurate , given the hundreds of games inspired by the system so much so it spawned a genre called Souls-like . These are just my thoughts , Hope we get a part 2 to this that clears up things more
always choose what feels best for the character. Either by lore or setting. A godly character would likely flourish with Character action and fast paced combat, and a horror game might need slower paced gameplay.
Just wanted to clarify: These are not Fighting games, they are Action games. Also, IK, motion capture, and blend tables while they helped make anim creation easier, didnt really aid the development of a freeflow combat system. The game design and anim engineering departments are responsible for that in game dev.
exactly, these are just ways to animate animations NOT program a combat system which i was eating some tasbihim as to why she mentioned that in the video when talking about god of war cuz i was like "HUH!!!" im also an indie dev programming a combat system for my game and i havent animated any animation with either IK or motion capture i was simply rotating each bone, keyframing, and changing the interporlation to make each animation so IDK why she mentioned animating techniques when talking about gameplay-ish combat system
@@walterh2113 While I get what your trying to say but that is a gross misnomer, as for gaming "Fighting Games" is a specific term so using it as a blanket statement leads to confusion and would seem amateurish which is not a good look.
@@walterh2113 By your logic, Super Mario Bros is much closer to actual fighting games because beside fighting Bowser and his minions, the game is 2D. Fighting game is a specific genre with it's own audience. If she can't even understand that simple fact, it undermines her authority and devalues everything she says about games.
I have a few gripes with this video. - In the first part, where you talk about the history that led to free flow, you almost only talk about animation, while it would be much more interesting for the topic of the video to talk about mechanics and game design. - Freeflow doesn't emphasize timing and positional awareness, it makes it easier and almost automatic, making the experience more fluid, but also less challenging and rewarding. - Freeflow can be fun when done right, but is all about removing skill barriers. Oftentime an action system that goes all in on the free flow aspect fails to feel interesting in the long run. - THOSE ARE NOT FIGHTING GAMES. I know it sounds like nitpicking, but when you talk about a topic and you get the basic terms wrong it feels like you don't know what you're talking about and you didn't care enough to do a little bit of research
As much as I enjoyed this video and found it very insightful, I do agree with all of this. Freeflow combat is a blast, but after a while you sort of slip into autopilot, to the point that it feels like second nature. Which is cool but also can feel repetitive. Almost like a rythym game. You rarely have to think on your feet anymore and it really comes down to timing and (in batmans case) how flashy you want to be about it.
This is a very well made video, but I completely disagree with your assessment of what free flow combat is. The very thing that defines it in my opinion is that instead of having a proper attack combo, you got a large variety of potential attack and counter animations, which are shuffled through to keep up visual variety and spice up the look of the battles you are partaking in. Also the whole thing of you bouncing between enemy to enemy and only hitting everyone once before moving on to the next since each free-flow hit knocks a guy down. That's how it is in Arkham, and Insomniac's Spider-Man games don't work that way at all. Play the TASM games if you wanna see an actual Arkham copycat. And towards the end of the video there was stuff said about how free flow introduced stuff like being able to smoothly go between different types of attacks but that's like.. I don't see the correlation. Devil May Cry lets you smoothly transition between melee attacks, gun attacks, mobility abilities such as teleports, parries, cancels, and all sorts of stuff, ever since DMC3 which came out in 2005. I'm not saying DMC is the true source of inspiration behind these mechanics, because there are extremely few games out there that play or control like it, but having a variety of abilities to mix into combat on top of your basic melee hits is 100% not a Batman thing
the moment she called these action games and ARPGs as Fighting Games I immediately knew she didn't do enough research on even basic terminology before making this
im rly rly rly rly glad you compiled these thoughts into one video, something im sure a lot of people think about, but haven't found the words or research, TY!!!
A lot of great research in this video: highlighting DMC, the Prince of Persia mention and pointing out that Assassin's Creed pre-dates Arkham for the counter system are all great elements of the background to the birth of the freeflow combat system. The one last piece of this evolution in combat that I feel was missed in this video (understandable for its recency) is the role Sifu plays in enhancing the system with even more fluid animation blending, incorporating the posture system from Sekiro, and expanding the players moveset to rival the arsenal found in traditional fighting games with parries and animation cancels allowing for complex combos without the button mashing since everything is based on basic building blocks. Great video, freeflow combat is one of my favorite mechanics evolutions in modern gaming. You got a new sub :)
@@jackbishop8610 It's collecting an historical record of consistent themes in media that collectively are used to demonstrate a thesis about that media. It requires finding said media and placing it within the proper context of the broader whole. We call this research. When collected in a work its called an essay, when presented in a video format its called a video essay. Welcome to society man. I'm not sure where your snark is coming from, whether you feel the need to simply be argumentative, or you're a sexist that doesn't like the messenger not the message, or maybe you're just a sad lonely person who only gets joy from feeling contrarion and superior. Whatever it is go take it somewhere else, I don't need it bro. Say something constructive next time, maybe something with more than two words that actually says something about how you feel.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time predates Assassin's Creed and is better in every way, it's also a much better game than God of War. Arkham series leaves Assassin's Creed in the dust. Action games have largely gone backwards though. Just like shooters get worse every year with every new installment of Battlefield and Call of Duty.
One thing you're missing is that Spiderman-2 from the original Playstation Era, had the free-flow combat movement. It also had the dodge and counter systems. Web attacks and airborne combat. This pre-dates batman.
I'm pretty she said Batman game mastered free flow combat. God of war already had free flow combat but the npc do the same action same with ps2 spider man 2 the npc are dumb
The moment the character stops doing predictable animations and starts using controls and animations that are based on enemy attacks and environment, the genre changes from the type of hack and slash i would enjoy to a "respond to the indicators and wait for the animation to end" game.
There's a game from 2022 called Soulstice that does something interesting with the "animations based on enemy attacks". First off, it's NOT a Soulslike. It's a game more in line with the genre of DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders and such than Black Myth: Wukong, Stellar Blade, GOW2018/Ragnarök etc. Primary and Secondary weapon buttons, launchers, aerial attacks, slam downs, a mix of a Style/Special/Devil Trigger meter, seven total weapons with quick switching and their own animation movesets and more. Got a really good story too! Has its rough spots but i would still recommend it. Got a lot to offer! In any case, to explain what i get at with the combat: The player character is technically two characters in one. The Ashen Knight named Briar is the one who wields the physical weaponry. She wields the sword, hammer, flagellation whip, punch daggers etc. The Shade is a ghost on the Knight's shoulder. In Briar's case it's her dead younger sister, Lute. Enemies can have a Counter Button prompt pop up for certain animations. Pressing it in time will perform any of three Counters: - Deflect (return a projectile) - Freeze (what it says on the tin) - Disrupt (makes the enemy stagger out of the animation) You can't choose the Counter but they're not random either. It's only particular attacks. Here's the thing: It's the Shade that does the Countering. Briar can be performing any animation with any of the weapons or be dodging, and as long as you press the button in time, Lute will perform the counter. No disruption to Briar's animations whatsoever. (Counters can be missed, but there's an optional skill that can give you a freebie if you were too late in pressing it. Has an invisible cooldown. All Skills have full currency refunds-- if you don't jive with one, you can use the currency you used for it to invest in other skills) Any Counter move builds up that Style/Special meter too, called Unity. It's a fairly fleeting resource for either weapon-unique Finishers (done by performing a pause combo and ending with your weapon of choice) or entering the Rapture Mode, the Devil Trigger equivalent. Therefore, succesful counters help in potentially getting extra powerful and stylish options later Outside of Lute's Counters, though, Briar has no defensive options. Aside from the Fist of Retribution. It's a metal gauntlet/buckler shield weapon and the only weapon with a Parry move in the entire game. I don't use it much. I prefer to use it and its charge-up move, which give extra power and reach, to knock Armor and Barriers (shields and forcefields) off the enemies that have them. All weapons can be used in any situation against any enemy just fine, though may prove a bit weaker or stronger against particular foes. - Aforementioned Fist of Retribution for example stands tall alongside the Ashen Enforcer (big warhammer) in breaking Armor and Barriers, yet the Hammer is even better against Barriers while the Fist excels against Armor when charged up. - The flagellation whip, the Tearing Penance, hits many times at once in a wide range and gives a bit of stun, making it nice against the speedsters that swarm around you, but the damage is fairly low. The stun doesn't apply much if the enemy is wearing armor. Oh, and it has a Grappling Hook move too. No range limit if you're locked onto an enemy. There's some other subtleties to the weapons and this isn't really about the initial subject anymore, i'm just trying to get word of Soulstice out there. Games in this genre are so little-catered to and Soulstice has proven one of my favourites in recent years, so i'm trying to help them out where i can. Others in the genre --and some fairly adjacent upcoming ones-- would be - Genokids - Enenra Daemon Core - Gori: Cuddly Carnage - Kings of Hell And Clash: Artifacts of Chaos may be interesting too. Combat's a bit more in the vein of God Hand, of all things. If you took the time to read this all through, thank you for doing so, hope this proved interesting, and have a good one.
Weird, for some reason the comment i posted here didn't go through. To repost it in a smaller and more concise way: There's a cool and solid game from 2022 called Soulstice, in the genre and gameplay style of DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders and such. Seven different weapons you can quickly swap between, Style/Special meter hybrid, aerial combat and launchers, quick "get back into the fight" moves like a Stinger, quite big enemy roster, etc. Anyway: it did something interesting with "respond to the indicators" while not compromising the gameplay influences from those other games. Namely by having the player character be, thematically and in practice, be two characters. Generally you directly control the Ashen Knight, Briar. She does the physical fighting and gets around seven different weapons, all with their own unique animations, utility and differences. On her shoulder is the ghost of her sister, Lute, referred to as a Shade. Lute you cannot directly control for any offensive moves, except for pressing the Counter button. Lute operates *separately* from Briar. For some animations, enemies will have a Counter button prompt pop up. There's three varieties: - Deflect (return a projectile) - Freeze (what it says on the tin) - Disrupt (prevents an attack from happening and staggers the enemy out of their animation). You don't have control which counter Lute will perform: it depends on the enemy's animation. The Stinger's tail swipe will always be a Freeze for example, so you have to react by getting away and rushing back in with a Piercing Lunge or other Stinger-type move, or getting over it and using moves that hit below you, then perform a slamdown when it's finished with the swipe, to start some new combos. As said, Lute operates separately from Briar. Which means that whatever animation, combo, launcher, aerial, grappling hook, charge, slamdown, dodge, etc. you're performing with her, Lute's counters do not interrupt or cancel whatever you're doing. There's a skill tree too where you can upgrade Lute, with stuff like perfect counters giving some currency, some health shards to heal, a speed bonus, sending out powerful homing spirit bolts or even launchers from a distance, making these launchers affect enemies of Medium and Big class enemies too, etc. Even one where you get a freebie It's a lot more substantial than just number/percentage-based upgrades. And --i'll keep it at this for now-- doing Counters boosts the Unity meter, which is like a hybrid of a Style Meter and Special/"Devil Trigger" meter. It's used for performing weapon-unique Finishers (done by ending any Pause Combo with a particular weapon) or entering the Rapture state. Or even a third option you get late in the game... In any case, Unity is a fairly fleeting resource if you don't hit anyone for too long or get hit yourself. But the Counters help keep up some momentum to perform more stylish and impressive damage later on, provided you can keep up the pressure without getting hit. I very much love Soulstice. Has its rough points but I can certainly recommend it. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos too. A Zeno Clash prequel with seemingly some God Hand and 3D beat-em-up influences this time around. Here's some other upcoming action games without combat systems like those of the Batman Arkham series or GOW 2018/Ragnarök: - Immortal: And the Death that Follows - Genokids - Enenra Daemon Core - Mightreya - Gori: Cuddly Carnage - Kings of Hell If you read this all the way through, thank you for doing so. Hope this was interesting and that you may look more into the games in question.
this is like calling super mario 64 a souls like, or superhot a call of duty game most of these games have no similarities in combat beyond using the same console controllers/mouse and keyboard and therefore following some contemporary input/UI schemes
You left out middle earth: shadow of war. Which had absolutely one of the best implementations of free flow combat, mixed with easily understood and flexible combat styles. :)
Devil May Cry 1 is my favourite game of all time and so it was great to see it mentioned here, but the PoP: Sands Trilogy and God of War are also amazing. Great vid.
The game I've had the most fun with that uses this type of system is Shadow of Mordor. I van play that for hours, just fighting hordes of enemies, only stopping when everyone is dead and I need to find a new group.
Fantastic! You did an awesome research to drive us all through the story of the design of this mechanic. I really enjoy this kind of videos. Sometimes you dive directly into a tutorial but making a step back and analyze the game design decision for certain mechanic helps to understand the mechanic better (and also the success factor of the referenced games) and even to realize about possible modifications or improvement. Great job!
Wanted to add to this that before Assassin's Creed, there was also Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, which had a much more in-depth combat system than PoP:SoT and AC1 as well as a Counter mechanic, before AC1. The big thing about Batman: Arkham Asylum was that the developers wanted to make the combat have a nice consistent rhythm to it, that's why enemies always perform a new action only when the player either hits another enemy, or finishes a counter animation. This hadn't been the case in previous games, where enemies would try to attack or do another action pretty much whenever there was an opening and the player would instead have to position themselves where they're less likely to be hit first. The combat upgrade that makes the player gain double combo points for timing attacks over just spamming them emphasises the rhythm aspect too. I don't know if action games post-Arkham have this feature though. Edit: wow I literally paused the video to make the comment right before you went on to explain the Rhythm part of Arkham 💀💀💀 I hope there's at least new info in my comment
Great video. Just a small detail : The targeting system we call "Lock on", which allowed to go full 360 while keeping focus on target (sort of circle strafe), was created and implemented by Sega for their "Virtual On : Cyber Troopers" game. It was an upgrade of their Lock-On system used in their "Panzer Dragoon" licence (itself inspired by the arcade game called Lock-On released in 1986). Said lock on was a key element to Virtual On which was third person action shooter where two robots had pretty fast paced 1vs1 battles in a 3d Arena, hence why it has no problem with the" tunnel vision" focus it brings since there were no issue with others mobs jumping you from blind spots. Virtual on released in 1996 meaning 1 month after Ocarina Of Time's first tech presentation while the final game released in 98. So Sega should take the credit for that. What Nintendo have to be credited for is the switch between multiple targets. Which is the most "a propos" when it comes to your video. We can also mention a game called Jet Li's "Rise to Honour" which was one of the first real attempt at free flow fighting between multiple targets. Using the right stick for hit direction. Or Mark of Kri+ Rise of the Kasai which both used a special targeting system allocating a button to an enemy. Both release during PS2 era.
I can't believe she didn't even mentioned Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks while talking about Free Flow Combat, it's almost the first time it has been introduced in game ever, what a sin... 😡
Another great backgrounder! It's really interesting to take a step back and see how games have progressed. Incremental changes really add up. Thanks for making this video!
So if this is "freeflow" combat, what are other combat systems called and what are examples of them? I'm not sure I'm a fan of this growing system. Isn't the point of a video game like Spiderman to FEEL what it would it would actually be like to be Spiderman!? I'm willing to bet that Spiderman is actually aiming and making calculations when fighting or SWINGING for that matter. Someone called this system the 'spam a button to win' system and that feels accurate. People who are impressed, seemed to be impressed by the animations and the seemless transitions but I'm prettyyy sure we don't have to sacrifice good animation to have more depth and risk. Just my 2 cents. Freaking love games and nerding out tho. You're my people
Fair question. To this day there's debates on the name of game genres and combat types like those of DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, God of War, etc. There's Character Action, Spectacle Fighter, Hack-and-Slash, "An evolution of Beat-em-Up games", etc. If you're interested, here's a list of various action games from recent times that use different combat systems from the modern Arkham games' type combat and stuff. There's things that are more in line with stuff like DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden, 3D and 2D beat-em-ups and even a way of mixing a die-and-cards system with realtime action combat. Many of them are still in production, though. Some of my favourites: - Soulstice. Not a Soulslike, it's in that vein of DMC, Bayonetta and Darksiders-type stuff. Has seven total different weapons, for one. A mix of a Style and a Special meter (at the highest "rank" tresholds you can perform weapon-unique Finishers or enter the monstrous Rapture mode), Counterattacks from a distance that don't disrupt animations, and more. - Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. Prequel to the Zeno Clash games but from a third person perspective this time. Has you finding different Martial Arts styles and special attacks to assign to the protagonist to mess around with. Like the weapons in Soulstice, all of the Stances have their own unique animation movesets and utilities. - No Straight Roads. Short, boss-centric, all about music. Bosses attack in rhythm with their own boss theme and have different attacks for different elements within the song. - Cookie Cutter. This one keeps it fairly simple. 2D beat-em-up combat in a beautifully 2D animated Metroidvania. Some different weapons and "spells" plus a costless "push back" move. The weapons and spells are used by consuming Void, which is built up by hitting enemies with normal attacks. There's a Parry too that can allow for instantly Executing an enemy if you pull it off. Void and Health is rewarded for Executing an enemy. Others: - Immortal: And the Death that Follows. A friend of mine described this as a Hindu Mythology Mad Max Beat-em-Up. Has a Roguelike element where dealing with a boss in a particular way can give a bonus or affect the difficulty, and it seems like you may unlock different moves in different runs. Main character's a cool monstrous creature without a head and with his face on his abdomen. - Lost in Random. This is the one with the mixing of a die and playing cards during realtime combat. Had a new game announced a few days ago! Many people are decrying it as ruining the original game because it's a different combat system (from the looks of it), sadly, but i'm excited and want to try it out. Help the devs and such. The gameplay is not the only thing that made the first Lost in Random special and memorable. - Hi-Fi Rush. The world moves in rhythm: your attacks and those of enemies. Same genre as DMC and stuff. - Genokids. You play as an entire rock band where you can switch between characters, who all have their own weapons, Specials and a Special Form. Same genre as DMC and stuff. - Enenra Daemon Core. Cyborg ninja shenanigans. Same genre as aforementioned two. - Mightreya. Don't know much about this one, seems to be a similar genre to aforementioned two. - Gori: Cuddly Carnage. Syntethic toy cat riding a hoverboard that is both the method of movement and offense (the board gets used as a weapon in various ways). - Kings of Hell. Quite spicy cartoonish 3D beat-em-up demon shenanigans. - Yasuke: A Lost Descendant. Cartoonish cyberpunk samurai shenanigans. And I want to mention Decline's Drops and Kraino Rebirth. The first one seems to be an action platformer with some more emphasized combat, the second may be similar-- but i just think it looks cool. Hope this list has proven interesting!
@@jurtheorc8117 Hey, big thanks for the list, man! In return I'll recommend Aztez. It's an indie 2D game inspired by DMC and Bayonetta. The combat designer gave a long-a** talk at GDC about Bayonetta combat, which I think is very interesting for any combat design nerd.
freeflow combat only started with Arkham Asylum, which then was copied by Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max, GoW2018 and Spiderman2019. Original GoW and DmC are hack and slash games, they don't have the freeflow combat system.
I think the wording and categorizing here might be wrong. Wukong and DMC are more of an action hack and slash genre type. Freeflow combat is like Assassins Creed in its golden years, Sleeping Dogs, Ghost of Tsushima, Sifu, the upcoming SPINE game, etc etc. Where every hit you land makes the enemy react specifically to that hit and pressing the counter button at the right time will launch a takedown. I like to think of it as cinematic combat. It’s pretty cool. Freeflow has kinda died off though I think because a lot of people thought it was lazy and not challenging.
Amazing, game combat can be a very difficult system to get right and it's best to have a plan worked out from the beginning. Thanks for also mentioning Mix and Jam's video as well, I'll hop over there next to check it out :D
That was a great video! Action games with a free-flowing combat system are the best. I was so glad to see it adopted by a bunch of Action MMO's back in the day like Vindictus and C9. I just started playing The Lord of the Rings: War in the North today, it's too bad the game doesn't have a counter mechanic. Its combat is pretty good.
Its crazy just how much is taken from the Arkham series for AAA games nowadays, but as some others pointed out, it can make most games seem repetitive by now. I wish Arkham mechanics hd stayed in Arkham.
This video is pretty much wrong about nearly everything. You're talking about completely different combat systems as if they are the same. Action games are not fighting games when using genre definition. Motion capture and IK controls have nothing to do with the development of these systems, only with the quality of the animations. The way you talk about how the games work and what effect it has on the gameplay sounds like you had an AI generate the text, because with very few exceptions all of it sounds like marketing speech more than actual experience. Sorry if this comes off as mean, but for most of the video I was just thinking: "What are you talking about...?"
I stopped the video right at the start myself. How did she conflate hitbox based combat systems and paired animation ones as the same Spreading misinformation at this point with how many comments saying this is well researched / praising this video
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure it was "Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time" in 2003. The first Spiderman game didn't have free flow combat it was more like melee combat from GTA3
@@mindeyethemasterscreen2712well no if you’re talking about the first movie Spider-Man game then it definitely did not have similar combat mechanics to gta 3 lol
Well this was trip down memory lane! 😊 Very well done! The only thing I would've added was some mention of Ninja Gaiden. It was never that popular, but their freeflow combat system remains one of the best to this day.
I think in some ways I still prefer the older combat methods. Free Flow Combat often feels like I'm not really in control of the character and more like I'm choreographing a dance or just shouting cues to someone fighting like, "Block now!", "Look Out Behing you!". I don't know why exactly but it takes me out of it sometimes. Makes me feel more like an observer rather than the character themselves. I think it's born from the limitations of a controller. No lock on with first person and mouse locked camera feels like I'm in much more control of every action.
I first encountered the term "free-flow combat system" in marketing and the back-of-box description of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and that was quite a different beast entirely. A fun one though, and to this day i haven't seen anything quite like it. If you're interested, here's a list of various action games from recent times that use different combat systems from the modern Arkham games' type combat and stuff. There's things that are more in line with stuff like DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden, 3D and 2D beat-em-ups and even a way of mixing a die-and-cards system with realtime action combat. Many of them are still in production, though. Some of my favourites: - Soulstice (not a Soulslike, it's in that vein of DMC, Bayonetta and Darksiders-type stuff.) - Clash: Artifacts of Chaos - No Straight Roads - Cookie Cutter Others: - Lost in Random (had a new game announced a few days ago! Many people are decrying it as ruining the original game, sadly, but i'm excited and want to try it out. Help the devs and such.) - Hi-Fi Rush - Genokids - Enenra Daemon Core - Mightreya - Gori: Cuddly Carnage - Kings of Hell - Yasuke: A Lost Descendant And I want to mention Decline's Drops and Kraino Rebirth. The first one seems to be an action platformer with some more emphasized combat, the second may be similar-- but i just think it looks cool Hope these games may prove interesting for you!
Batman Arkham Asylum was my first ever game in which I was introduced to the free flow combat, and I was literally amazed by how it all played seamlessly and it felt so natural. Also there were other things I liked a lot about the game including playing a Batman game with great graphics and its performance on my Intel HD Graphics too was super nice. Seeing Batman in this video felt as if I got represented somehow 😅 7:37 and didn't know someone had recreated Batman's combat system already on TH-cam, and their project is also available on GitHub. Gotta try it for sure! Great video Sam, and keep up the great work 🚀
Ah, yes, the "spam a button to win" system, very fun system, very challenging indeed. I'm glad most action games use this system nowadays, I like my games to be played with a single finger without thinking to strategic positioning, managing the camera or thinking in general.
Make sense for huge ips like spiderman. You have to appeal to EVERYBODY, so it makes sense the challenge is low. To be fair though they tried more with the parry mechanic, more aggressive enemies, enemies that can interrupt attacks, and harder bosses.
@@suave9184 The system itself can be ok, I enjoyed some of the batman games, but they become too repetitive very soon, once you play a single game like that it's like you played all of them already. I stopped buying them years ago, they say: "A game for everyone is a game for no one".
You can be creative if you want they give you the option. Take devil may 5 for example you can just use one button to kill a monster learn the combo do your own way which is hard. Not every game has to be souls like game and lot's of people aren't interested mastering these movementsYou can be creative if you want they give you the option. Take devil may 5 for example you can just use one button to kill a monster learn the combo do your own way which is hard. Not every game has to be souls like game and lot's of people aren't interested mastering these movements. Also every game i played have different movement, attack and defence so it won't feel repeated. Spiderman and Batman game has free flow combat but both are not the same
@@SuperDaDaD yea these games , like a lot of industries these days, are trying to appeal to as many people as possible , so they make it easier to play , it's fun but I think it could be more fun with more challenge
GOW 2018 made impressive leaps with Mob AI on the hardest difficulty, it felt like you were genuinely outnumbered as the enemies target your every opening
So, solid idea for a video, needed more research. Hope to see an improved effort in the future, because honestly coming up with good video idea's is the hard part for most.
You called these games "fighting games", that is a BIG NO NO. These are games containing fighting, but "fighting game" is very very specific genre. The games you're talking about are action games
Alright calm down semantics police. She's talking about the fighting mechanics in games if anything they might be more hack and slash or beat em ups than action games but whatever.
@@Whywe.lovegames Hack and slash is a subgenre of action game. Regardless, fighting games and action games are too completely different genres, and if people walk away from this video thinking that action games are called "fighting games" then it can have a negative affect, especially for such a niche genre
@@owencmykyeah, makes you wonder about a scenario where you would want targeting in a fighting game, though. Don't think I've ever seen that done. Might be interesting to consider. I'm super smash bros when you're doing one of the 1-to-many fights for instance
they could easily use a set of animation rigs for each body type in the game. then it would be as simple as a model swap. The majority of the implementation for this kind of combat does not rely at all on the character's visual characteristics just like how the appearances of different weapons of the same type (mostly) doesn't have a noticeable change on the fundamental combat. the animation for one sword may be shared with another without needing to be reanimated.
Great video. Especially for gamers like me who want to learn more technical knowledge. And the knowledge is conveyed in an entertaining way. Keep it up! 😃
Small mistake here. When multi counters occur in Batman you still have to input the counter button for each attack. The max is a triple counter which requires 3 presses.
I wouldn't even say any of the 4 games from the intro are similar in combat system. But souls like deriving from z targeting is absolutely real. Ive stopped calling games "souls like" and went to say "z targeted hack n slash"
Not mentioning Prince Of Persia Warrior Within is a huge crime. Assassins Creed was a big step down. Warrior Within was ahead of its time, a lot of games nowadays cant achieve what was there made. In depth fighting system made without machine learning, or advanced rigid bodies, all running on Core 2 duo, 1GB of ram, and 512MB of VRAM. You could automatically lock in on any given enemy, grab them, toss them, jump on them from the ceiling, create combos with intrinsic athletic moves, grab their weapons, use terrain as your weapon, counter block, dodge, stab, use finishers, throw weapons (with every type of weapon dealing different kind of damage and playing different animation), and vast variety of combos. The only game that is as close to fluidity of that system, is Insomniac's Spiderman.
When you were explaining how the free flow combat works in Batman, I was thinking "...This just sounds like the same system we had in Batman Begins." Of course, it's less flashy and you can't vault over enemies quite as quickly, (Vaults are their own special attack) but the movement feels roughly the same to me.
Great take, but I have to disagree on the first game that pioneered free flow combat. It wasn’t assassin’s creed, which dropped in 2007. It was ninja gaiden, which dropped in 2004
Jet Li - Rise To Honor & Spiderman 2 (PS2) are also HUGE influences way before the arkham series came into play but everyone usually overlooks those titles when mentioning combat influence in Action games
If The Witcher 3 makes a template for current action games, how about Shadow of Rome from 2005 with the same template? Its nothing new, people just realize that it is the most fair and fun combat system, and its easy to make it nice looking from developer perspective. From my knowledge, Witcher 3, Ghost of Tsushima, Black Myth Wukong etc uses a different combat than Batman, AC-Games, Ryse: Son of Rome, Shadow of Mordor etc. There are also souls-like, and sekiro-like combat systems quite popular.
My favorite game for beat 'em up/hack and slash-style combat to date is the Prototype series. Prototype one had overall better feel, but Prototype 2 brought the parry shields, flip dodge, and some other upgrades to the character, as well as just more power and carnage in general. To this day there isn't a single game that feels as responsive or connected combat-wise that I've played. Not that I've played an extensive list of these types of games, but still.
There's a split down the middle between people who follow Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya's combat styles and well, western games. The combat in DMC, ninja gaiden, nier, bayonetta, sekiro, kh2fm, etc. grants the player a plethora of tools they can use that aren't necessarily BETTER but serve to extend a player's creativity, on top of the higher APM and tighter windows, ability to juggle, enemy management, etc. while in western games it's all about accessibility and feeling a certain way, whether it be powerful like batman or kratos, or agile like spiderman. It ends upaking them feel very different even though they were all cut from the same cloth.
It still has similarities. Basically you don't need to lock on to individual targets in those games, while DMC does use lock-on (can't remember if it's in all the games), you mostly don't need it, and can play through most of the games without it. Freeflow combat can exist in both beat-em-ups and hack and slash games.
@@FractalPrism. Umm, I wouldn't call Zelda hack and slash. If anything, the Dynasty Warriors series is hack and slash. Hack and slash does have connotations of brainless button mashing, but I'm not a big fan of the label "character action". That can apply to a lot of games, the common thread in DMC, GOW, Bayonetta, and Ninja Gaiden is you're using primarily melee weapons (of some kind) to attack enemies using combo strings, but it's less brainless than Dynasty Warriors. While it's not a great label, hack and slash is the only label that makes sense, unless someone can think of a better name.
@@EnigmaHood No, that's categorically false. It's obvious to any observer that the Arkham games and Insomniac Spiderman are way different than DMC. The main difference for those who can't describe is, is that God of War and DMC use preset, on demand attacks and combos that cover different areas, and are static. The lock on elements are either light or non existent and the activity you are participating in is stringing those shapes together with minimum down time. Your response to any incoming damage is usually to try and sweep the enemy into a combo, or use a noncontextual dodge. There are no preset combos in Arkham games that cover a box, it's always one target unless you're using a quick use ability. The activity you're participating in is trying to keep an overall state of flow, and more importantly, picking your targets. The game moves you to the target, and there is no specific weapon or combo to switch to. It's more responsive than planned, which is why the counter window is larger, some complain and say too large. Some complain and say the game moves you from target to target too easily. Either way, quick actions are not the same as intricate combos, and parry mechanics in DMC are always much tighter and much more rewarding because they're not the intended quick solution to an attack.
I've never seen such a detailed and elegant explanation of free flow combat. But I do have to point it out: God of War 2018, BM Wukong, and the Witcher don't do “free flow” combat. If anything, they took things back to the Z-Targeting. The only games I can think of that do free flow as it was designed are the Batman games (duh), Shadow of Mordor (and the sequel), and the Spider-man games. (Arguably, Devil May Cry, but not quite) It's a shame, really, especially since Rocksteady gave up on their own masterpiece of a system in the most recent game. We absolutely need more free flow games where you play as an absolute badass.
I would love to see a variety of ways free-flow combat can be integrated into a third-person shooter; one great example is now WH40K Space Marine 2, yet imagine the system amplifying forward momentum in games inspired by John Woo - with counters triggering a standing joint lock against one NPC mixed with a free aiming toward another NPC or a throw toward any direction in quick succession. Such integrations can tie into the player's capacity to bring overwhelming force and stimuli against an opposing squad.
The biggest imperfection with Freeflow is the same with automatic parkour of Assassin's series it just doesn't work 100% of the time sooner or later Etzio will just jump directly into water or Batman will round house kick the air none of these are game breaking on their own but these games often overestimate their mechanics working and you'll loose a timed chase or Lose a no-hit combat challange with Batman often. Infact some of the Batman Arkham Knights challenges were basically more than luck than your ability to understand Freeflow combat because even if you do everything perfectly it is always possible for Batman to hit the wrong enemy or Throw a batarang into the void or get hit despite your best efforts and you'll lose the challenge. For this reason I would advice not to play these types of games back to back because your frustrations with the combat system can carry over from Batman Arkham Knight to Witcher 3 and ruin your fun.
super random comment: I think your audio would massively benefit from a high pass filter on the voice. There's a lot of low frequency rumble, and your voice would be much clearer if you cut anything below (rough guess) 100hz.
The first time I experienced a game with some kind of free flow was in the Soul Reaver series, now many games tends to get toward aimlock combats like in the soulslike but a mix between the two was done in the latest GoW and that was perfect !
Is there no mention of the OBJECTIVELY smoothest combat system from Ninja Gaiden? Or the best action game series, the Ys series? Nah, it's not a big deal. Good video. I've been looking for a way to smooth out my combat, and this brief retrospective is neat
I can't help but feel Legacy of Kain: Defiance really helped developed this system as well. The later entries (not Blood Omen 2) seem like a simplified combination of God of War and Ocarina of Time.
I really believe the peak was with DMC. Starting with GoW, these types of games lost a ton of depth in the combos and the enemies became way easier. I will die on this hill.
In short batman introduced gap closing and adopted contextual attacks, interpolation and lock on is based what you are facing. It's all relatively simple, though I am not really strong on IK, it scared me to use it in Unity and I haven't touched it in Godot yet. Just finished my core game play loop yesterday, spent today refactoring and refining the code base. But hopefully this week I'll be working on combat, great timing on this video for me.
I agree with a lot of the comment section here. A lot of the examples in this video are wrong, and either you haven't really played those games you mentioned or you didn't really understand any of their gameplay. DMC is nowhere near freeflow combat, nor BM Wukong. Those games have rigid combos that have to be manually stringed together. In other words, if you input a set pattern of buttons, it'll output an exact pattern of animations. There's an intentionality behind the combo strings that you do as well as the positioning of your character. You also have defensive options that you have to manually choose/employ as you react to attacks. You have complete control over your character and you're not supposed to just button mash over and over. Presentation wise, this makes the game more video game-y. Freeflow combat is the exact opposite of that. You can press a similar set of buttons, but your character animations will be completely different based on the situation. You don't have a complete control or intentionality over it, unlike classic arpgs like DMC. You're basically letting the game decide your movements whenever you press the button and all you have to do is mash mash mash. Reacting to attacks are like qte's where it basically demands you to press the correct prompt. The game plays itself for you in a way but this makes the presentation look much more cinematic. Using another analogy, it's like a manual car vs an automatic car. Freeflow combat is an automatic car. While prior examples are a manual car. They are completely different based on how you control them. Another commenter has mentioned that freeflow combat isn't even a commonplace, which is what the title of this video claims to be as. Freeflow combat is a rather new tech and it's requires a lot of work to make. Hence why only AAA studios have the resources to put them in their games. It's very much UNLIKE the classic combo based combat that 99% of action games have. The title of this video is just false.
As I thought, I haven't played Black Myth Wukong yet and I'm surprised when she mentioned its combat is free flow, when in reality is more souls-like. I should've known she's making a huge mistakd when she mentioned GOW 2018 here😂 I'm glad she recognized Prince of Persia's free flow though. I remember when game manuals were a thing, it specifically mentioned this specific phrase to describe its combat.
i feel like you shouldve mentioned Jak and daxter 1 though, because without it, we couldnt have the free flow system we have today. if you dont know, naughty dog wanted to create seamless animation transitions for both movement and combat, so they created the 3d animation interpolation system for video games that would later be replicated and improved on, and would lead to the creation of free-flow combat games.
No, Batman's combat is designed to be easy and remove skill barriers. It's more like a rhythm game with low decision making and precision required. Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls did alot more to inspire combat systems then Assassin's Creed or Batman.
@@jeremyterkelsen2518 Because freeflow is not an evolution of melee combat in games it's a side genre of combat. DMC, Soulslike or Zelda are not an inferior version of melee combat because they have lock-on or stricter animations, they have a different combat philosophy all together.
Rollemups should be in their own category. Batman/Arkham games are fantastic but obviously meant to be a fun brawler, not an RPG or competitor to other action games. Other mainstream action games have mostly taken hints from trash like God of War or Assassin's Creed - shittier versions of the worst parts of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which at the time was completely unique and still stands on its own. Sad what happened to this genre. You either mainline one of a dozen critically acclaimed Soulslikes games or you play other genres entirely.
Might have added the best of combats - middle earth Shadow Of. SoM had a very immersive story, and with the fine combat described here, gave me an unforgettable experience
This video basically explains why we want a john Wick game whilst also showing why we don't. A John Wick game that stays within the skillset of the character would likely become boring really fast because it would effectively be a light or out of date version of the games shown in this video. I mean, how different would a John Wick game be from the first God of War game?
Hey, I'm curious if you still consider Unity the best for you or if it is the main game engine that if you want to make a game that will take a long time, it will be your choice!
Jet Li’s Rise to Honor walked so these modern games could run. It’s absolutely cave man compared to modern games, but back then that kind of combat flow in an action game was quite a breath of fresh air.
The first 500 people to use my link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare! skl.sh/samyam07241
Ridiculous definition of Ik, it’s just a way of using the end of a bone system to move the entire bone chain as opposed to rotating each joint manually or through script.
(Insert Kiryu from Yakuza yelling at the air)
As a Street Fighter player a part of my soul left my body every time she called ARPGs fighting games 😭
i looked at the comments just to see if this was mentioned
Dude same 💀 I just wanted to ➡️*⃣⬇️↘️+2⃣⚡⚡⚡
Fr lol I was just listening and half confused on if she was talking about fighting games or action games for like the first minute
This small nitpicking aside, she does a lot of great remarks.
I felt that I’d even be less mad if she said beatem ups
These are action games, 'fighting games' usually refers to the genre of game where you are primarily fighting against another player, such as street fighter and tekken. I mean yah other games focused on fighting have been called that before, but pretty much after the first era of beat-em-ups in arcades, PvE games havent really been referred to as fighting games anymore.
i wonder why none of the mobs tries to grab Batman's cape.
Too busy getting punched in the face
Let's mode the mobs to do so.
Would be so badass
It would be like pulling someone's hair in a fight, viewed as a cowardly move
@@imhulki463Ganging up on Batman isn't cowardly then?
I heard her say “one game that changed combat systems forever” and I knew she was about to talk about Devil May Cry
I was suprised she didn't talk about Hack n Slash as a whole after mentioning DMC and GOW
I still remember the day that game released. I couldn’t put it down for weeks. That was the first PS2 game I remember convincing me that we were in the “next generation” at that time. It made the wait for MGS2 a lot easier.
@@omgyeti2049
I always enjoy hearing people talk about which game you played on the PS2 that made you realize we are in a new generation.
For me it was when I first got a hold of Final Fantasy X and saw that blitzball cutscene in Zanarkand for the first time
But i bet you didnt know it was a fighting game lol
@@FAMCHAMPI think it’s because most Hack N’ Slash are unlike DMC. You are better trying Character Action games to find stuff that have interesting mechanics like Metal Gear Revengeance or Scarlet Nexus. Even though the former SHOULD be considered Hack N’ Slash and the latter an RPG.
wow as someone developing a very complex indie Hack & Slash game, this video hits close to heart man
What games do you take inspiration from for your games, if it's alright to ask?
@@jurtheorc8117 Devil May Cry, Sonic Frontiers, Muck, Elden Ring, Sonic Adventure 2 (i added a platforming mechanic inspired by SA 2), and probably more in the future when my game's development will progress
Aaaaas to... What not to do?
That's what I got from it.
Dev here as well kinda, I’m always thinking of something that can take the genre further but it’s hard. For me Punishing Gray Raven has innovated the genre the most with its ping system. Nioh and Rise of Ronin implemented stance based combos where with the press of a button you can have a different moveset mid combo. Honkai Impact 3 started the trend of playing as 3 characters that can swap during battle. Stellar Blade has a large amount of defensive tools to mitigate damage and punish the enemy. Vindictus has all sorts of characters with different mechanics. I like Vella, she has a counter stance that lets her slash through an enemy while being attacked in the stance. Vindictus had an interesting thing where attacks didn’t auto track or soft lock an enemy, you kind of had to strategically whiff the air in order to land your power attack on the enemy safely. Freeflow combat is different though imo. I like to think of it as cinematic combat where it’s just a lot of enemy interactions and pressing a button to counter and takedown an enemy. Games like Sleeping Dogs, Ghost of Tsushima, Sifu, SPINE, Assassins Creed II~Black Flag. As an indie those are harder to make because you have all these specific enemy interactions, you need some sort of animation pairing system, and the combat unfortunately isn’t as complex or challenging as a usual hack and slash since all you have to do is press a button to takedown. But hack and slash and action games have been able to implement takedowns as like finisher moves or like Stellar Blade, as a move to use when the enemy’s balance bar is depleted.
@@TakiGamesOfficial oh hey i remember you man i checked out the alphas of your project
While free flow is revolution and fluid. Its easy to mess up, as in some openworld games with freeflow melle eventually became spam counter to win.
They simplified it to the point where you just had to continually counter to avoid getting hit and then you could attack without risk. And the removal of complex combo systems resulted in loads of AAA games feeling the same.
And that's why people appricate Soul likes.
I understand it now.
The thing in the arkham games the counter dosent do any damage so you still have to fight the enemies to win combat encounters, a small but important thing that a lot of other games miss.
Shadow Of Mordor is the classic example of a free flow combat system that basically ruined the game once you unlocked enough moves, because you could just spam the same four buttons over and over and win every single encounter with zero effort.
Ac4 and shadow of mordor are examples of this. Works fine on flat terrain. But that's usually never the case. Hand to hand combat on ships in ac4 is super jank at tends to stop working at points.
And in shadow of mordor, elevated terrain is a great way to break the combat to your disadvantage
Now I wanna mention an interesting what if scenario. During the development of bully back in 2005-2006, someone at Rockstar developed in his free time, a new context sensitive combat system which changed combat moves and combo chaining depending on the player or enemy's state, for example: if the enemy was on a regular position, jabs and hooks would be thrown, if the enemy was below a certain height, uppercuts would be thrown and so on. His combat system also featured a "brawling mechanic" which made it so that you couldn't spam combos and counters, since stunlocking was almost completely removed, have you seen people fighting IRL? where both parties land hits until someone gets knocked out? literally that, enemies would also have the capacity to counterattack just like the player. This combat system never made it past the developer's workstation but I wonder, what if Bully had released with this combat system? would we see more games with a similar system to what I described?
Me personally I really prefer the idea of a game where fighting actually involves strategy instead of combolocking and counter spamming.
Wow you're actually the goat for mentioning Prince of Persia The Sands of Time. A lot of people miss out on this, thanks for mentioning it!
5:55 "...potentially leading to a gruesome death"
shows the most goofy death ever
:P
The satisfaction that free flow combat provides is immediate and requires zero to no skill, it became an instant success and an inspiration for mainstream videogames like Spiderman. The way it magnetizes player to their targets so the player doesn't have to think about positioning is great for casual players but to me this solution is downright insulting as an avid fighting/action gamer. Ninja Gaiden Black can be punishing, a bit finicky in its soft locking and awkward with its camera but once you manage to understand the system and how it behaves, to me it is the pinnacle of action videogames (It sequel even more) but we strayed away from such brutal game design no action game nowadays scratches that itch.
If you're up for some games that don't have the magnetizing thing and are more in line with older styles of gameplay, like DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, 3D beat-em-ups, here's a list of games that may be interesting.
Some are of fairly recent years, most are still in development. They won't hit the level of intensity as Ninja Gaiden but i still want to spread word to give the little guys a chance and just... help out different types of combat styles.
- Soulstice (personal favourite. *Not* a Soulslike)
- Clash: Artifacts of Chaos (personal favourite. Zeno Clash prequel but there seem to be some God Hand inspirations in the combat)
- Immortal: And the Death that Follows
- Genokids
- Enenra Daemon Core
- Gori: Cuddly Carnage
- Mightreya (a game by the dev of Assaulst Spy)
- Kings of Hell (fair warning, looks cartoony but is quite spicy and has El Swearing)
Hope there's stuff to your interest in here!
I 100% Batman Arkhum Asylum and that was pretty difficult for me, it's not easy chaining combos to achieve the challenges highest scores and dodging when few enemy hits can kill you
Exactly
Games with free flow combat are not inherently easy, they just tackle difficulty very differently from other games.
2 important things about free flow combat is that:
1. Almost at any point of in the game, you can avoid any incoming attack if you press the right button(s)
2. Once you get into a combo, distance is not a big factor anymore. But as soon as the combo stops, so does the magnetism.
These 2 things mean that as long as you can keep up the combo, you can maintain fight with a bunch of enemies (the fact that they don't attack all at once also helps).
And these games do exactly that. Throw you in a room with a bunch of enemies, some even with specific ways to defeat/counter, so you can't just spam and blam your way out.
In a hard encounter, you are essentially multitasking with a variety of enemies, some of them being quite different from the rest.
Meanwhile, if I am not mistaken (since I haven't specifically played Ninja Gaiden, but a few games with similar reputation), ideally, an important part of the gameplay is to lure out enemy one by one so that you don't have to take out all at once.
In fact, fighting multiple enemies at once is highly discouraged. There's a reason why gank is a term used to refer to these fights.
Overall, fighting an overwhelming number of enemies (not just 4 or 5 enemies) is bread and butter of free flow combat while even the concept of this is not entertained in games like Ninja Gaiden.
The thing is, are you really fighting 10 enemies if only 2 of them are active at a times or are you just fighting a small group while knowing all the waves you have to fight at once ?
Free flow combat strenght is in its ease to use. Doesn't mean you won't get difficulty but it's not the focus at all. The magnetism allows to keep your combo going easier yes but also and mainly make it so you can't just throw a random punch in the air since seeing Batman fighting a fly isn't really super heroish. And the ability to cancel anything into a counter is in the same veins, Batman don't get hit by random thugs so he can counter at all times, you (almost) never take risks.
But the important thing is to know what you want the player to feel. Is it mastery over Batman or feeling like him ? If it was the first then it would fail completly since the games cover most mistakes you can do and you loose control of him very often (when he is switching target, when you start a counter, finishing moves, ect).
It also comes with it's own set of challenge, because it's overly animated, you need enough space, making a lot of the fight happening in very similar arena. No cool fightscenes in a giant stairways or in a thight corridor for Batman, gotta be in a big enough spherish arena. If the rooster of enemies isn't strong enought it can become extremely repetitif and down right boring. And the enemies design themselves is hard. If he doesn't force the player to change his fighting style, what even is his point ? But since the free flow is actually quite stiff with it's rules they can also just force the player to do 1 set of actions for this enemies and that's it. for example shields ask you to double press X/A coz that's what you have to do.
You can also loose to much freedom making the player feels like the fight are closer to QTE than actuall fight. In AC the best options you had was wait for the attack, parry and times your next attack to chain one hit kills. While it looks cool it also become incredibly mind numbing.
Batman way to handle that was quite... dumb. Enemies would need to take a giant beating before going down forcing you to rely on finishers and since the normal punisher takes forever and (if my memory is right) you can't counter while doing it you will be seeing the same 5 specials takedowns again and again making it extremelly repetitive.
Funilly enought the last man standing got his life reduced so much that he goes down after one heavy hit. Making Batman feels very inconsistent in his strenght.
Tldr: Free flow is about empowering the player.
As an Arkham and Spider-Man fan there’s a few points i don’t agree with ,Free flow isn’t the standard for combat in games because it’s very animation heavy , meaning it requires you to be in a specific scenario and location , you get a cool takedown animation near a wall but what if you didn’t want to execute a takedown , It also lacks combo strings because the purpose is fluid movement between targets so you’re limited to basic inputs the more free flow your system is getting repetitive after a while. The best and most popular systems are combat that allow more player input , challenge and creativity . Which is why I found your statement of saying the Arkham games system were better than previous systems when those previous systems were Devil May Cry and classic GOW ,hack and slash games that are a different genre of combat not worse . DMC in particular that only added quality of life improvements as the series continued to DMC3 and DMC5 and is still regarded as one of the best combat system in gaming . As far as what the standard is the Souls formula is a little more accurate , given the hundreds of games inspired by the system so much so it spawned a genre called Souls-like . These are just my thoughts , Hope we get a part 2 to this that clears up things more
I think combat is hard to get right. Some games have it too complicated, others too easy. In some it is too slow, in others too fast.
It's one of those things that seems simple from the outset but actually has a lot of subtleties to be careful about.
don't try to please everyone, unless you wanna make a game with multiple mutually exclusive systems (and having to balance the game accordingly)
Please don't make rock paper scissors.
always choose what feels best for the character. Either by lore or setting.
A godly character would likely flourish with Character action and fast paced combat, and a horror game might need slower paced gameplay.
Just wanted to clarify:
These are not Fighting games, they are Action games.
Also, IK, motion capture, and blend tables while they helped make anim creation easier, didnt really aid the development of a freeflow combat system. The game design and anim engineering departments are responsible for that in game dev.
Get this to top comment people PLEASE
exactly, these are just ways to animate animations NOT program a combat system which i was eating some tasbihim as to why she mentioned that in the video when talking about god of war cuz i was like "HUH!!!" im also an indie dev programming a combat system for my game and i havent animated any animation with either IK or motion capture i was simply rotating each bone, keyframing, and changing the interporlation to make each animation so IDK why she mentioned animating techniques when talking about gameplay-ish combat system
"akschoully ☝🤓"
_If you watch the video_ you'll see that she isn't saying it as a singular genre, but as in games in which you fight.
@@walterh2113 While I get what your trying to say but that is a gross misnomer, as for gaming "Fighting Games" is a specific term so using it as a blanket statement leads to confusion and would seem amateurish which is not a good look.
@@walterh2113 By your logic, Super Mario Bros is much closer to actual fighting games because beside fighting Bowser and his minions, the game is 2D.
Fighting game is a specific genre with it's own audience. If she can't even understand that simple fact, it undermines her authority and devalues everything she says about games.
I enjoyed your analysis, but as a fighting game player, i took chip damage every time you referred to these games as fighting games
I have a few gripes with this video.
- In the first part, where you talk about the history that led to free flow, you almost only talk about animation, while it would be much more interesting for the topic of the video to talk about mechanics and game design.
- Freeflow doesn't emphasize timing and positional awareness, it makes it easier and almost automatic, making the experience more fluid, but also less challenging and rewarding.
- Freeflow can be fun when done right, but is all about removing skill barriers. Oftentime an action system that goes all in on the free flow aspect fails to feel interesting in the long run.
- THOSE ARE NOT FIGHTING GAMES. I know it sounds like nitpicking, but when you talk about a topic and you get the basic terms wrong it feels like you don't know what you're talking about and you didn't care enough to do a little bit of research
It's not nitpicking, these games have a genre, and it's not the fighting one. 😂
@@skandol8650 I don’t think she has heard of a Hadouken before.
@randomsupergodzillalizardd9981 🤦🏾♂️😂 idk how she popped up on my algorithm but we fixed that.
As much as I enjoyed this video and found it very insightful, I do agree with all of this. Freeflow combat is a blast, but after a while you sort of slip into autopilot, to the point that it feels like second nature. Which is cool but also can feel repetitive. Almost like a rythym game. You rarely have to think on your feet anymore and it really comes down to timing and (in batmans case) how flashy you want to be about it.
This is a very well made video, but I completely disagree with your assessment of what free flow combat is.
The very thing that defines it in my opinion is that instead of having a proper attack combo, you got a large variety of potential attack and counter animations, which are shuffled through to keep up visual variety and spice up the look of the battles you are partaking in.
Also the whole thing of you bouncing between enemy to enemy and only hitting everyone once before moving on to the next since each free-flow hit knocks a guy down. That's how it is in Arkham, and Insomniac's Spider-Man games don't work that way at all. Play the TASM games if you wanna see an actual Arkham copycat.
And towards the end of the video there was stuff said about how free flow introduced stuff like being able to smoothly go between different types of attacks but that's like.. I don't see the correlation.
Devil May Cry lets you smoothly transition between melee attacks, gun attacks, mobility abilities such as teleports, parries, cancels, and all sorts of stuff, ever since DMC3 which came out in 2005. I'm not saying DMC is the true source of inspiration behind these mechanics, because there are extremely few games out there that play or control like it, but having a variety of abilities to mix into combat on top of your basic melee hits is 100% not a Batman thing
Yeah I agree
Those games are not fighting games.
the moment she called these action games and ARPGs as Fighting Games I immediately knew she didn't do enough research on even basic terminology before making this
im rly rly rly rly glad you compiled these thoughts into one video, something im sure a lot of people think about, but haven't found the words or research, TY!!!
A lot of great research in this video: highlighting DMC, the Prince of Persia mention and pointing out that Assassin's Creed pre-dates Arkham for the counter system are all great elements of the background to the birth of the freeflow combat system.
The one last piece of this evolution in combat that I feel was missed in this video (understandable for its recency) is the role Sifu plays in enhancing the system with even more fluid animation blending, incorporating the posture system from Sekiro, and expanding the players moveset to rival the arsenal found in traditional fighting games with parries and animation cancels allowing for complex combos without the button mashing since everything is based on basic building blocks.
Great video, freeflow combat is one of my favorite mechanics evolutions in modern gaming. You got a new sub :)
Thank you! I hadn’t played Sifu, maybe I should!
"Great Research"
@@jackbishop8610 It's collecting an historical record of consistent themes in media that collectively are used to demonstrate a thesis about that media. It requires finding said media and placing it within the proper context of the broader whole. We call this research. When collected in a work its called an essay, when presented in a video format its called a video essay. Welcome to society man.
I'm not sure where your snark is coming from, whether you feel the need to simply be argumentative, or you're a sexist that doesn't like the messenger not the message, or maybe you're just a sad lonely person who only gets joy from feeling contrarion and superior. Whatever it is go take it somewhere else, I don't need it bro. Say something constructive next time, maybe something with more than two words that actually says something about how you feel.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time predates Assassin's Creed and is better in every way, it's also a much better game than God of War. Arkham series leaves Assassin's Creed in the dust. Action games have largely gone backwards though. Just like shooters get worse every year with every new installment of Battlefield and Call of Duty.
One thing you're missing is that Spiderman-2 from the original Playstation Era, had the free-flow combat movement. It also had the dodge and counter systems. Web attacks and airborne combat. This pre-dates batman.
I'm pretty she said Batman game mastered free flow combat. God of war already had free flow combat but the npc do the same action same with ps2 spider man 2 the npc are dumb
The moment the character stops doing predictable animations and starts using controls and animations that are based on enemy attacks and environment, the genre changes from the type of hack and slash i would enjoy to a "respond to the indicators and wait for the animation to end" game.
There's a game from 2022 called Soulstice that does something interesting with the "animations based on enemy attacks".
First off, it's NOT a Soulslike. It's a game more in line with the genre of DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders and such than Black Myth: Wukong, Stellar Blade, GOW2018/Ragnarök etc.
Primary and Secondary weapon buttons, launchers, aerial attacks, slam downs, a mix of a Style/Special/Devil Trigger meter, seven total weapons with quick switching and their own animation movesets and more.
Got a really good story too! Has its rough spots but i would still recommend it. Got a lot to offer!
In any case, to explain what i get at with the combat: The player character is technically two characters in one. The Ashen Knight named Briar is the one who wields the physical weaponry. She wields the sword, hammer, flagellation whip, punch daggers etc.
The Shade is a ghost on the Knight's shoulder. In Briar's case it's her dead younger sister, Lute.
Enemies can have a Counter Button prompt pop up for certain animations. Pressing it in time will perform any of three Counters:
- Deflect (return a projectile)
- Freeze (what it says on the tin)
- Disrupt (makes the enemy stagger out of the animation)
You can't choose the Counter but they're not random either. It's only particular attacks.
Here's the thing: It's the Shade that does the Countering.
Briar can be performing any animation with any of the weapons or be dodging, and as long as you press the button in time, Lute will perform the counter. No disruption to Briar's animations whatsoever.
(Counters can be missed, but there's an optional skill that can give you a freebie if you were too late in pressing it. Has an invisible cooldown.
All Skills have full currency refunds-- if you don't jive with one, you can use the currency you used for it to invest in other skills)
Any Counter move builds up that Style/Special meter too, called Unity.
It's a fairly fleeting resource for either weapon-unique Finishers (done by performing a pause combo and ending with your weapon of choice) or entering the Rapture Mode, the Devil Trigger equivalent.
Therefore, succesful counters help in potentially getting extra powerful and stylish options later
Outside of Lute's Counters, though, Briar has no defensive options. Aside from the Fist of Retribution.
It's a metal gauntlet/buckler shield weapon and the only weapon with a Parry move in the entire game. I don't use it much.
I prefer to use it and its charge-up move, which give extra power and reach, to knock Armor and Barriers (shields and forcefields) off the enemies that have them.
All weapons can be used in any situation against any enemy just fine, though may prove a bit weaker or stronger against particular foes.
- Aforementioned Fist of Retribution for example stands tall alongside the Ashen Enforcer (big warhammer) in breaking Armor and Barriers, yet the Hammer is even better against Barriers while the Fist excels against Armor when charged up.
- The flagellation whip, the Tearing Penance, hits many times at once in a wide range and gives a bit of stun, making it nice against the speedsters that swarm around you, but the damage is fairly low. The stun doesn't apply much if the enemy is wearing armor.
Oh, and it has a Grappling Hook move too. No range limit if you're locked onto an enemy.
There's some other subtleties to the weapons and this isn't really about the initial subject anymore, i'm just trying to get word of Soulstice out there.
Games in this genre are so little-catered to and Soulstice has proven one of my favourites in recent years, so i'm trying to help them out where i can.
Others in the genre --and some fairly adjacent upcoming ones-- would be
- Genokids
- Enenra Daemon Core
- Gori: Cuddly Carnage
- Kings of Hell
And Clash: Artifacts of Chaos may be interesting too. Combat's a bit more in the vein of God Hand, of all things.
If you took the time to read this all through, thank you for doing so, hope this proved interesting, and have a good one.
Yeah, it's super repetitive and gets old quick
Yes and enemies helth bars just feel spongy adding salt to the injury. Thats why Souls like are such a breath of fresh air
Weird, for some reason the comment i posted here didn't go through.
To repost it in a smaller and more concise way: There's a cool and solid game from 2022 called Soulstice, in the genre and gameplay style of DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders and such. Seven different weapons you can quickly swap between, Style/Special meter hybrid, aerial combat and launchers, quick "get back into the fight" moves like a Stinger, quite big enemy roster, etc.
Anyway: it did something interesting with "respond to the indicators" while not compromising the gameplay influences from those other games. Namely by having the player character be, thematically and in practice, be two characters.
Generally you directly control the Ashen Knight, Briar. She does the physical fighting and gets around seven different weapons, all with their own unique animations, utility and differences.
On her shoulder is the ghost of her sister, Lute, referred to as a Shade. Lute you cannot directly control for any offensive moves, except for pressing the Counter button.
Lute operates *separately* from Briar.
For some animations, enemies will have a Counter button prompt pop up.
There's three varieties:
- Deflect (return a projectile)
- Freeze (what it says on the tin)
- Disrupt (prevents an attack from happening and staggers the enemy out of their animation).
You don't have control which counter Lute will perform: it depends on the enemy's animation. The Stinger's tail swipe will always be a Freeze for example, so you have to react by getting away and rushing back in with a Piercing Lunge or other Stinger-type move, or getting over it and using moves that hit below you, then perform a slamdown when it's finished with the swipe, to start some new combos.
As said, Lute operates separately from Briar. Which means that whatever animation, combo, launcher, aerial, grappling hook, charge, slamdown, dodge, etc. you're performing with her, Lute's counters do not interrupt or cancel whatever you're doing.
There's a skill tree too where you can upgrade Lute, with stuff like perfect counters giving some currency, some health shards to heal, a speed bonus, sending out powerful homing spirit bolts or even launchers from a distance, making these launchers affect enemies of Medium and Big class enemies too, etc.
Even one where you get a freebie
It's a lot more substantial than just number/percentage-based upgrades.
And --i'll keep it at this for now-- doing Counters boosts the Unity meter, which is like a hybrid of a Style Meter and Special/"Devil Trigger" meter.
It's used for performing weapon-unique Finishers (done by ending any Pause Combo with a particular weapon) or entering the Rapture state. Or even a third option you get late in the game...
In any case, Unity is a fairly fleeting resource if you don't hit anyone for too long or get hit yourself. But the Counters help keep up some momentum to perform more stylish and impressive damage later on, provided you can keep up the pressure without getting hit.
I very much love Soulstice. Has its rough points but I can certainly recommend it.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos too. A Zeno Clash prequel with seemingly some God Hand and 3D beat-em-up influences this time around.
Here's some other upcoming action games without combat systems like those of the Batman Arkham series or GOW 2018/Ragnarök:
- Immortal: And the Death that Follows
- Genokids
- Enenra Daemon Core
- Mightreya
- Gori: Cuddly Carnage
- Kings of Hell
If you read this all the way through, thank you for doing so. Hope this was interesting and that you may look more into the games in question.
@@jurtheorc8117 that happens alot, it's an issue across all users on TH-cam, only about half of my comments actually post and stay up.
This video feels written by AI...
I thought so too!
Good point
Probably explains why its so wrong right from the start
this is like calling super mario 64 a souls like, or superhot a call of duty game
most of these games have no similarities in combat beyond using the same console controllers/mouse and keyboard and therefore following some contemporary input/UI schemes
I was astonished to hear that the God of War reboot could be considered to use the Arkham Asylum combat system.
You left out middle earth: shadow of war. Which had absolutely one of the best implementations of free flow combat, mixed with easily understood and flexible combat styles. :)
I'd be interested in seeing an analysis on the combat system in Sifu too! :)
If you found Sifu fun, perhaps you may find something interesting in the combat of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos.
Devil May Cry 1 is my favourite game of all time and so it was great to see it mentioned here, but the PoP: Sands Trilogy and God of War are also amazing. Great vid.
6:54
WRONG. it was actually the Batman Begins movie game that featured it first. The exact same mechanic exact implemented better and more realistic.
Wrong, it's actually Matrix Path Of Neo that influenced Any free flow combat
The game I've had the most fun with that uses this type of system is Shadow of Mordor. I van play that for hours, just fighting hordes of enemies, only stopping when everyone is dead and I need to find a new group.
Fantastic! You did an awesome research to drive us all through the story of the design of this mechanic. I really enjoy this kind of videos. Sometimes you dive directly into a tutorial but making a step back and analyze the game design decision for certain mechanic helps to understand the mechanic better (and also the success factor of the referenced games) and even to realize about possible modifications or improvement. Great job!
Thank you!
Wanted to add to this that before Assassin's Creed, there was also Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, which had a much more in-depth combat system than PoP:SoT and AC1 as well as a Counter mechanic, before AC1.
The big thing about Batman: Arkham Asylum was that the developers wanted to make the combat have a nice consistent rhythm to it, that's why enemies always perform a new action only when the player either hits another enemy, or finishes a counter animation. This hadn't been the case in previous games, where enemies would try to attack or do another action pretty much whenever there was an opening and the player would instead have to position themselves where they're less likely to be hit first.
The combat upgrade that makes the player gain double combo points for timing attacks over just spamming them emphasises the rhythm aspect too. I don't know if action games post-Arkham have this feature though.
Edit: wow I literally paused the video to make the comment right before you went on to explain the Rhythm part of Arkham 💀💀💀 I hope there's at least new info in my comment
Great video.
Just a small detail :
The targeting system we call "Lock on", which allowed to go full 360 while keeping focus on target (sort of circle strafe), was created and implemented by Sega for their "Virtual On : Cyber Troopers" game. It was an upgrade of their Lock-On system used in their "Panzer Dragoon" licence (itself inspired by the arcade game called Lock-On released in 1986).
Said lock on was a key element to Virtual On which was third person action shooter where two robots had pretty fast paced 1vs1 battles in a 3d Arena, hence why it has no problem with the" tunnel vision" focus it brings since there were no issue with others mobs jumping you from blind spots.
Virtual on released in 1996 meaning 1 month after Ocarina Of Time's first tech presentation while the final game released in 98. So Sega should take the credit for that.
What Nintendo have to be credited for is the switch between multiple targets. Which is the most "a propos" when it comes to your video.
We can also mention a game called Jet Li's "Rise to Honour" which was one of the first real attempt at free flow fighting between multiple targets. Using the right stick for hit direction. Or Mark of Kri+ Rise of the Kasai which both used a special targeting system allocating a button to an enemy. Both release during PS2 era.
I can't believe she didn't even mentioned Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks while talking about Free Flow Combat, it's almost the first time it has been introduced in game ever, what a sin... 😡
Another great backgrounder! It's really interesting to take a step back and see how games have progressed. Incremental changes really add up. Thanks for making this video!
So if this is "freeflow" combat, what are other combat systems called and what are examples of them?
I'm not sure I'm a fan of this growing system. Isn't the point of a video game like Spiderman to FEEL what it would it would actually be like to be Spiderman!? I'm willing to bet that Spiderman is actually aiming and making calculations when fighting or SWINGING for that matter. Someone called this system the 'spam a button to win' system and that feels accurate.
People who are impressed, seemed to be impressed by the animations and the seemless transitions but I'm prettyyy sure we don't have to sacrifice good animation to have more depth and risk. Just my 2 cents. Freaking love games and nerding out tho. You're my people
Fair question. To this day there's debates on the name of game genres and combat types like those of DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, God of War, etc. There's Character Action, Spectacle Fighter, Hack-and-Slash, "An evolution of Beat-em-Up games", etc.
If you're interested, here's a list of various action games from recent times that use different combat systems from the modern Arkham games' type combat and stuff.
There's things that are more in line with stuff like DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden, 3D and 2D beat-em-ups and even a way of mixing a die-and-cards system with realtime action combat.
Many of them are still in production, though.
Some of my favourites:
- Soulstice. Not a Soulslike, it's in that vein of DMC, Bayonetta and Darksiders-type stuff. Has seven total different weapons, for one. A mix of a Style and a Special meter (at the highest "rank" tresholds you can perform weapon-unique Finishers or enter the monstrous Rapture mode), Counterattacks from a distance that don't disrupt animations, and more.
- Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. Prequel to the Zeno Clash games but from a third person perspective this time. Has you finding different Martial Arts styles and special attacks to assign to the protagonist to mess around with.
Like the weapons in Soulstice, all of the Stances have their own unique animation movesets and utilities.
- No Straight Roads. Short, boss-centric, all about music. Bosses attack in rhythm with their own boss theme and have different attacks for different elements within the song.
- Cookie Cutter. This one keeps it fairly simple. 2D beat-em-up combat in a beautifully 2D animated Metroidvania. Some different weapons and "spells" plus a costless "push back" move. The weapons and spells are used by consuming Void, which is built up by hitting enemies with normal attacks. There's a Parry too that can allow for instantly Executing an enemy if you pull it off.
Void and Health is rewarded for Executing an enemy.
Others:
- Immortal: And the Death that Follows. A friend of mine described this as a Hindu Mythology Mad Max Beat-em-Up. Has a Roguelike element where dealing with a boss in a particular way can give a bonus or affect the difficulty, and it seems like you may unlock different moves in different runs.
Main character's a cool monstrous creature without a head and with his face on his abdomen.
- Lost in Random. This is the one with the mixing of a die and playing cards during realtime combat.
Had a new game announced a few days ago! Many people are decrying it as ruining the original game because it's a different combat system (from the looks of it), sadly, but i'm excited and want to try it out. Help the devs and such. The gameplay is not the only thing that made the first Lost in Random special and memorable.
- Hi-Fi Rush. The world moves in rhythm: your attacks and those of enemies. Same genre as DMC and stuff.
- Genokids. You play as an entire rock band where you can switch between characters, who all have their own weapons, Specials and a Special Form. Same genre as DMC and stuff.
- Enenra Daemon Core. Cyborg ninja shenanigans. Same genre as aforementioned two.
- Mightreya. Don't know much about this one, seems to be a similar genre to aforementioned two.
- Gori: Cuddly Carnage. Syntethic toy cat riding a hoverboard that is both the method of movement and offense (the board gets used as a weapon in various ways).
- Kings of Hell. Quite spicy cartoonish 3D beat-em-up demon shenanigans.
- Yasuke: A Lost Descendant. Cartoonish cyberpunk samurai shenanigans.
And I want to mention Decline's Drops and Kraino Rebirth. The first one seems to be an action platformer with some more emphasized combat, the second may be similar-- but i just think it looks cool.
Hope this list has proven interesting!
This type of combat system is designed to be easy to learn, but they can have a pretty deep skill ceilling
@@jurtheorc8117 Hey, big thanks for the list, man! In return I'll recommend Aztez. It's an indie 2D game inspired by DMC and Bayonetta. The combat designer gave a long-a** talk at GDC about Bayonetta combat, which I think is very interesting for any combat design nerd.
Hack and slash. Bayonetta, Kingdom Hearts, NieR, God of War, Devil May Cry
freeflow combat only started with Arkham Asylum, which then was copied by Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max, GoW2018 and Spiderman2019.
Original GoW and DmC are hack and slash games, they don't have the freeflow combat system.
I think the wording and categorizing here might be wrong. Wukong and DMC are more of an action hack and slash genre type. Freeflow combat is like Assassins Creed in its golden years, Sleeping Dogs, Ghost of Tsushima, Sifu, the upcoming SPINE game, etc etc. Where every hit you land makes the enemy react specifically to that hit and pressing the counter button at the right time will launch a takedown. I like to think of it as cinematic combat. It’s pretty cool. Freeflow has kinda died off though I think because a lot of people thought it was lazy and not challenging.
Amazing, game combat can be a very difficult system to get right and it's best to have a plan worked out from the beginning.
Thanks for also mentioning Mix and Jam's video as well, I'll hop over there next to check it out :D
Clicked on a hunch! Pleasantly surprised by the quality content! :O :)
That was a great video! Action games with a free-flowing combat system are the best. I was so glad to see it adopted by a bunch of Action MMO's back in the day like Vindictus and C9. I just started playing The Lord of the Rings: War in the North today, it's too bad the game doesn't have a counter mechanic. Its combat is pretty good.
Its crazy just how much is taken from the Arkham series for AAA games nowadays, but as some others pointed out, it can make most games seem repetitive by now. I wish Arkham mechanics hd stayed in Arkham.
This video is pretty much wrong about nearly everything.
You're talking about completely different combat systems as if they are the same.
Action games are not fighting games when using genre definition.
Motion capture and IK controls have nothing to do with the development of these systems, only with the quality of the animations.
The way you talk about how the games work and what effect it has on the gameplay sounds like you had an AI generate the text, because with very few exceptions all of it sounds like marketing speech more than actual experience.
Sorry if this comes off as mean, but for most of the video I was just thinking: "What are you talking about...?"
I stopped the video right at the start myself.
How did she conflate hitbox based combat systems and paired animation ones as the same
Spreading misinformation at this point with how many comments saying this is well researched / praising this video
Remember, kids; FreeFlow Combat as we know it today was introduced in Spider-Man 2: The Movie Videogame. (Counter was a dodge back then)
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure it was "Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time" in 2003.
The first Spiderman game didn't have free flow combat it was more like melee combat from GTA3
@@mindeyethemasterscreen2712well no if you’re talking about the first movie Spider-Man game then it definitely did not have similar combat mechanics to gta 3 lol
Well this was trip down memory lane! 😊 Very well done! The only thing I would've added was some mention of Ninja Gaiden. It was never that popular, but their freeflow combat system remains one of the best to this day.
I think in some ways I still prefer the older combat methods. Free Flow Combat often feels like I'm not really in control of the character and more like I'm choreographing a dance or just shouting cues to someone fighting like, "Block now!", "Look Out Behing you!". I don't know why exactly but it takes me out of it sometimes. Makes me feel more like an observer rather than the character themselves. I think it's born from the limitations of a controller. No lock on with first person and mouse locked camera feels like I'm in much more control of every action.
I first encountered the term "free-flow combat system" in marketing and the back-of-box description of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and that was quite a different beast entirely. A fun one though, and to this day i haven't seen anything quite like it.
If you're interested, here's a list of various action games from recent times that use different combat systems from the modern Arkham games' type combat and stuff. There's things that are more in line with stuff like DMC, Bayonetta, Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden, 3D and 2D beat-em-ups and even a way of mixing a die-and-cards system with realtime action combat.
Many of them are still in production, though.
Some of my favourites:
- Soulstice (not a Soulslike, it's in that vein of DMC, Bayonetta and Darksiders-type stuff.)
- Clash: Artifacts of Chaos
- No Straight Roads
- Cookie Cutter
Others:
- Lost in Random (had a new game announced a few days ago! Many people are decrying it as ruining the original game, sadly, but i'm excited and want to try it out. Help the devs and such.)
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Genokids
- Enenra Daemon Core
- Mightreya
- Gori: Cuddly Carnage
- Kings of Hell
- Yasuke: A Lost Descendant
And I want to mention Decline's Drops and Kraino Rebirth. The first one seems to be an action platformer with some more emphasized combat, the second may be similar-- but i just think it looks cool
Hope these games may prove interesting for you!
I just knew that AC and Batman would come up as she progressed through growth of combat in games. Nice video 👍🏽
I'd be curious to see this video continued! God of War and Sifu arguably expand on this system. A game like For Honor is PVP for similar situations.
Batman Arkham Asylum was my first ever game in which I was introduced to the free flow combat, and I was literally amazed by how it all played seamlessly and it felt so natural. Also there were other things I liked a lot about the game including playing a Batman game with great graphics and its performance on my Intel HD Graphics too was super nice. Seeing Batman in this video felt as if I got represented somehow 😅
7:37 and didn't know someone had recreated Batman's combat system already on TH-cam, and their project is also available on GitHub. Gotta try it for sure!
Great video Sam, and keep up the great work 🚀
Thank you!
Cool video and content, but god, it did hurt every time you called those games "fighting games".
Ah, yes, the "spam a button to win" system, very fun system, very challenging indeed. I'm glad most action games use this system nowadays, I like my games to be played with a single finger without thinking to strategic positioning, managing the camera or thinking in general.
Make sense for huge ips like spiderman. You have to appeal to EVERYBODY, so it makes sense the challenge is low. To be fair though they tried more with the parry mechanic, more aggressive enemies, enemies that can interrupt attacks, and harder bosses.
@@suave9184 The system itself can be ok, I enjoyed some of the batman games, but they become too repetitive very soon, once you play a single game like that it's like you played all of them already. I stopped buying them years ago, they say: "A game for everyone is a game for no one".
You can be creative if you want they give you the option. Take devil may 5 for example you can just use one button to kill a monster learn the combo do your own way which is hard. Not every game has to be souls like game and lot's of people aren't interested mastering these movementsYou can be creative if you want they give you the option. Take devil may 5 for example you can just use one button to kill a monster learn the combo do your own way which is hard. Not every game has to be souls like game and lot's of people aren't interested mastering these movements. Also every game i played have different movement, attack and defence so it won't feel repeated. Spiderman and Batman game has free flow combat but both are not the same
@@SuperDaDaD yea these games , like a lot of industries these days, are trying to appeal to as many people as possible , so they make it easier to play , it's fun but I think it could be more fun with more challenge
I like more complex combat mechanics like Sifu, Monster Hunter and Sekiro. For me personally is way more satisfying once you master the game.
GOW 2018 made impressive leaps with Mob AI on the hardest difficulty, it felt like you were genuinely outnumbered as the enemies target your every opening
So, solid idea for a video, needed more research. Hope to see an improved effort in the future, because honestly coming up with good video idea's is the hard part for most.
Respectfully, please have someone look at your script.
Wdym man??
Man, the next Bumbi game is going to be way more violent then I thought!
You know, I really found this video interesting. I subscribed. Hope to see more ma'am :)
Thanks!
You called these games "fighting games", that is a BIG NO NO. These are games containing fighting, but "fighting game" is very very specific genre. The games you're talking about are action games
Alright calm down semantics police. She's talking about the fighting mechanics in games if anything they might be more hack and slash or beat em ups than action games but whatever.
@@Whywe.lovegames Hack and slash is a subgenre of action game. Regardless, fighting games and action games are too completely different genres, and if people walk away from this video thinking that action games are called "fighting games" then it can have a negative affect, especially for such a niche genre
🤓👆 actually
@@owencmykyeah, makes you wonder about a scenario where you would want targeting in a fighting game, though. Don't think I've ever seen that done. Might be interesting to consider. I'm super smash bros when you're doing one of the 1-to-many fights for instance
This is a fighting game, main part of getting through missions is, you guessed it, fighting
that was a preaty good way of explaining this system !
Now I understand why gacha games don't have free flow combat. Imagine how many characters and synergies they will have to implement.
Zenless zone zero be like
they could easily use a set of animation rigs for each body type in the game. then it would be as simple as a model swap. The majority of the implementation for this kind of combat does not rely at all on the character's visual characteristics just like how the appearances of different weapons of the same type (mostly) doesn't have a noticeable change on the fundamental combat. the animation for one sword may be shared with another without needing to be reanimated.
Great video. Especially for gamers like me who want to learn more technical knowledge. And the knowledge is conveyed in an entertaining way. Keep it up! 😃
Thank you!
Miss you Sammy, great content as always.
Small mistake here. When multi counters occur in Batman you still have to input the counter button for each attack. The max is a triple counter which requires 3 presses.
I wouldn't even say any of the 4 games from the intro are similar in combat system. But souls like deriving from z targeting is absolutely real. Ive stopped calling games "souls like" and went to say "z targeted hack n slash"
Not mentioning Prince Of Persia Warrior Within is a huge crime. Assassins Creed was a big step down. Warrior Within was ahead of its time, a lot of games nowadays cant achieve what was there made. In depth fighting system made without machine learning, or advanced rigid bodies, all running on Core 2 duo, 1GB of ram, and 512MB of VRAM.
You could automatically lock in on any given enemy, grab them, toss them, jump on them from the ceiling, create combos with intrinsic athletic moves, grab their weapons, use terrain as your weapon, counter block, dodge, stab, use finishers, throw weapons (with every type of weapon dealing different kind of damage and playing different animation), and vast variety of combos.
The only game that is as close to fluidity of that system, is Insomniac's Spiderman.
"Fighting games"
These are third person action-adventure games lol. Fighting games are things like Street Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear, etc.
Great video Sam! :)
When you were explaining how the free flow combat works in Batman, I was thinking "...This just sounds like the same system we had in Batman Begins."
Of course, it's less flashy and you can't vault over enemies quite as quickly, (Vaults are their own special attack) but the movement feels roughly the same to me.
Great take, but I have to disagree on the first game that pioneered free flow combat.
It wasn’t assassin’s creed, which dropped in 2007.
It was ninja gaiden, which dropped in 2004
Jet Li - Rise To Honor & Spiderman 2 (PS2) are also HUGE influences way before the arkham series came into play but everyone usually overlooks those titles when mentioning combat influence in Action games
Great video but also I cant wait to see how Camouflaj incorporates the free flow combat in their arkham vr game
If The Witcher 3 makes a template for current action games, how about Shadow of Rome from 2005 with the same template?
Its nothing new, people just realize that it is the most fair and fun combat system, and its easy to make it nice looking from developer perspective.
From my knowledge, Witcher 3, Ghost of Tsushima, Black Myth Wukong etc uses a different combat than Batman, AC-Games, Ryse: Son of Rome, Shadow of Mordor etc.
There are also souls-like, and sekiro-like combat systems quite popular.
My favorite game for beat 'em up/hack and slash-style combat to date is the Prototype series. Prototype one had overall better feel, but Prototype 2 brought the parry shields, flip dodge, and some other upgrades to the character, as well as just more power and carnage in general. To this day there isn't a single game that feels as responsive or connected combat-wise that I've played. Not that I've played an extensive list of these types of games, but still.
If you want it in Unreal Engine, use Animation Warping. It's just there, I use it for my game too, for wall climbing...
There's a split down the middle between people who follow Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya's combat styles and well, western games. The combat in DMC, ninja gaiden, nier, bayonetta, sekiro, kh2fm, etc. grants the player a plethora of tools they can use that aren't necessarily BETTER but serve to extend a player's creativity, on top of the higher APM and tighter windows, ability to juggle, enemy management, etc. while in western games it's all about accessibility and feeling a certain way, whether it be powerful like batman or kratos, or agile like spiderman. It ends upaking them feel very different even though they were all cut from the same cloth.
DMC and GOW aren't "freeflow combat", those are hack and slash games, the term was coined for Arkham Asylum and it's completely different.
dmc and gow are character action
aa is a brawler
zelda is hack n slash
It still has similarities. Basically you don't need to lock on to individual targets in those games, while DMC does use lock-on (can't remember if it's in all the games), you mostly don't need it, and can play through most of the games without it. Freeflow combat can exist in both beat-em-ups and hack and slash games.
@@FractalPrism. Umm, I wouldn't call Zelda hack and slash. If anything, the Dynasty Warriors series is hack and slash. Hack and slash does have connotations of brainless button mashing, but I'm not a big fan of the label "character action". That can apply to a lot of games, the common thread in DMC, GOW, Bayonetta, and Ninja Gaiden is you're using primarily melee weapons (of some kind) to attack enemies using combo strings, but it's less brainless than Dynasty Warriors. While it's not a great label, hack and slash is the only label that makes sense, unless someone can think of a better name.
@@EnigmaHood No, that's categorically false. It's obvious to any observer that the Arkham games and Insomniac Spiderman are way different than DMC. The main difference for those who can't describe is, is that God of War and DMC use preset, on demand attacks and combos that cover different areas, and are static. The lock on elements are either light or non existent and the activity you are participating in is stringing those shapes together with minimum down time. Your response to any incoming damage is usually to try and sweep the enemy into a combo, or use a noncontextual dodge. There are no preset combos in Arkham games that cover a box, it's always one target unless you're using a quick use ability. The activity you're participating in is trying to keep an overall state of flow, and more importantly, picking your targets. The game moves you to the target, and there is no specific weapon or combo to switch to. It's more responsive than planned, which is why the counter window is larger, some complain and say too large. Some complain and say the game moves you from target to target too easily. Either way, quick actions are not the same as intricate combos, and parry mechanics in DMC are always much tighter and much more rewarding because they're not the intended quick solution to an attack.
Someone should bring back the fight system from Jet Li’s, “Rise To Honor”!
Have you tried "Sifu"?
@@paulochf I have. It’s one of my favorite games.
I've never seen such a detailed and elegant explanation of free flow combat.
But I do have to point it out: God of War 2018, BM Wukong, and the Witcher don't do “free flow” combat. If anything, they took things back to the Z-Targeting.
The only games I can think of that do free flow as it was designed are the Batman games (duh), Shadow of Mordor (and the sequel), and the Spider-man games. (Arguably, Devil May Cry, but not quite)
It's a shame, really, especially since Rocksteady gave up on their own masterpiece of a system in the most recent game.
We absolutely need more free flow games where you play as an absolute badass.
I would love to see a variety of ways free-flow combat can be integrated into a third-person shooter; one great example is now WH40K Space Marine 2, yet imagine the system amplifying forward momentum in games inspired by John Woo - with counters triggering a standing joint lock against one NPC mixed with a free aiming toward another NPC or a throw toward any direction in quick succession. Such integrations can tie into the player's capacity to bring overwhelming force and stimuli against an opposing squad.
the combat in Sleeping Dogs is so fluid and awesome, what an underrated gem.
Mark of kri was another combat system that brought the focus and lock on feature with specific button attacks for the enemy under that button command
The biggest imperfection with Freeflow is the same with automatic parkour of Assassin's series it just doesn't work 100% of the time sooner or later Etzio will just jump directly into water or Batman will round house kick the air none of these are game breaking on their own but these games often overestimate their mechanics working and you'll loose a timed chase or Lose a no-hit combat challange with Batman often.
Infact some of the Batman Arkham Knights challenges were basically more than luck than your ability to understand Freeflow combat because even if you do everything perfectly it is always possible for Batman to hit the wrong enemy or Throw a batarang into the void or get hit despite your best efforts and you'll lose the challenge.
For this reason I would advice not to play these types of games back to back because your frustrations with the combat system can carry over from Batman Arkham Knight to Witcher 3 and ruin your fun.
super random comment: I think your audio would massively benefit from a high pass filter on the voice. There's a lot of low frequency rumble, and your voice would be much clearer if you cut anything below (rough guess) 100hz.
thank you!
Nitpick: mocap suits don't have sensors, they have reflective knobs which are recorded by cameras.
God there’s nothing that kills my interest in a game more than this combat style
The first time I experienced a game with some kind of free flow was in the Soul Reaver series, now many games tends to get toward aimlock combats like in the soulslike but a mix between the two was done in the latest GoW and that was perfect !
loved the video !!! very interesting !!!
Is there no mention of the OBJECTIVELY smoothest combat system from Ninja Gaiden? Or the best action game series, the Ys series?
Nah, it's not a big deal. Good video. I've been looking for a way to smooth out my combat, and this brief retrospective is neat
Thanks for the well researched content
I can't help but feel Legacy of Kain: Defiance really helped developed this system as well. The later entries (not Blood Omen 2) seem like a simplified combination of God of War and Ocarina of Time.
I really believe the peak was with DMC.
Starting with GoW, these types of games lost a ton of depth in the combos and the enemies became way easier.
I will die on this hill.
Peak was Ninja Gaiden
In short batman introduced gap closing and adopted contextual attacks, interpolation and lock on is based what you are facing.
It's all relatively simple, though I am not really strong on IK, it scared me to use it in Unity and I haven't touched it in Godot yet.
Just finished my core game play loop yesterday, spent today refactoring and refining the code base. But hopefully this week I'll be working on combat, great timing on this video for me.
I agree with a lot of the comment section here. A lot of the examples in this video are wrong, and either you haven't really played those games you mentioned or you didn't really understand any of their gameplay.
DMC is nowhere near freeflow combat, nor BM Wukong. Those games have rigid combos that have to be manually stringed together. In other words, if you input a set pattern of buttons, it'll output an exact pattern of animations. There's an intentionality behind the combo strings that you do as well as the positioning of your character. You also have defensive options that you have to manually choose/employ as you react to attacks. You have complete control over your character and you're not supposed to just button mash over and over. Presentation wise, this makes the game more video game-y.
Freeflow combat is the exact opposite of that. You can press a similar set of buttons, but your character animations will be completely different based on the situation. You don't have a complete control or intentionality over it, unlike classic arpgs like DMC. You're basically letting the game decide your movements whenever you press the button and all you have to do is mash mash mash. Reacting to attacks are like qte's where it basically demands you to press the correct prompt. The game plays itself for you in a way but this makes the presentation look much more cinematic.
Using another analogy, it's like a manual car vs an automatic car. Freeflow combat is an automatic car. While prior examples are a manual car. They are completely different based on how you control them.
Another commenter has mentioned that freeflow combat isn't even a commonplace, which is what the title of this video claims to be as. Freeflow combat is a rather new tech and it's requires a lot of work to make. Hence why only AAA studios have the resources to put them in their games. It's very much UNLIKE the classic combo based combat that 99% of action games have.
The title of this video is just false.
As I thought, I haven't played Black Myth Wukong yet and I'm surprised when she mentioned its combat is free flow, when in reality is more souls-like. I should've known she's making a huge mistakd when she mentioned GOW 2018 here😂
I'm glad she recognized Prince of Persia's free flow though. I remember when game manuals were a thing, it specifically mentioned this specific phrase to describe its combat.
i feel like you shouldve mentioned Jak and daxter 1 though, because without it, we couldnt have the free flow system we have today. if you dont know, naughty dog wanted to create seamless animation transitions for both movement and combat, so they created the 3d animation interpolation system for video games that would later be replicated and improved on, and would lead to the creation of free-flow combat games.
I wish we had a prince of persia remake, it's just so nostalgic seeing all the wall running into combat moves
No, Batman's combat is designed to be easy and remove skill barriers. It's more like a rhythm game with low decision making and precision required. Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls did alot more to inspire combat systems then Assassin's Creed or Batman.
Yeah but she's talking about free flow, which is Arkham and AC. Why is everyone shitting on this video?
@@jeremyterkelsen2518 Because freeflow is not an evolution of melee combat in games it's a side genre of combat. DMC, Soulslike or Zelda are not an inferior version of melee combat because they have lock-on or stricter animations, they have a different combat philosophy all together.
Rollemups should be in their own category. Batman/Arkham games are fantastic but obviously meant to be a fun brawler, not an RPG or competitor to other action games. Other mainstream action games have mostly taken hints from trash like God of War or Assassin's Creed - shittier versions of the worst parts of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which at the time was completely unique and still stands on its own. Sad what happened to this genre. You either mainline one of a dozen critically acclaimed Soulslikes games or you play other genres entirely.
Might have added the best of combats - middle earth Shadow Of.
SoM had a very immersive story, and with the fine combat described here, gave me an unforgettable experience
This video basically explains why we want a john Wick game whilst also showing why we don't. A John Wick game that stays within the skillset of the character would likely become boring really fast because it would effectively be a light or out of date version of the games shown in this video. I mean, how different would a John Wick game be from the first God of War game?
now there's some great content! subscribed 👽
The matrix: path of neo!
I will never forget the absolutely epic combat of that game!!
I heard her say “one game that changed combat systems forever” and I knew she was about to talk about Gex 3D
Hey, I'm curious if you still consider Unity the best for you or if it is the main game engine that if you want to make a game that will take a long time, it will be your choice!
i will make a video on that soon!
Jet Li’s Rise to Honor walked so these modern games could run. It’s absolutely cave man compared to modern games, but back then that kind of combat flow in an action game was quite a breath of fresh air.