Points are earned through attacking, obviously, as well as consuming health items (bonus if you have full health) and knocking enemies into stage hazards. In order to get an S ranking, the highest possible rank, in a SOR4 stage, the player has to pass a minimum threshold for points, with bonuses given at the end of the stage for how quickly the level was beaten, how much life and men you had remaining, if you took any hits during the level, and how many “Stars,” or super moves, you have left. SOR4 taps into this same level of creativity. Beat ‘em ups like Devil May Cry and even adventure games like Sonic Adventure 2 employ a ranking system like this, which can push and pull the player into completing levels not just faster, but more precisely, using all the techniques and mechanics a game has in order to push it past the red line and get that A/S ranking that is so desired. In my opinion, this is much preferred – the sheer amount of options and optimizing one can do in order to hit a flat score in order to get a high rank are near endless. By contrast, some games choose to rank you after every level, with the ranking changing depending on how many points you got, which is contributed to not just by the raw count but by external factors that can give you bonuses.
This is decently fun and a fun category to shoot for in a world record, but there is a way to optimize the max amount of points in a run that rarely changes once figured out.
#STREETS OF RAGE 4 ENEMIES FREE#
Most beat ‘em up games in the 90’s had a points system that was necessary to raise so one could get a free man, but also rank high when the ranking boards flashed after either a game over or a finished run. With it, SOR4 becomes a truly modern beat ‘em up, and not just a nostalgia bait from the past. Instead, I would argue that the mobility is the way it is because the game was built around its extensive ranking system, which contributes to why it is so satisfying to dig into again and again, even after dozens of playthroughs. I’m not here to say that this is an invalid opinion, or even that there isn’t merit to the opinion at all – far from it. A lot of people chalked up the game’s reasonably tough difficulty to feeling like they couldn’t move out of the way of attacks, and more generally that they felt limited by the game not allowing faster mobility for its entire cast. Suffice it to say, there was definitely a lot of caterwauling over SOR4 going back to SOR2-level mobility and locking extended dashing/running to only a few characters (Cherry and Adam). The game’s reception is split due to an absurdly difficult USA port and some of its stranger design choices, but most agree that the enhanced mobility, priorly restricted to one character, was a massive net positive. Dashing and dash attacks had been around since Capcom’s Captain Commando in 1991, so SOR3 was arguably late in adding these kinds of mechanics. The last SOR game, 3, added a lot of new universal mechanics, most notable of all extreme mobility every character could run and perform a vertical dodge that allowed them to position and blitz across the screen, as well as perform a no-penalty special attack using a new rechargeable meter. I’m probably in the minority with my vast praise, but I’m in an even smaller minority when it comes to one of the game’s more divisive decisions. Across 5 (now 6) difficulty levels and 12 stages, developers Lizard Cube and Guard Crush crafted a game that walks the fine line of servicing nostalgia while making its own mark on the genre. Just coming close to SOR2 would be a high bar, but SOR4 surpasses it in my opinion. This isn’t grading on a curve – many would consider the series’ second iteration to be amongst the pinnacle of not just the genre, but that generation of games. To that end, SOR4 is as close to perfection one can achieve in the genre. At its best, there’s a sheer kinetic thrill when executing your gameplan to clear out swaths of enemies that is simply unmatched. When I play games I tackle it from a problem-solving perspective, and beat ‘em ups throw one problem after another at you, forcing you not only to be reactive, but proactive in what strategies you pursue on a screen-to-screen basis, all within a fairly rapid pace. This isn’t just nostalgia talking either – as the beat ‘em up has evolved into far more sophisticated games like Devil May Cry V and Persona 5 Strikers, I think it is consistently one of the most fascinating genres of action games. This probably isn’t a surprise given my love for fighting games, but I’m a really big fan of beat ‘em up games.
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