I work in the industry, designing combat for AAA titles and you're right on the money. I think that one key aspect that you overlooked is enemy defenses as a very important pillar of a fun combat experience. Believe it or not it has more impact than the enemy attcks as it ties directly into the satisfaction of gameplay. You glossed a bit over it with the hyperarmor. The enemy needs means to avoid damage, not all of the enemies of course, as this tied to their design (i.e. a shambling zombie or a mindless brute cares little about defense) but enemies feel more satisfying to defeat if they also narrowly avoid player's attack and on ocassion counter back, punishing stun-lock spam. (hyper armor is not an elegant solution) The closer to the player's own ability to block/parry, the better it feels for the player as the understanding of what happened is crystal clear and that alleviates frustration and confusion. On the other end of the spectrum, highly evasive opponents are annoying and frustrating to fight as a player. If you need to make a highly defensive character it is worth considering the environment as a potential tool to allow the player to break defenses, increase the recovery frames on the lengthy enemy dodge animations, avoid lenghty backwards dodges backwards as to allow the player to close in during the window of opportunity of the recovery with a gap closer. TLDR: Enemy defensive moves (dodges, parries, disengages, not static blocking) are also a key ingredient to make the fight more satisfying and make the enemy look clever.
Disagree. The most satisfying combat is the combat where I can unleash hell (mostly) uninterupted. See the DMC series. But I do agree that simply giving enemies hyper armour is the worst shit in gaming since triple A. Platinum games are so much anti-fun because you cannot finish a combo as the enemy gets hyper armour halfway through and you either dodge or get your face smashed in. Fuck those games.
Clemens Cohn Feel like that's where preference comes in. I prefer having a dance with my opponent via dodges, parries and interruptions. An example would be MH, I can dish out some crazy damage with cool animations, but only after I stagger/mount the monster which is a reward of patience and observation. I like games like GoW but the lack of a threat makes me less inclined to play it. If you have anything to add about GoW, I'd like to hear it.
Big reason why I was so impressed with God Hand, they get wise to your crap especially if it gets repetitive by blocking, parrying or dodging; however, a good player can use the different tools in their moveset to stun, trip, or launch the enemy into a state where they're unable to defend. Mostly. Doing all this while managing multiple enemies makes even the first fight pretty hectic.
That breakdown of a 'satisfying impact' into frames was a really cool and clear way of portraying how that works, it's not something I have ever really thought specifically about before so it was really useful info!
It's a really interesting part of making a game feel good. This talk given by Mariel Cartwright mentions something Mark didn't, which is animating a very slight "pull back" right after an attack has extended as far as it can go: ua-cam.com/video/Mw0h9WmBlsw/v-deo.html Also a bit surprised that Mark didn't mention Monster Hunter World's great sword having almost a full half-second of hitstop after landing a true charge.
Another good example of that is Ryu Hayabusa and William Adams' Iai strikes in which they quickly go from a neutral stance, rush forward while slashing their blade, and then going into a recovery animation at the end. Most competent action game developers know this technique like the back of their hand. Stuff like this, enemy damage reactions, and hitstop really makes your attacks feel like they carry weight and power.
I remember a brief video from one of the animators of the film Kubo and the Two Strings, which was an excellent illustration of how they included certain frames with frozen poses to help emphasise impacts. I don't think it was a UA-cam video, I think it was on Twitter or Instagram. I'll try and find it... EDIT: Found it! It was on kevinbparry's Instagram. (Who, I didn't realise before, is the same person who did a viral ball magic trick video earlier this year.) UA-cam will probably block this post if I post the URL directly, so you'll have to scroll back through his timeline to find his post of December 24, 2016. It's not an analysis video, just a clip from the movie, and I misremembered it because although it was about how to emphasise impacts, it wasn't really about holding frozen frames. But his comments on it are still very detailed and fascinating for anyone interested in animation techniques.
OMG I JUST REALIZED! This is why Dark Souls 2 combat feels so weak and buttery in a really unsatisfying way, unlike the other games in the series. A lot of the weapons admittedly do have the slow startup and recovery, but not much more than that. The "colored lines" following the attack patterns for the weapons are pretty weak (not to mention colorless) and a pretty unsatisfying sound effect. Also, Mark didn't mention this, but I think the lack of screen shake decreases the satisfaction of the combat.
Just saying, Super Smash Brothers does an interesting thing in that attacks get weaker every time you use them (this is called staling), unless you use some other attacks to reset it. I think a combat system with a much more exaggerated staling mechanic could lead to a very interesting game where you *can* use one move over and over again, but you're heavily encouraged to mix things up to be more effective.
Not sure if damage lessens in DMC, but if all you do is use the same couple of moves after a short while those moves will stop generating style points.
Let's not forget about the inverse possibility; in another episode of GMTK, Mark cites that another (in some cases better) way to keep players on a certain path is to _reward_ them for playing a certain way rather than to _punish_ them for playing another. Not that there's anything wrong with how stale moves work as they do now (huge props to Sakurai for such an ingenious idea); but imagine if instead of some moves doing less damage when used repeatedly, all moves could do MORE damage the more diversity a player could use throughout a single combo. Of course, depending on how that's scaled, it might be a better fit for a single-player game like DMC or GoW than a PVP fighting game like Smash or Street Fighter, but the idea definitely makes ME giddy with excitement. Heck, maybe it'd even do wonders for a turn-based RPG in which players often find themselves casting the same overpowered spells over and over again.
@@CapnShades Staling works better for comboing. A lighter hit from a stale move won't send the opponent as far or damage them quite as much, thus adding to combo potential, where as what you're talking about would end combos if they received more damage or a "reward" for mixing it up.
While he did mention a lot of visual tricks to make conbat feel "crunchy" and visceral, I'm surprised he never explicitly mentioned screen shake. That's a huge part of what makes attacks feel weighty, and nearly every clip in the video features screen shake in one way or another. It definitely gives off a lot of feedback with each attack, and combining that with hitstop and some nice sound effects like he said will ultimately make each strike feel heavy and extremely satisfying!
I agree the 4 ways to make an attack feel satisfying are: VFX SFX Camera shake Playing with ( like hit stops and stuff, mark mentioned this in depth in "forging the leviathan axe" video)
I think screen shake is part of why, when I'm faced with a combat system, I stop trying to parse the animations and understand what's going on onscreen, and just mash the buttons.
@@dranorter what about times when you don't need to read the animation Like when you attack a low damage one but it's great for crowd control and you know they're stunned so by the time you need to read the animation you won't be having the camera shake But don't you agree it makes it satisfying I played the old god of war games they had it and it was fun
@@adityaanuragi6916 I'm an odd case, I just don't connect that well with combat mechanics. Similarly, when fight scenes show up in comics and movies, I just kinda wait for them to end so I can see who won since that's all that matters. I think the last time I really enjoyed a combat mechanic was SMRPG, trying to get the "timed hit" right -- IE, adding a simple timing element to a turn-based system is fun for me, but having things be all timing all the time, well, my brain just turns off and I spam whatever button I've learned is okay to spam. I say I'm an odd case, but idk, I'm sure there are lots of people like me. I am trying to learn to enjoy such things though - there are some rare combat sequences I enjoy in comics.
You didn't play a clip of Optimus turning into a vehicle and ramming a Decepticon when you said "hit like a truck". Absolutely unwatchable 99.9999999/100 Awesome video, very well made and informative
His content is mainly for his Patreons - it doesn't harm him in any way to recommend other UA-camrs content. Plus others do the same thing - just look at the Battlefield community on Twitch. Never seen anything like 'em, telling them to check out the other's steams.
Thing is attacks from Furi do feel as hard as a truck with the camera shake and everything, I'm not saying Transformers doesn't but Furi feels a bit better
Fun fact: Assassin's Creed 2 improved on the combat system later in the game by introducing enemies (in armor) that you couldn't parry until you weakened them with regular attacks. They also had some quicker, stronger attacks that you had to block or dodge, which gave you a little window to weaken them. Get a few good hits in, and you can parry and insta-kill them now.
AC2 has a lot of options for counter-attacking that don’t involve counters. Using parries (not counters) and timing attacks properly after them functions as a perfect parry system that lets you stagger enemies. Hitting a staggered enemy is basically like a deathblow in Sekiro. The stagger system is the cornerstone of that combat system and a stagger state can be triggered in a number of different ways, which makes using counters a rather ineffective method of defence by the late game, as you mentioned. Against brutes, you’ll need to parry if you want to induce stagger. Against regular armoured enemies, a dodge to the side followed by a quick strike does the trick, but you can also use parries. Dodging a seeker’s sweep attack causes Ezio to perform a unique animation that snaps their spear in half. Counters are reserved for common enemies and agiles. It is theoretically possible to win every fight by sitting there, waiting to counter people with the Hidden Blade, but why would you do that? It’s not the most effective way to fight, nor the most efficient way to fight, nor the most cool-looking way to fight and it’s certainly not the most enjoyable way to fight. Choosing to play that way only harms the experience for yourself and it’s not even optimal. So, don’t do it. AC2 also introduced backstabs, disarm counters, strafing, grabbing onto enemies and holding them/beating them down/killing them, using enemies as human shields, using enemies as projectiles to knock down other enemies, ground finishers with all weapons, long/heavy weapon special attacks, taunting enemies to induce attacks, and more. That the system is reduced to being “just stand there and wait for enemies to attack so you can counter them” will forever be tragic to me because players who chose to engage with the system that way missed out on so much stuff that really helps sell the fantasy of being an Assassin.
@@jcers I don't think there were any parries in AC2. It's been a while since I've played it, but aside from the normal counters, I don't remember any type of timed perfect parry in the game. There were different types of counters based on what you had equipped. Normal weapons had normal counters. If you were unarmed, you would do a disarm counter and attempt to steal your enemy's weapon. And if you equipped the assassin's blade, you would get a special counter that would insta-kill any enemy (including the boss enemies in the game), but you couldn't block while equipped with this weapon, and the timing was much more difficult than other counters, so this was a risky strategy. High risk, high reward. Different enemies had different methods that were best for fighting them. The most basic of enemies could be insta-killed with a single counter attack. Some other enemies were also weak to counter attacks. The big brute enemies were weak to the disarm move. You could steal their giant weapon and insta-kill them with it, and then that weapon could be used to insta-kill another brute, but it would break the weapon to do an insta-kill on a brute when you didn't just steal the weapon. So for the price of a single disarm counter, you could kill two brutes with cool, cinematic kill animations. I seem to recall that you could also do a counter with a brute weapon that would insta-kill any normal enemy, but would break the weapon. But most enemies as you progress through the game, counter attacks would do a little bit of damage, but a very low amount. Not every enemy could even be countered effectively with a normal weapon. In the video, he cherry picked a fight from early in the game and pretends like that fight with the single weakest enemy type defines the entire combat system. You could do that with any game and claim that the combat system was bad because they haven't even introduced 90% of the combat system at that point. If you show the first level of a game and act like that's the entire game, you're ignoring almost the entire game in your analysis. And yes, if you were bad at the game and didn't know the differences between enemies, you could use that counter strategy to get you through most of the game. But it was slow and inefficient, and didn't feel at all good or satisfying. You would counter a guy and bonk him on the head and do 1/10 of his HP, and keep going until you countered him 10 times in a row. And the guys didn't attack constantly, so you could be waiting 30 seconds or more between attacks, which is an eternity in video game time. Think about games that have special abilities with a long cooldown time of 30 seconds, with short cooldowns in the 5 second range and medium cooldown of 10-15 seconds! You could spend half an hour on a single fight with just a few guys if you did it that way. My point is, most games have something you could do to exploit the combat in a cheap, slow, unfun way to get through the game. I remember playing Borderlands and getting up on a rock and shooting at an enemy that was way higher level than me, but he didn't have any ranged attacks, and I emptied literally every bullet I owned and managed to kill the critter with my very last bullet. It took 20 minutes to kill one enemy. It wasn't fun - although the fact that he died on my last bullet made it more rewarding than it would reasonably be normally. But I didn't adopt that play style, because it was slow and boring. I did it once. It was effective, but it was slow and boring, so I never did it again. The devs don't have to remove every possible way that you can exploit their combat system. If there's a boring way that doesn't require any skill to get through the game, I think it's fine to leave that in. If a player gets enough enjoyment by using that to get through the game, great. The player played through the game in a way that was enjoyable to them. Mission accomplished. But if a player finds that method slow and boring, then he'll look for better ways to get through the game that feel more rewarding. Now I'll give you that the AC2 combat system was a little unadvanced by today's standards, and had a lot of room for improvement. But it was possibly the best and most realistic melee combat system ever devised at that point in time. And I much prefer the AC2 combat system to the combat systems of the more recent AC games like Origins and... god, I can't even remember the names of them anymore they run together so much... that other one that was basically an extension of Origins. Odyssey? That's it. Didn't try Valhalla, because I was burned out on AC after O&O.
he also talks about Bayonetta's animation cancelling into a dodge and doesn't even show an example of that happening. the editing in this video is pretty bad, cuz a lot of the footage isn't related to what he's talking about beyond showing any random clip of the game in question.
@@StriderWolf exactly he should really read comments and see this criticism if he is to improve otherwise he's gonna be one of those channels that make content for the sake of money and not really paying much attention to what they preach. I doubt much of these gaming channels even play these games or if it's even their game play they show. Such a shame really
@@z.a.y.n-5053 This... isn't a gaming channel though. As far as I'm aware, it's aimed at developers. His goal isn't to show off these mechanics and how cool they can be, but to explain their effect on gameplay and on the player themselves
Hyper Light Drifter has one of my favorite combat systems. The push and pull from firing off your gun before darting in for melee hits to recharge your gun was super satisfying. The attacks are all well telegraphed and require specific timing to dodge which is really good. The sound effects are also top notch.
HLD was at its best when the Drifter is up against a whole crowd of enemies. Each individual enemy is incredibly simple to defeat given the Drifter's ability to dodge, but the way you need to be constantly aware of the whole battlefield to prevent yourself from being zoned is where it shines.
Hard agree with this. I always thought that the balance for ammo and melee combat was a genius idea. HLD remains my favorite game of all time in all honesty just to how much I enjoyed it in every way possible.
I remember enjoying it a lot, but I also remember having a somewhat difficult time understanding all the new moves I kept getting. I played it for 3-4 hours and haven't touched it since but I wanna finish it; would it be better to start over or just load up my save and try to re-learn it?
The big difference in that game is that the camera is top-down, so you're not always fighting with the camera. Although I wish it didn't move in front of your character and just stayed centered.
It had good combat but range weapons felt too overpowered even when they where balanced. I could kill so many enemies before I finish rest with melee. This game is super easy if you upgrade your weapons and health. The dash system did not respond well with my keyboard... Maybe its my keyboard or its from the game.
Am I the only person who disagrees with the whole idea of the Resident Evil punch? It is exactly that kind of super over the top animation as the over the shoulder super quick rotating strike of Gerald from the Witcher 3 (no offense meant. It's still a great game). In my opinion animations shouldn't be too realistic but also not too "holy crap wtf is just happening right NOW!!!?" like.
@@dramalexi Your opinion is worthless then because these are all very basic tried and true concepts of animation. I'm not even sure what you are even getting at, it's very clear what is happening when Chris punches the enemy, it's the whole godamn point of it in the first place.
@@dramalexi Over the shoulder rotating strike? Wtf is that? Do you mean his overhand left or spinning back fist? All those strikes are legit striking techniques... how is it over top? 😂🤣
16:34 "God Hand", I loved this game, the combat system is one of the best i have ever seen. The player could costomize every hit on the combos, was insane. Great video, as always. I am a brazilian fan and i plan on studying game design, and your videos always inspire me.
It's just me, or God Hand really seen more popular here in Brasil? Me and a lot of friends grown up playing it, but it just don't seen as popular out there.
@@vikisetyaherdian8368 Oh cool, God Hand is a really fun game, i wish it was more popular. I actually follow a few indonesian streamers from Hololive, nice to know that God Hand is popular there.
The original Bushido Blade is my favorite system so far. You had a high stance, a middle stance, and a low stance, and a high attack, a medium attack, and a low attack that each did something different in each of the different stances and also each did something different in each stance moving forward, running, moving backwards, and dodging. There were parries and counters, but everything came from the basic three stances and three strikes. It was very simple, but became deeply complex. Very satisfying
Oh damn, this video is one of those I'll rewatch a hundred times because it is so well made, researched and atop of that entertaining… Dammit Mark, why is your content so good?
MogamiArt It is indeed well researched for his subjects of interesting combat systems but sadly, not for all of the actual games. It may be because I am a no life fan of the Dark Souls series but Mark Brown got some little things wrong about the series that kind of made me worry. Especially when there’s only DS1 and 3 clips in it. IDK for the others games but it may not just be about Dark Souls. Ho knows, I may be just rambling endlessly for no good reason but... what ever.
Well, this is one of his longest videos, so I guess he just had to cut it short in some way. As for DS2, that may just be my perception, but I thought that a lot of Soulsborn fans didn't like DS2 that much… …and since Mark uses his own footage, he may not have had any great DS2 footage to put into the video. But I understand your concern and it's great that you shared your opinion!
Yes I am pretty aware of the hate on Dark Souls 2. It is all right for him to not like it but it is in no way a bad game. Most people hate it simply because of the nostalgia, following the hate train or just looking at the surface and blame the game instead of adapting the new game play. But the game is still known in the Souls fandom to have the best pvp in the whole series and also brought something important in making a compelling combat system. That is diversity in fighting style. You see, in ds2, you could build a shield only build and have a variety of ways to fight with it. When in the others games, you had one attack and maybe two wen in ds2, you have 5 diverse move set of attacks with it. Then there’s the dual wielding mechanics that only exist in the second game. It makes that if you are using 2 weapons of the same size and have the right stats, you can use a dual move set that varies for each weapon. You basically can dual wield almost every single weapons in the game including shields. This is just scratching the surface of all of the great improvements from ds2 but got all tossed out from the 3 game because of DS1 fans service. This is why I believe that it is still important to look at the games that you don’t like because you may miss great things about them. So this is one of the reasons of my concern but then, Mark Brown makes 2 big mistakes. He says that in the Souls series, you have to dedicate your actions because they cannot get canceled. But again, ds2 has animation canceling which is again one of the reasons why it is considered as to have the best pvp. It is indeed minor but then he talks about hyper armor and call it poise as he showed us a clip of ds3. If you didn’t know, ds3 don’t have any poise in it. It does have hyper armor but it is not poise. If he was really a fan of the Souls series like he said in an another video, then this shouldn’t have been in the video. Especially when it was a big BIG discussion in the Souls fandom the moment the 3 game hit the shelves and is still on going to this day. If those errors were made in one of his most praise games... then think of the others games that he doesn’t enjoy as much. Now that I think of it, he made also a lot of errors in the boss key video of skyward sword wen he was talking about the game outside of the dungeons. But I may be wrong on that so I am going to go watch the video right now. I hope that explains correctly my concerns. But in the end, we are all humans and we are bound to make mistakes.
I assume Mark didn't talk about DS2 because he wanted to talk about simplicity in combat, DS1 had a relatively simple combat system and I can imagine that he put the focus on beauty in simplicity. I wouldn't call it DS1 fanservice because most people only know DS1 so it was probably just choosing an example that most people could comprehend. This is a video for game developers and game enthusiasts, that's why it's as broad and conceptual as possible. I agree with you on that part, however, I would simply call it bad wording than calling it out as a mistake. I didn't know that DS3 doesn't have poise in it as I have never played it, but I can imagine that making a wrong statement about a game that you are passionate about is upsetting. Everyone makes small errors, only because I got that one fact wrong doesn't mean he's not a fan of the series… When you have to play as many games as Mark does for his job it's easy to confuse details. The only thing that bothered me personally about the SWS Bosskeys episode was that he didn't even try to hide his dislike of the game. I see now where you are coming from, especially getting the poise part wrong is imaginably upsetting. However, Dark Souls was just one of the many games he presented in the video and I still believe it was overall well researched. The problem could have been that his source wasn't all that authentic.
This video makes me appreciate just how dynamic Super Smash Bros is as a fighting game. It's got quick moves, highly useful but not OP shielding and blocking, but most importantly, health being directly related to how far you get launched, which makes you consider the environment and what direction you're fighting in.
And how Sakurai made a series that can be enjoyed by casuals without the need for crazy strats but can also be enjoyed by veterans and pros for the complete opposite reason I’d say he was successful in accomplishing that not enough games do that imo
@@jonathanwilson7949 Idk, i feel like that was true at least til Brawl but since then, especially with ultimate, smash isn’t really appealing to newer players. Sure, it may just have to do with the stigma of it being a “sweaty” competitive game now, but with the insane roster it has now it can be intimidating especially to those who don’t have much experience in games, much less fighting games which are notorious for having a really steep skill curve. I do remember being able to play smash 64 and melee without feeling super overwhelmed, mainly because the roster was short and mostly made up of extremely familiar characters. And at that time, even tho there certainly was a competitive scene, it wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now. Not to say that this is any fault of Sakurai, just noticing how over time smash has become less accessible to new players which used to be central to its ideals
One thing I wanna throw out there about Batman's combat system being too lenient with its Counter system is that it complements what the game is trying to achieve. The combat isn't trying to have an intricate combat system that makes you feel like a tactician, it's trying to make you feel like an unstoppable force against the common enemies. In the movies and comics, the henchman aren't typically going to be taking batman out, so the game wants to empower you by making it easy to take out waves of guys at the same time.
MrSecksee well it's a good thing to make the player feel like an unstoppable force...but I think Devil may cry 3, Bayonetta 1 and 2, Transformers devastation and a lot more, have better combat system and still make you feel like an unstoppable force.
@@ManagerBlackwood way to completely miss the point of his comment. The game throws harder learneing curves in different ways. Some enemies cannot be countered or use special weapons that need certain techniques to counter. The predator sections have varied mechanics with enemies that have radar or special guns, etc. Point is, Batman's combat system is prefect for the game and any criticism of it is kinda tone deaf
This is a cop out. All action games have the same goal without resorting to the absolute bottom of the barrel combat system that is Bamham. What you meant to say is that the game is meant to be marketed to the lowest common denominator.
Arkham's Free Flow is my favorite combat system. Yes, Batman automatically moves between enemies, but it is so fun to beat up 50 enemies while traveling in circles. And I think it's perfect for Batman. Just my opinion though.
I love it too, although I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite. It works great for Batman, and the variety of enemy types does make it much more than button mashing and waiting for counters
@@scepta101 Even when it's just basic goons, the combat system is far more than just button mashing. The Arkham games are possibly the least button mashy games I've ever played. The penalty for button mashing is severe in those games. This is the game that taught me to stop button mashing. Every game I played before this let me get away with button mashing without much consequence. But Arkham taught me to only press the button when I want to actually do something, not just in anticipation of spamming attack as quickly as possible. In Arkham, every attack must be thought out and planned and pulled off with a single button press. Press the button too quickly and your attacks are far less powerful. Repeatedly press the button too quickly and your attacks will miss altogether and you will eventually get hit with an attack that you can't deflect, either of which has the drastic effect of weakening your next 2 attacks to the point where they have a very short range and do literally no damage. The game is genius, though, because you can get through the game by button mashing. But you're not Batman. You're just another goon punching his way through the game. But learn to play without button mashing, and the game transforms into something else entirely. It becomes a tightly choreographed action movie with some of the most amazing fight scenes ever.
Something you missed out when talking about the satisfaction of a good system is the enemy reactions. I've worked on a game (for a well known studio) and during development we would get enemies that weren't finished so they didn't have all their reactions set up. It's amazing how completely different it feels. Like even if their health is going down, if you don't have reaction animations, and ideally also audio and VFX for each detected hit, it doesn't actually feel like you're hitting the enemy at all - even if you can see the contact or the weapon go through them. Another thing worth mentioning is auto-targeting. Even in games where there's no manual lock-on, e.g. the Arkham games, the combat system will select a target and turn the player character towards them, and usually move towards them (up to some max distance) if they are too far away for the attack to land. But it's this direction alignment during the early phase of the attack that's critical (the enemies do it too of course). During development we could turn the auto-targeting off and it's amazing how completely broken games feel without it. You think you can move your stick in the right direction to land an attack on the enemy of your choice, but it's actually incredibly hard with human sized enemies. One major game that doesn't do auto-targeting is Monster Hunter. This is because it matters which part of the monster you hit, so you need some choice over that. But it doesn't feel broken because the monsters are big enough that the attacks usually land.
Funny you mention Monster Hunter's lack of targeting helping it since I feel it's a better representative of your first topic: the enemy reactions. I played a Monster Hunter game on my PSP back in the day and I just couldn't get into it at all because there WEREN'T any enemy reactions. It felt like my giant wind-up and recovery animations did *nothing* to these creatures. I recoil when I'm bit by a bug or scratched by a kitten and I just cut through 3-4 inches of flesh on this beast and it didn't do anything at all to react to it. It was entirely unsatisfying and it was the primary reason I put the game down. Dauntless, a Monster Hunter-like which just went into open beta, fixed this by having the body part react to the attack, at least a little bit, and giving it visual scarring based on the kind of attack used on that body part. I actually feel like I'm carving into this beast instead of my weapon passing through it like dropping a knife into a tub of butter/spread.
@@VoilaTadaOfficial Modern Monster Hunter games have way more satisfying feedback and enemy reactions than the first games. MH4U and World Iceborne have the best combat systems of the franchise, you should give it another opportunity.
11:22, this, THIS. I can't stress enough how important enemy design is in just about every single player game where you kill things, it's the pillar which sustains everything else. Developers often forget about this. No matter how deep the mechanics of your game are, if you don't design enemies that force you to be good at every single aspect of the combat by behaving in many different ways and not just a single one, adapt to your playstyle, and make you turn your brain on, all the work you've done is wasted.
Reminds me of Prototype. They created this character with all of these awesome, crazy moves. "Pretty cool. So who do I use them on?" "I dunno. Dudes? Like, army dudes."
This is where Mirrors Edge catalyst failed. The enemy AI is retarded. They don’t chase you, they don’t learn from spam moves, and they have like one attack each; except the sentinels. But they aren’t in free roam so what’s the point.
I'm glad you pointed out how some systems adapt to your playstyle. I wish more games did this. The Mr. Freeze battle in Arkham City is a perfect example of this and really breaks up the monotony of the attack system.
as an aspiring game creator, thank you for all of these videos. They make me think about things more deliberately and I fell like it is really improving my sense of design
"Tales of Symphonia" has one of the greatest combat systems in my book, its got two attack buttons (simple and special) the simple attack can be used for crowd control on its own, to push back enemies when pushing the thumb stick laterally, 'float' enemies by pushing the thumb stick up and knock down enemies by pushing the thumb stick down. You can decide what specials are linked to each direction on the special attack button so you can build the combos to your liking, for example I would use an upwards spinning special on the Up + Special command to allow me to get any enemy high in mid air and then "Rising Falcon" on the Just Special command, a move that jumped you up and back before flying back through your starting positions blades first. And that was just one of the characters, it worked differently for each character even using the same buttons for ranged spell casters
I would have loved to see you talk/mention Jedi Academy. It's an ancient game, that has incredible action gameplay. It still holds up to this day. My belief is gameplay, ages the best. Hence why we can play Mario 64 and still enjoy the game.
Honestly, I have to disagree. Gameplay can age the best, but so can visuals, or sound design. I played Super Mario 64 on the Switch recently and I think the gameplay was pretty atrocious, it felt clunky and awkward. It's not aged well. But somebody who grew up with that as their standard is going to think that all things considered, it plays pretty well. Yet I'm sure both of us can agree that the game's visuals have aged like a jug of milk. Meanwhile, if you look at a game like Terraria or Hollow Knight, those games are probably always going to look acceptable regardless of how you feel about their gameplay because of how stylized their visuals are.
Then the combat should reward interesting choices. Devil may cry is often easy to just beat especially on lower difficulties. But to get that coveted SSS rank or equivalent you need to really think about your choices, even when you're mowing through enemies.
@@aniketraghav1328 he showed an example of God of War having enimies attcking you at once so you wouldnt have a chance to do that. So idk what youre talking about.
My favorite combat system: Insult Swordfighting from The Secret of Monkey Island. Plenty of attack/defense options. Constant switching between attack and defense. Abilities are learned from opponents.
Evades in BOTW are all over the place though. It still boggles my mind that they used some weird "threat area" mechanic to determine whether or not you pulled off a perfect dodge instead of using the ennemy attack animation itself. It leads to very frustrating moments where you pull off an awesome dodge at the right moment but the game doesn't register it as a perfect dodge because you weren't in that arbitrary "threat area" even if you went right over the ennemy sword. On the other hand; sometimes you pull off a random perfect dodge from miles away on an attack that would have never hit you. That game's combat system is a mess :/
+1, For me, if they have reduced the use of the flurry rush would have been better. In the later third of the game, I remebered the only enjoyment I get from using it happened once to avoid an enemy and use the bow to kill another enemy while falling off from a wood tower.
yeah,the evades are a bit weird.like,its technicly impossible to actually time it for some lynel-attacks,but when you actually do it,you basicly do it when the attack should have already hit you.and there are those weird attacks where you get hit even if you use the dodge
I think they were trying to find a middle ground between difficult and easy. Using the enemy's attack animations alone would have made for very easy perfect dodge, especially since the game doesn't have very many enemy types to learn. On the other hand, they could have made enemies telegraph less, but that would have made dodging too difficult. It would have hurt the aesthetics, too, since there is inherent charm and game-feel value to expressive enemies with exaggerated animation. So they took the middle ground of giving enemies relatively predictable telegraphs, yet limiting perfect dodges to a specific threat zone so you couldn't flurry rush spam. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good solution. Or at the very least, not implemented carefully enough. As it stands, the game would have been better off without the perfect dodge. The perfect dodge really does nothing but lessen the incentive to try risking a parry, despite parries being far better implemented and balanced. Like most aspects of BotW, the combat is imperfect, yet has great potential.
But even when you miss a dodge, you still tend to not get hit and have an opening while the enemy is in it’s follow through and anticipation animations
@@Graphomite There's a few enemies that do have small telegraph windows in Botw. One is Lizalfos with great-swords. Their anticipation window is deceptively small with great-swords compared to the other weapon types. The other ones are Bokos and moblins with spears. They have one attack in particular which is just ridiculous. One frame they're running towards you, the very next frame their spears are in your gut. There's zero anticipation window for them.
I've never really understood combat scoring systems. They always seem so arbitrary to me, in both how you get them and their purpose. I've never felt encouraged to play any differently or better just to receive more points or a higher grade. I don't know if that's just me, or maybe I haven't played a game that really gets it right. Also, I can't believe you used the phrase "hits like a truck" and didn't set it to that footage of Optimus Prime's special attack. Rookie error.
Game Score Fanfare I don't think they're that hard to understand. Your combo score builds by landing attacks in a row without getting hit. Each attack is assigned some value based on its difficulty to perform. The algorithm decreases the value of the attack each time you perform it in the same combo.
Well I imagine it varies for each game. But sometimes they just have these random parameters like "Finesse" or something but never teaches you how to score higher in it! That's my general impression, but I haven't played a whole lot of action combat games.
Some games, like devil may cry, give you more orbs the higher the score you get which in turn you can use to buy new items and combos. i think thats a pretty good example of a scoring system which encourages you to do well, but i agree with you than in most games its pretty useless.
in DMC it is huge difference in orbs (your upgrade resource and money) between C and S ranks etc. So it DOES matter. Other games might just implement it as a bonus feature, or something to be comparable
My favorite combat system is in Breath of the Wild because of how it works together with the physics engine. It feels like combat is part of the open world and not another mode because the things you do in the open world also work in combat. Not only that, but the engine allows for crazy maneuvers like getting an aerial attack with a spicy pepper and a fire arrow or throwing a rock at your enemies.
I love the combat in hell blade: senua's sacrifice, or at least the implementation of audio cues for when enemies will attack you when they are off screen.
I totally agree with that bit about satisfying impacts. I mostly played as Alvin in Tales of Xillia because he's the only one who didn't feel like he was slapping you with a wet noodle or a whiffleball bat. It drove me crazy, and now I know why.
One of my favorite impact animations in recent memory is the greatsword true charge slash impact in Monster Hunter World. There's a solid second where the sword freezes in place at the point of impact before finally crashing down to the ground, and it just feels amazing.
I think another important aspect of fighting systems is having a "punish" reward. Something that lets you unleash a series of strong attacks after successfully defending yourself or attacking the enemy in certain ways. Revengeance lets you cut through weakened enemies, Bayonetta lets you slow down time, and Zelda has that satisfying flurry rush. I think rewarding the player with an opportunity for unique attacks and strategies is vital to a great combat experience.
The level of thought and detail you put into these videos are just engaging and breathtaking. Time passes by quickly when watching them. And I have a newfound appreciation for games and game designers. Thanks and keep it up!
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix has a great combat system when you play on Critical mode. Because of the halved HP and strength of the bosses you can't really jump in and mash X to win. Instead you have to learn the enemy's attack patterns and find counters with either magic, summons or limits. But at the same time you still feel powerful due to the glass cannon nature of the mode. Once you take that mentality to the whole game you find a lot more to the combat system than you may have thought. Not to mention the Revenge Value system where bosses will always counter after you hit them with a set amount of combos to prevent stunlocking them and also telling you not to get greedy with your attacks. It's a system that hasn't been seen since in the franchise since you either have bosses that just don't get stunned in Birth By Sleep or you have a single spell that trivialises the game in 3D.
I just want to point out 2 thing: In critical you have esentially 1/4 of the HP than in beginner (Sora gains half the HP, and he takes twice as much damage), and RVs don't count succesful comboes, it adds a value on each hit (The value being dependan on what the hit is) and once it reaches a certain treshold (Lingering Will's is 25, for example), the boss does an attack and resets the counter, and yes it's a really good system which seems like it might be back on 3 if the super boss from 0.2 is anything to go by? (Or at least they are letting bosses get stunned and giving them predictable and dodgable counters which, fun fact, Vanitas did at the end of Ventus' story and it feels so good you wonder why they didn't do it with the rest of the bosses)
SonOfDickins I'm currently playing through KH2FM on critical mode and revenge value is never acknowledged by the game. I guess that's why it feels like some enemies randomly avoid hit stun. The player wouldn't be able to spam x if enemies blocked or dodged instead of magically brute forcing their way through. Sora's attacks are floaty and hard to cancel. The parry takes about half a second to startup and recover making it extremely clunky. In order to avoid getting caught in boss fights the combat devolves into hit 4-5 times then run, spam cure if you made mistake. Revenge value is a cop-out for designing a combat system and bosses that eliminate spamming in a natural way.
dandre3K Revenge value wasn't discovered until literally years after the game released. It's a hidden mechanic that had to be discovered by fans. And it's a great system. I would link you to a video or two that explains it better than I ever could, but it seems like you've already made up your mind, so I won't. Also, if you know that the guard takes half a second to startup, then work around that. And if you want to know what floaty combat feels like, play any Kingdom Hearts after 2FM, because 2FM isn't floaty.
SonOfDickins yeah the only good thing about that game is its combat system on a difficulty only available in Japan for 10 years. It’s why speed runners like it because they skip the bad parts. The first game was clunky but it was infinitely more charming, had a better atmosphere, more varied and interesting level design, better writing and narrative and overall just a better package.
"Everyone looks at the controller and whines, [in a whiney voice] 'There's only one attack button'. Will you gimme a break? Just because there's only one button *called* attack, doesn't mean it's the only one you can use. It's called a manual. Try to show a little initiative at least." - Tutorial Guy from Spiderman 2
I think the "crunchy attacks" you mentioned is one of the reasons I love hand to hand combat in Red Dead Redemption 2. In general, Arthur feels like a real dude, he has weight to the way he walks, jumps on his horse and especially punches. The combat system definitely isn't stellar, but the sound design when a hit connects really makes it quite fun!
Happy we got a section on just making sure your combat system has the sense of impact and weight to them, it's tragic when a fun combat system leaves out that.
Ninja Gaiden 2 is my favorite for combat, what did you think of it Mark? - Enemies became slower but more violent when they lose limbs, making how you approach much more dynamic - sharpness/bludgeoning increases with weapon level ups - each weapon has over 60 moves - You can run on walls and water mid combat to make each scenario more unique - Satisfaction linked to combos, one combo you can slice an enemy to pieces then flying pile drive them before their body explodes into the chunks you cut them into earlier
One combat system I really liked was Prince of Persia Warrior Within. A nice amount of combos, the ability to pick up enemy weapons to add variety and strategy to your play style, using the environment both as defensive and offensive opportunities. Such an amazing game!
HEY HOW COME YOU DIDN'T TALK ABOUT THIS ONE GAME I LIKE IN A VIDEO THAT'S ONLY 17 MINUTES LONG! Seriously, some of you people in the comments need to chill the hell out.
I think in the part he tlaked about brutes forcing you to change strategy woudvle been a great place to talk about the different enemy types in Bat:Ark Series tho. They have many great enemies that force you to do so in Ark City. The league of shadow girls teleporting forcing you to use the gadgets, the armored guys that need to be stunned first, the lightning rod guys that need to be hit on the back...Really a Video on enemy types may just be a good follow up video/part 2.
Wish I could like this comment more. All of Mark's points broadly cover the majority of how combat systems in games work, even if everyone's favorite niche game isn't represented. Yet, some act like it's a personal affront and slight to their very existence and livelihood as humans on this Earth that Mark didn't include it.
I think that Monster Hunter's combat system is great: Every hit feels impactful, you really need to think about positioning and every weapon gives you different defense mechanics. Oh, and the enemy design is alright too I guess :D
Too many attacks with a lot of wind up and cool down, and since most of the monsters that you have to fight have a lot of super armor, it gets pretty irritating too try and land an attack.
I dunno, I didn't feel like the the hits had much impact at all. Maybe it was just a problem with 3 Ultimate which was the only one I played, but I doubt it. Beasties that big need to be able to shrug off any single attack like it's a light breeze, and it wouldn't work otherwise, but it leaves any hit feeling pretty weak.
Play Greatsword. The monsters don't flinch on every attack, but when you break a part, they'll reel back and you'll get a visual effect of the part breaking, or you may even knock them out if you play hammer. I've yet to find a more satisfying feeling in a video game compared to landing a full charge greatsword swing on the head of a charging monster only to see and hear their face breaking and them reeling backwards only opening themselves up to more damage. Them having constant super armor makes it all the more satisfying because when they finally do flinch, you know you just hit them really hard.
Bayonetta has such a great combat system! You have tons of weapon choices that change your options, the combos use 2 buttons making the basics easy, and just how the game tricks you into learning combos. You start off mashing but then find hard monsters and learn some simple combos, like the PKP for wicked weave or PPPKKK for crowd control. After you learned a few, you decide to learn some others (usually in the training loading screens), and over time you learn them all. It also helps that most layouts share simple combos (PKP or PPPKKK), plus over time you learn certain weapons bring their own special combos. Plus the scoring system relies on you varying your combos for a good score.
Happy to see some Transformers Devastation in this video! I'm a massive Bayonetta fan, as well as a big Transformers fan, and while TF Devastation wasn't as polished or varied as Bayonetta overall, it was still a really great title that I'm glad I got to play. Not many people give it the time of day which is unfortunate. Lovely visuals, especially if you're a fan of the G1 characters, and great music, too!
Kingdom hearts, particularly KH2 has one of my more liked enemy come back mechanics to prevent most bosses from stun locking. players call this the revenge value, most attacks in the game have a set value towards this and when a thresh hold hits it makes the boss in question retaliate. This was mostly only used for the bosses that could even be stuned from attacks to begin with, so larger enemys didnt really have much of this. it made alot of the humanoid boss battles vary memorable because of the fact you had to see how many attacks you could get in before they hit there revenge value then learn how to deal with there attacks effectivly to punish the boss
Didn't KH1 have something similar to it too? I remember in the Sephiroth fight specifically, where it was much better to NOT execute a full attack combo on him because he'd just teleport out of the last hit. (Though I definitely remember more using partial attack combos against Xigbar in KH2...)
@@Stratelier from what i remember only 2 bosses actually have a small enough RV to ever make a difference, which is riku in hallowbastion and sephi. and even then rikus is high enough were unless you going for those big combos doesnt actually consider for most people since the basic 3 hit combo is generaly what most people got. sephi on the other hand from what i recall just breaks out of anything after 5? hits in atlest 1 phase. unlike almost ever other entrys in the KH series, KH1 has limits with how combos work to get the longest combos that only certain setups can break.
pre 1.9 java minecraft has, hands down, my favourite melee pvp combat system ever. I think what sells it to me the most is that it wasnt made by the devs (as seen by the fact that they chose to ruin it in 1.9), it was made by the players - over years of discovering the limits of minute mechanics and how best to manipulate an array of unintended features. It's only downfall (to my mind) is how influential latency can be.
@@hxrl5838 yep its probably sounds wierd to someone who never played pvp minecraft but its really good, especially how you could use stuff that wasnt intedet to fight in pvp like rods fns and lava
@@hxrl5838 before I reply a disclaimer: no offence in any of these sentences, if ur offended I'm sorry I am confused about people that love pre 1.9 combat. now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with liking it. I'm just confused about how in many games spammy playstyles are looked down upon, while in the minecraft community the pre 1.9 combat system that literally involves spamming your sword is the preferred option. now I do have to agree that it was cool that we could use things like rods for combat, but I do not understand why people complained about the removal of mashing m1 as a viable strategy. TL;DR: me not getting why people prefer spammy combat system go brrr
You do need to be very careful with how and when enemies escape from stagger. If an enemy can break out of stagger arbitrarily, or whenever it wants to use a certain attack, it can end up feeling like it's never possible to punish the enemy ala the superbosses in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. If your enemies can stagger, the when, why, and how should be given careful thought, and be something able to be understood and learned by the player, or you end up destroying the purpose of having stagger in the first place.
I think you forgot the importance of mouvement, is your character fast or slow? How many moves does it has? It plays a big role into how the game feels.
I find it too easy. The constamt juggling of enemies make the game less satisfying and more mainstream easy. My oppinion tho. You can have a lot more fun with it then i did i guess
@@cherrydragon3120 I think you didnt play on DMD, since enemies activate devil trigger and CAN NOT be staggered (or at least it takes like 30 attacks to acctually juggle them). Give it a try
DMC is not about just beating the level, at all. A 5 year old could mash through a DMC level on the first few difficulties. DMC is about keeping your SSS for as long as possible and feeling like a badass.
When you talk about dodge and Parry, you got DMC3 there but never brought up the perfection of Royal Guard and Trickster (DMC3) and Table Hopper from DMC4. Royal Guard is a high risk high reward style that took a ton to master. The Perfect Royal Block only negate the damage but that doesn't stop the enemies from attacking. This mechanic was essentially Parry from Street Fighter Third Strike. The timing window was very strict in order to prevent abuse and it will fill up the anger gauge. You have to manually do the Royal Release and in order to achieve maximum counter damage and the window is the same as the Perfect Royal Block. This required you to learn the enemies' patterns and the cue sound of their animation attack as well. Trickster was an advanced dodging system that allowed you to ground dash, Air Dash and Air Trick teleport to avoid the enemies incoming attacks. You still have your regular dodge which was very quick and a perfect dodge remove the recovery window. Table Hopper was basically Perfect Royal Block but in dodge form. It will not stop the enemies from attacking but if you timed correctly, you could even dodge a constant beam attack with ease if you master the mechanic. You could just talk about how risk and reward of Dodge and Parry in DMC3 and DMC4 and it would be good enough.
It may seem small but lets thank mark brown for always putting the music in the description I thoght that begging song sounded nice found out its called saynara (blue wednesday)
10:30 I'm surprised you didn't mention kingdom hearts 2 here, Kingdom hearts 2 has a system in it where it's kinda like dark soul's poise system but like backwards. Enemies can be stun locked from the get go, however if you stun lock them for too long, they'll counter you.
The fact that this video mentions Transformers Devastation multiple times makes me want to cry tears of joy. Criminally underrated game and I could even go as far as to say as being one of Platinum's best purely for the combat system alone. Yes, even better than Bayonetta. I await angry replies...
Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning magic attacks has some good wind up sequences. they just feel, timed so perfectly when i hit the buttons. i wish someone could remake it
The Gunlance in Monster Hunter will force you to think about all of your moves, there was a an attack where it takes like 5 seconds to finish and you can't cancel it and this is only executable after stringing a chain of attacks. Using this weapon increased my reaction time and observation in enemies, making fast games like DMC very easy. It's awesome how it affects your way of thinking.
Bloodborne has some amazing collision detection I saw videos of people swinging and hitting bullets because they where shot a fraction before or after the parry window.
I'd like to add on a way to perform parry in a good way: There are fundamentally, I have found, two different ways to design parries in fighting games. One is when the timing is based completely on the enemy's animation, where you "just" have to press a button at some arbitrary correct point during the enemy's animation. The other much more interesting way is to have a parry animation in an of itself, making so that some arbitrary point in the parry animation must happen at the same time as the arbitrary point of the enemy's attack animation. The former is seen in Dark Souls 1 and For Honor, the latter in Dark Souls 2 & 3. In Dark Souls 2 & 3, there are 3 parts to the parry: The startup, the active parry frames, and the end. If the enemy hits you during the startup or end, you will receive extra damage, but if they hit you during the parry frames they get parried. This might seem like an unnecessary complecation but it actually have a very important gameplay implication. In the first way to do parrying, particularly in a competitive multiplayer setting, a player can theoretically always parry every attack ever, because the player will always have the ability to react after the enemy has begun the attack animation. For Honor has sometimes been criticized of being a glorified starring contest because of this. At some point people simply become too good at reacting to enemy animations, and the game become less about trying to outsmart the opponent, and more about clicking the button at the right time from literally hundreds of hours of experience. There simply is no penalty for doing an incorrect parry, because you can simply cancel if the enemy change animation. Parrying become a non-existing risk/high reward at really high level play, encouraging turtle play. The other way to do parrying will in many cases disable you to make a parry after the enemy begun the attack animation, because of the start up. This means you have to enticipate the enemy movements and parry before the enemy even begins to hit. So it becomes more of a way to punish repetitive play, and less about learning how to press a button the correct time over and over again. While I in many cases appreciate the combat of For Honor, I consider their parry mechanic to be a giant unnecessary mistake, that Dark Souls handles a lot better, and which could easily be used in For Honor as well. Note also that some items in Dark Souls 3 enable you to begin parry after enemy attack(caestus), which I also consider to be a flaw in Dark Souls 3. Lastly it should be noted that I'm not a high level player in either Dark Souls or For Honor, so I am probably talking way out of my knowledge.
I agree with you, so I'm not saying that, but reading "I am probably talking way out of my knowledge" after such an interesting opinion gives you even more credits. So many people don't even dare to consider there might be some oversight in what they think.
Yeah that's how DMC has done it since the beginning of action games, the second that is. That one is also the most common though. The first came with Assassin's Creed as far as I can remember.
As someone who likes fast paced, airborne, combo focused attacks, but my sister prefers more methodical, simple attacks that don't go any higher than a small jump. Truly good combat can easily force me and her into another's territory without realizing it because it's fun.
These videos are SO GOOD! I have been wanting a channel to watch like this for long. This stuff is so good that I missed 3 seconds and just reminded because I wanted to know what you said. Such great tips, thanks!
Can confirm, I did this and my came made 17 million pounds and won game of the year for 32.8 years in a row and cured my skin and cleared my depression
From my experience the "anticipation" stage of an attack is usually referred to as Start Up. We call the early parts of the animation it's starting frames.
The difference in terminology comes down to whether it's discussed as a high concept between game designers or a technical component as programmers and gamers tend to do. Calling it anticipation is important here because it points to the important part of the start-up animation for game designers.
What TES6 needs is some martial skill and lethality. Like thrusts are fast but cuts knock away thrusts, 2h weapons break 1h weapon blocks but not vice versa, etc. sword-chess.
@@shiroshiba9791 Honestly that's even worse. At least with the normal combat there's some sort of risk of dying and there's *some* nuance with power attacks and blocking. Stealth archer? Just kill everything, one after another, with literally no risk of dying because enemies couldn't find a fucking billboard if they tried.
Great video! Really captures how interconnected everything needs to be. One suggestion, when stating frame counts clarify if is at 30 or 60FPS (as some games are different on your video but I assume its 60 based on the timing shown). This is useful as well during development, when working with animators they are probably authoring @30fps, in-game could be @60fps (or both if covering multiple hardware). For Killer Instinct we designed & animated @60fp. Ryse we kept our lingo at 30fps across the board during development (but our dev pc's ran it at 60fps). Some past games animated at 30fps, ran at 60fps (and combat tools hooked things into the 60fps real-time animation).
I also heard that sometimes of the devs want to make the attack seem stronger they pause the frames a bit. For example Ninja Gaiden's attacks where you have to charge it up.
Great analysis and suggestions. Though I'd love some footage from Kingdom Hearts, imo one of the earlier 3D action game with really rewarding combat system and cleverly balancing melee and magic attack mechanics.
Used to love a series of vids called Digressing and Sidequesting , sadly its not a thing anymore but coming across this connect more than fills the hole left behind. Thanks for the good vids, you got a new sub here!
Great video! I am working on a game that has an extraordinary combat system, including damaging limbs, damaging organs, bleeding out, disarming, parrying, potentially breaking your opponent’s sword if your sword is made of higher quality metals, or if their sword has been heavily used. The combat system even allows for dismemberment of limbs, which can be replaced if you use magic to replace it.
I think the video is more about how to do a *satisfying* combat system, not necessarily a good one. I say this mostly because I don't think all of the examples shown here are good combat systems. Most notably the new God of War. Why? Because there was one very important detail that was left out of the discussion: pacing and scaling of the combat. Let's take a look at bayonetta, for example: The difference between the difficulty of enemies in the first level vs last level is huge: They deal more damage, are immune to witch time, don't get staggered as easily, if at all, etc while the difference in the player character is mostly not present: a few extra moves that give some mobility options, but those aren't as huge. The biggest difference is in player skill and how he can now perform combos with muscular memory instead of actively thinking about them, how he can instinctively dodge attacks, etc. And playing in a higher difficulty level just further drives this home. The player has to improve, not the character. Now let's compare this with the new God of War. Even though the combat feels satisfying as heck with beautiful animations and probably the most visually impactful attacks I've seen, if you play the game on a hard difficulty, the pacing is just a slog and the scaling is mostly grindy. This comes down to one very very very bad decision, imo. The fact that enemies attacks can de blocked/parried *based on kratos' defence attribute*. This, paired with frequent high number of enemies encounters, makes it so some fights are pretty much literally impossible, as you'll get otk'd with no real way to counter it, as it is fairly easy to get hit when you try to go on the offensive if you're surrounded. Fast forward a bit when you've upgraded your gear (not your skill) and now you can block attacks but are still one shot. This leads to staying in a corner with the shield raised while spamming ranged attacks for upwards of 20 minutes (yup, I've done this at some points) until you finally win. Fast forward some more when you no longer get one shot and you can go to town on rooms packed with enemies, and this is where the combat feels right at home and makes you feel like a badass. The thing is, you didn't earn it. While in DmC/bayonetta you become a badass and stylish by learning the game, in GoW you do so by leveling up, which, for a combat focused game, doesn't make it a "good" combat system.
Not really. I actually kinda like jrpg's, for example. I believe with god of war my main issue is a problem of expectations. When you see an action combat system with rolls blocks combos and parries you expect it to be pending more towards player skill and less towards character skill and I was playing GoW that way, trying to "skill up" my way through the encounters (unsuccessfully due to the aforementioned rooms filled with one shot enemies) and ended up very disappointed after realizing you can just outlevel/outgear everything and steam roll though them. For example in dark souls, even though you can grind levels and gear (for the most part) the game never feels hinged towards that approach, as you can never steamroll anything (unless you grind for an absurd amount of time)
I think it really depends on your play style. I think I relied really heavily on skill throughout the entire game because of how I outfitted kratos I intentionally made a build that required me to constantly move, attack, and defend, while limiting my rune attacks because of long cool downs. Of course the difficulty setting also dictates how much skill is required versus simple level up.
While I agree wholeheartedly with this video, I feel like a point that was missed somewhat is more of the player's perspective of action combat. Good action combat must also mean that your on-screen character does as the player instructed. this is not much of a problem in fighting games, but in games like the Batman games I find there are a lot of times where I don't hit the enemy I intended to hit, but roll with it, because hey, at least I did damage to an enemy, right?
bryan rustenhoven Games like batman aren't meant to provide an immense amount of difficulty. These games were created to be style of challenge. You were meant to be the batman or be a nimble assassin.
I was looking for this comment. It should have been in the video IMO. The character should be controllable. Does it do what you intended to do? Also, imo locking out movement should be used sparsely. Nothing is more infuriating then accidentally starting a move with a recovery time of 5 seconds and not being able to do anything.
The Batman games gets shat on a lot, but they're actually really well-designed when it comes to the combat. The problem is that on Normal difficulty and below you basically don't have to play as the game was designed, so mashing attack and counter is more effective. The hallmark of a good combat system is that it makes the player think and make decisions. Batman (especially Arkham Knight) throws in a lot of enemy types and situations that forces the player to make tons of decisions while also giving the player a bunch of tools, moves and "supers" (burning combo meter for specific super moves or keep the combo going for a passive buff?). In the Batman games, spacing is also important. Partially for the reason you mentioned (so you make certain abilities and attacks hit the right target). In addition to what I've said, "combat" can even start before the enemy even notices you. You can for example perch atop something and looking over the enemies present to decide how you will tackle the situation once you engage. Making the player think and already make decisions. In all honesty, I consider Arkham Knight to have some of the very best combat systems out there. Partially because it's more unique and doesn't fall into similar territory/overlap like many other games do (Ninja Gaiden, DMC, Bayonetta, Nier Automata, etc.). But again, you pretty much need to play it on a higher difficulty setting to actually have to play the game as intended, so a lot of people disregard it as generally bad.
bryan rustenhoven the Arkham games have poorly designed counter combat. You can beat the entire game by just spamming the triangle button. It’s not engaging and it means that you tractor beam to foes you didn’t mean to hit. The Arkham games have great stealth,but poorly designs combat. Spider-Man PS4 foxes you problem. It lets you select enemies with the camera to shoot at in combat instead of useless quick fires.
Gonna be honest here, I really think that you should have MILLIONS of subscribers. Not only is your content helpful for developers like me, but it is also entertaining, and well made. Keep on keeping on.
in mount & blade games, the best things of melee combat is four directional attack & parry/block, cancelation, and stamina doesn't exists, that made it my favorite game ever
I'd love to hear you talk about Monster Hunter and the radically different playstyles that result from the weaponry in a future video. The Insect Glaive and Hunting Horn are especially quirky and fun. It's interesting how Capcom made the combat satisfying for weapons that play very differently (and fill different combat roles) but still face the same enemies.
I work in the industry, designing combat for AAA titles and you're right on the money. I think that one key aspect that you overlooked is enemy defenses as a very important pillar of a fun combat experience. Believe it or not it has more impact than the enemy attcks as it ties directly into the satisfaction of gameplay. You glossed a bit over it with the hyperarmor. The enemy needs means to avoid damage, not all of the enemies of course, as this tied to their design (i.e. a shambling zombie or a mindless brute cares little about defense) but enemies feel more satisfying to defeat if they also narrowly avoid player's attack and on ocassion counter back, punishing stun-lock spam. (hyper armor is not an elegant solution) The closer to the player's own ability to block/parry, the better it feels for the player as the understanding of what happened is crystal clear and that alleviates frustration and confusion. On the other end of the spectrum, highly evasive opponents are annoying and frustrating to fight as a player. If you need to make a highly defensive character it is worth considering the environment as a potential tool to allow the player to break defenses, increase the recovery frames on the lengthy enemy dodge animations, avoid lenghty backwards dodges backwards as to allow the player to close in during the window of opportunity of the recovery with a gap closer.
TLDR: Enemy defensive moves (dodges, parries, disengages, not static blocking) are also a key ingredient to make the fight more satisfying and make the enemy look clever.
Ser Xarthilias awesome mate, thanks for that!
Disagree. The most satisfying combat is the combat where I can unleash hell (mostly) uninterupted. See the DMC series. But I do agree that simply giving enemies hyper armour is the worst shit in gaming since triple A. Platinum games are so much anti-fun because you cannot finish a combo as the enemy gets hyper armour halfway through and you either dodge or get your face smashed in. Fuck those games.
+
Clemens Cohn Feel like that's where preference comes in. I prefer having a dance with my opponent via dodges, parries and interruptions.
An example would be MH, I can dish out some crazy damage with cool animations, but only after I stagger/mount the monster which is a reward of patience and observation.
I like games like GoW but the lack of a threat makes me less inclined to play it.
If you have anything to add about GoW, I'd like to hear it.
Big reason why I was so impressed with God Hand, they get wise to your crap especially if it gets repetitive by blocking, parrying or dodging; however, a good player can use the different tools in their moveset to stun, trip, or launch the enemy into a state where they're unable to defend. Mostly.
Doing all this while managing multiple enemies makes even the first fight pretty hectic.
Player: * presses punch button *
Batman: * backflips through a window, calls an Uber, drives several blocks and punches some random criminal *
all happens in 24 frames
Well he is batman, what do you expect?
Player: * presses punch button *
Batman: * blasts off into the marvel universe and bitch slaps thanos *
Spiderman is a funny guy
Player: connects microphone
Batman: time travels to kill kratos
That breakdown of a 'satisfying impact' into frames was a really cool and clear way of portraying how that works, it's not something I have ever really thought specifically about before so it was really useful info!
It's a really interesting part of making a game feel good. This talk given by Mariel Cartwright mentions something Mark didn't, which is animating a very slight "pull back" right after an attack has extended as far as it can go: ua-cam.com/video/Mw0h9WmBlsw/v-deo.html
Also a bit surprised that Mark didn't mention Monster Hunter World's great sword having almost a full half-second of hitstop after landing a true charge.
Every weapon in MH World feels absolutely amazing. The bow in particular feels like the best bow in all of gaming.
Another good example of that is Ryu Hayabusa and William Adams' Iai strikes in which they quickly go from a neutral stance, rush forward while slashing their blade, and then going into a recovery animation at the end. Most competent action game developers know this technique like the back of their hand. Stuff like this, enemy damage reactions, and hitstop really makes your attacks feel like they carry weight and power.
I remember a brief video from one of the animators of the film Kubo and the Two Strings, which was an excellent illustration of how they included certain frames with frozen poses to help emphasise impacts. I don't think it was a UA-cam video, I think it was on Twitter or Instagram. I'll try and find it...
EDIT: Found it! It was on kevinbparry's Instagram. (Who, I didn't realise before, is the same person who did a viral ball magic trick video earlier this year.) UA-cam will probably block this post if I post the URL directly, so you'll have to scroll back through his timeline to find his post of December 24, 2016. It's not an analysis video, just a clip from the movie, and I misremembered it because although it was about how to emphasise impacts, it wasn't really about holding frozen frames. But his comments on it are still very detailed and fascinating for anyone interested in animation techniques.
OMG I JUST REALIZED! This is why Dark Souls 2 combat feels so weak and buttery in a really unsatisfying way, unlike the other games in the series. A lot of the weapons admittedly do have the slow startup and recovery, but not much more than that. The "colored lines" following the attack patterns for the weapons are pretty weak (not to mention colorless) and a pretty unsatisfying sound effect. Also, Mark didn't mention this, but I think the lack of screen shake decreases the satisfaction of the combat.
Just saying, Super Smash Brothers does an interesting thing in that attacks get weaker every time you use them (this is called staling), unless you use some other attacks to reset it. I think a combat system with a much more exaggerated staling mechanic could lead to a very interesting game where you *can* use one move over and over again, but you're heavily encouraged to mix things up to be more effective.
Devil May cry does this
Not sure if damage lessens in DMC, but if all you do is use the same couple of moves after a short while those moves will stop generating style points.
Let's not forget about the inverse possibility; in another episode of GMTK, Mark cites that another (in some cases better) way to keep players on a certain path is to _reward_ them for playing a certain way rather than to _punish_ them for playing another.
Not that there's anything wrong with how stale moves work as they do now (huge props to Sakurai for such an ingenious idea); but imagine if instead of some moves doing less damage when used repeatedly, all moves could do MORE damage the more diversity a player could use throughout a single combo. Of course, depending on how that's scaled, it might be a better fit for a single-player game like DMC or GoW than a PVP fighting game like Smash or Street Fighter, but the idea definitely makes ME giddy with excitement. Heck, maybe it'd even do wonders for a turn-based RPG in which players often find themselves casting the same overpowered spells over and over again.
@@CapnShades Staling works better for comboing. A lighter hit from a stale move won't send the opponent as far or damage them quite as much, thus adding to combo potential, where as what you're talking about would end combos if they received more damage or a "reward" for mixing it up.
@@Sumatchi Precisely
While he did mention a lot of visual tricks to make conbat feel "crunchy" and visceral, I'm surprised he never explicitly mentioned screen shake. That's a huge part of what makes attacks feel weighty, and nearly every clip in the video features screen shake in one way or another. It definitely gives off a lot of feedback with each attack, and combining that with hitstop and some nice sound effects like he said will ultimately make each strike feel heavy and extremely satisfying!
That is a visual effect
I agree the 4 ways to make an attack feel satisfying are:
VFX
SFX
Camera shake
Playing with ( like hit stops and stuff, mark mentioned this in depth in "forging the leviathan axe" video)
I think screen shake is part of why, when I'm faced with a combat system, I stop trying to parse the animations and understand what's going on onscreen, and just mash the buttons.
@@dranorter what about times when you don't need to read the animation
Like when you attack a low damage one but it's great for crowd control and you know they're stunned so by the time you need to read the animation you won't be having the camera shake
But don't you agree it makes it satisfying I played the old god of war games they had it and it was fun
@@adityaanuragi6916 I'm an odd case, I just don't connect that well with combat mechanics. Similarly, when fight scenes show up in comics and movies, I just kinda wait for them to end so I can see who won since that's all that matters. I think the last time I really enjoyed a combat mechanic was SMRPG, trying to get the "timed hit" right -- IE, adding a simple timing element to a turn-based system is fun for me, but having things be all timing all the time, well, my brain just turns off and I spam whatever button I've learned is okay to spam.
I say I'm an odd case, but idk, I'm sure there are lots of people like me. I am trying to learn to enjoy such things though - there are some rare combat sequences I enjoy in comics.
You didn't play a clip of Optimus turning into a vehicle and ramming a Decepticon when you said "hit like a truck". Absolutely unwatchable
99.9999999/100
Awesome video, very well made and informative
Hi brony
@@concernedcommenter8258 What's a brony
@@Mr.Jubilation A fan of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It's a fandom fan name.
@@concernedcommenter8258 K, thanks my dude
I'm giving you a sub for that
@@Mr.Jubilation Hope you like 80s classic rock! 🤟
On top of making consistently good content, I applaud you for recommending the videos of other UA-camrs as well. Not enough people do that.
His content is mainly for his Patreons - it doesn't harm him in any way to recommend other UA-camrs content. Plus others do the same thing - just look at the Battlefield community on Twitch. Never seen anything like 'em, telling them to check out the other's steams.
Joseph Romines I don't think it would harm him even if he didn't have Patreon
You'll find smaller channels tend to do it more, ironically.
you're right, the web has always been a hyperlinking medium, and it should be no less in the new era of video content. good comment.
"hit like a truck" joke but not showing Optimus Prime do a truck tackle, for shame.
That game is top tier
Thing is attacks from Furi do feel as hard as a truck with the camera shake and everything, I'm not saying Transformers doesn't but Furi feels a bit better
@@adityaanuragi6916 but is furi an actual truck hitting
@@bbbbende no sadly
Fun fact: Assassin's Creed 2 improved on the combat system later in the game by introducing enemies (in armor) that you couldn't parry until you weakened them with regular attacks. They also had some quicker, stronger attacks that you had to block or dodge, which gave you a little window to weaken them. Get a few good hits in, and you can parry and insta-kill them now.
AC2 has a lot of options for counter-attacking that don’t involve counters. Using parries (not counters) and timing attacks properly after them functions as a perfect parry system that lets you stagger enemies. Hitting a staggered enemy is basically like a deathblow in Sekiro. The stagger system is the cornerstone of that combat system and a stagger state can be triggered in a number of different ways, which makes using counters a rather ineffective method of defence by the late game, as you mentioned. Against brutes, you’ll need to parry if you want to induce stagger. Against regular armoured enemies, a dodge to the side followed by a quick strike does the trick, but you can also use parries. Dodging a seeker’s sweep attack causes Ezio to perform a unique animation that snaps their spear in half. Counters are reserved for common enemies and agiles. It is theoretically possible to win every fight by sitting there, waiting to counter people with the Hidden Blade, but why would you do that? It’s not the most effective way to fight, nor the most efficient way to fight, nor the most cool-looking way to fight and it’s certainly not the most enjoyable way to fight. Choosing to play that way only harms the experience for yourself and it’s not even optimal. So, don’t do it.
AC2 also introduced backstabs, disarm counters, strafing, grabbing onto enemies and holding them/beating them down/killing them, using enemies as human shields, using enemies as projectiles to knock down other enemies, ground finishers with all weapons, long/heavy weapon special attacks, taunting enemies to induce attacks, and more. That the system is reduced to being “just stand there and wait for enemies to attack so you can counter them” will forever be tragic to me because players who chose to engage with the system that way missed out on so much stuff that really helps sell the fantasy of being an Assassin.
@@jcers I don't think there were any parries in AC2. It's been a while since I've played it, but aside from the normal counters, I don't remember any type of timed perfect parry in the game. There were different types of counters based on what you had equipped. Normal weapons had normal counters. If you were unarmed, you would do a disarm counter and attempt to steal your enemy's weapon. And if you equipped the assassin's blade, you would get a special counter that would insta-kill any enemy (including the boss enemies in the game), but you couldn't block while equipped with this weapon, and the timing was much more difficult than other counters, so this was a risky strategy. High risk, high reward.
Different enemies had different methods that were best for fighting them. The most basic of enemies could be insta-killed with a single counter attack. Some other enemies were also weak to counter attacks. The big brute enemies were weak to the disarm move. You could steal their giant weapon and insta-kill them with it, and then that weapon could be used to insta-kill another brute, but it would break the weapon to do an insta-kill on a brute when you didn't just steal the weapon. So for the price of a single disarm counter, you could kill two brutes with cool, cinematic kill animations. I seem to recall that you could also do a counter with a brute weapon that would insta-kill any normal enemy, but would break the weapon.
But most enemies as you progress through the game, counter attacks would do a little bit of damage, but a very low amount. Not every enemy could even be countered effectively with a normal weapon.
In the video, he cherry picked a fight from early in the game and pretends like that fight with the single weakest enemy type defines the entire combat system.
You could do that with any game and claim that the combat system was bad because they haven't even introduced 90% of the combat system at that point. If you show the first level of a game and act like that's the entire game, you're ignoring almost the entire game in your analysis.
And yes, if you were bad at the game and didn't know the differences between enemies, you could use that counter strategy to get you through most of the game. But it was slow and inefficient, and didn't feel at all good or satisfying. You would counter a guy and bonk him on the head and do 1/10 of his HP, and keep going until you countered him 10 times in a row. And the guys didn't attack constantly, so you could be waiting 30 seconds or more between attacks, which is an eternity in video game time. Think about games that have special abilities with a long cooldown time of 30 seconds, with short cooldowns in the 5 second range and medium cooldown of 10-15 seconds! You could spend half an hour on a single fight with just a few guys if you did it that way.
My point is, most games have something you could do to exploit the combat in a cheap, slow, unfun way to get through the game. I remember playing Borderlands and getting up on a rock and shooting at an enemy that was way higher level than me, but he didn't have any ranged attacks, and I emptied literally every bullet I owned and managed to kill the critter with my very last bullet. It took 20 minutes to kill one enemy. It wasn't fun - although the fact that he died on my last bullet made it more rewarding than it would reasonably be normally. But I didn't adopt that play style, because it was slow and boring. I did it once. It was effective, but it was slow and boring, so I never did it again.
The devs don't have to remove every possible way that you can exploit their combat system. If there's a boring way that doesn't require any skill to get through the game, I think it's fine to leave that in. If a player gets enough enjoyment by using that to get through the game, great. The player played through the game in a way that was enjoyable to them. Mission accomplished. But if a player finds that method slow and boring, then he'll look for better ways to get through the game that feel more rewarding.
Now I'll give you that the AC2 combat system was a little unadvanced by today's standards, and had a lot of room for improvement. But it was possibly the best and most realistic melee combat system ever devised at that point in time. And I much prefer the AC2 combat system to the combat systems of the more recent AC games like Origins and... god, I can't even remember the names of them anymore they run together so much... that other one that was basically an extension of Origins. Odyssey? That's it. Didn't try Valhalla, because I was burned out on AC after O&O.
"Swinging a giant sword in Monster Hunter" *proceeds to show the second smallest weapon in the game*
he also talks about Bayonetta's animation cancelling into a dodge and doesn't even show an example of that happening. the editing in this video is pretty bad, cuz a lot of the footage isn't related to what he's talking about beyond showing any random clip of the game in question.
"small" weapons in a lot of games happen to be several times larger than practical historical weapons
@@realIanIANian
"smallest" does not mean "small"
@@StriderWolf exactly he should really read comments and see this criticism if he is to improve otherwise he's gonna be one of those channels that make content for the sake of money and not really paying much attention to what they preach. I doubt much of these gaming channels even play these games or if it's even their game play they show. Such a shame really
@@z.a.y.n-5053 This... isn't a gaming channel though. As far as I'm aware, it's aimed at developers. His goal isn't to show off these mechanics and how cool they can be, but to explain their effect on gameplay and on the player themselves
Hyper Light Drifter has one of my favorite combat systems. The push and pull from firing off your gun before darting in for melee hits to recharge your gun was super satisfying. The attacks are all well telegraphed and require specific timing to dodge which is really good. The sound effects are also top notch.
HLD was at its best when the Drifter is up against a whole crowd of enemies. Each individual enemy is incredibly simple to defeat given the Drifter's ability to dodge, but the way you need to be constantly aware of the whole battlefield to prevent yourself from being zoned is where it shines.
Hard agree with this. I always thought that the balance for ammo and melee combat was a genius idea. HLD remains my favorite game of all time in all honesty just to how much I enjoyed it in every way possible.
I remember enjoying it a lot, but I also remember having a somewhat difficult time understanding all the new moves I kept getting. I played it for 3-4 hours and haven't touched it since but I wanna finish it; would it be better to start over or just load up my save and try to re-learn it?
The big difference in that game is that the camera is top-down, so you're not always fighting with the camera. Although I wish it didn't move in front of your character and just stayed centered.
It had good combat but range weapons felt too overpowered even when they where balanced. I could kill so many enemies before I finish rest with melee. This game is super easy if you upgrade your weapons and health. The dash system did not respond well with my keyboard... Maybe its my keyboard or its from the game.
I’m actually working on a fight scene in an animation, so this video, especially the Resident Evil Punch Analysis was extremely helpful.
Is it ready
Am I the only person who disagrees with the whole idea of the Resident Evil punch? It is exactly that kind of super over the top animation as the over the shoulder super quick rotating strike of Gerald from the Witcher 3 (no offense meant. It's still a great game). In my opinion animations shouldn't be too realistic but also not too "holy crap wtf is just happening right NOW!!!?" like.
@@dramalexi Your opinion is worthless then because these are all very basic tried and true concepts of animation. I'm not even sure what you are even getting at, it's very clear what is happening when Chris punches the enemy, it's the whole godamn point of it in the first place.
Well Chris Redfield can break boulders with his bare hands. What the heck was expected from you?
@@dramalexi Over the shoulder rotating strike? Wtf is that? Do you mean his overhand left or spinning back fist? All those strikes are legit striking techniques... how is it over top? 😂🤣
16:34 "God Hand", I loved this game, the combat system is one of the best i have ever seen. The player could costomize every hit on the combos, was insane. Great video, as always. I am a brazilian fan and i plan on studying game design, and your videos always inspire me.
It's just me, or God Hand really seen more popular here in Brasil? Me and a lot of friends grown up playing it, but it just don't seen as popular out there.
One of my favs as a kid
I hated it because the button mashing was fkin unreal. unless you like buying 5controllers for 1 game. The QTE's fked the game pretty hard tbh
God hand in Indonesia is also very popular
@@vikisetyaherdian8368 Oh cool, God Hand is a really fun game, i wish it was more popular. I actually follow a few indonesian streamers from Hololive, nice to know that God Hand is popular there.
Good stuff. Thanks for this.
HEY It's Kratos' choreographer! Thanks for making it possible Sir!
@@jhudielgabrielsabelino9278 fcv
00009
When will your new game come out? Cant wait!!!! #MidnightFightExpress
The original Bushido Blade is my favorite system so far. You had a high stance, a middle stance, and a low stance, and a high attack, a medium attack, and a low attack that each did something different in each of the different stances and also each did something different in each stance moving forward, running, moving backwards, and dodging. There were parries and counters, but everything came from the basic three stances and three strikes. It was very simple, but became deeply complex. Very satisfying
Oh damn, this video is one of those I'll rewatch a hundred times because it is so well made, researched and atop of that entertaining… Dammit Mark, why is your content so good?
MogamiArt It is indeed well researched for his subjects of interesting combat systems but sadly, not for all of the actual games. It may be because I am a no life fan of the Dark Souls series but Mark Brown got some little things wrong about the series that kind of made me worry. Especially when there’s only DS1 and 3 clips in it. IDK for the others games but it may not just be about Dark Souls. Ho knows, I may be just rambling endlessly for no good reason but... what ever.
Well, this is one of his longest videos, so I guess he just had to cut it short in some way.
As for DS2, that may just be my perception, but I thought that a lot of Soulsborn fans didn't like DS2 that much… …and since Mark uses his own footage, he may not have had any great DS2 footage to put into the video.
But I understand your concern and it's great that you shared your opinion!
Yes I am pretty aware of the hate on Dark Souls 2. It is all right for him to not like it but it is in no way a bad game. Most people hate it simply because of the nostalgia, following the hate train or just looking at the surface and blame the game instead of adapting the new game play. But the game is still known in the Souls fandom to have the best pvp in the whole series and also brought something important in making a compelling combat system. That is diversity in fighting style. You see, in ds2, you could build a shield only build and have a variety of ways to fight with it. When in the others games, you had one attack and maybe two wen in ds2, you have 5 diverse move set of attacks with it. Then there’s the dual wielding mechanics that only exist in the second game. It makes that if you are using 2 weapons of the same size and have the right stats, you can use a dual move set that varies for each weapon. You basically can dual wield almost every single weapons in the game including shields. This is just scratching the surface of all of the great improvements from ds2 but got all tossed out from the 3 game because of DS1 fans service. This is why I believe that it is still important to look at the games that you don’t like because you may miss great things about them.
So this is one of the reasons of my concern but then, Mark Brown makes 2 big mistakes. He says that in the Souls series, you have to dedicate your actions because they cannot get canceled. But again, ds2 has animation canceling which is again one of the reasons why it is considered as to have the best pvp. It is indeed minor but then he talks about hyper armor and call it poise as he showed us a clip of ds3. If you didn’t know, ds3 don’t have any poise in it. It does have hyper armor but it is not poise. If he was really a fan of the Souls series like he said in an another video, then this shouldn’t have been in the video. Especially when it was a big BIG discussion in the Souls fandom the moment the 3 game hit the shelves and is still on going to this day.
If those errors were made in one of his most praise games... then think of the others games that he doesn’t enjoy as much. Now that I think of it, he made also a lot of errors in the boss key video of skyward sword wen he was talking about the game outside of the dungeons. But I may be wrong on that so I am going to go watch the video right now.
I hope that explains correctly my concerns. But in the end, we are all humans and we are bound to make mistakes.
I assume Mark didn't talk about DS2 because he wanted to talk about simplicity in combat, DS1 had a relatively simple combat system and I can imagine that he put the focus on beauty in simplicity. I wouldn't call it DS1 fanservice because most people only know DS1 so it was probably just choosing an example that most people could comprehend. This is a video for game developers and game enthusiasts, that's why it's as broad and conceptual as possible.
I agree with you on that part, however, I would simply call it bad wording than calling it out as a mistake.
I didn't know that DS3 doesn't have poise in it as I have never played it, but I can imagine that making a wrong statement about a game that you are passionate about is upsetting. Everyone makes small errors, only because I got that one fact wrong doesn't mean he's not a fan of the series… When you have to play as many games as Mark does for his job it's easy to confuse details.
The only thing that bothered me personally about the SWS Bosskeys episode was that he didn't even try to hide his dislike of the game.
I see now where you are coming from, especially getting the poise part wrong is imaginably upsetting. However, Dark Souls was just one of the many games he presented in the video and I still believe it was overall well researched. The problem could have been that his source wasn't all that authentic.
@@raphicoco what a garbage comment
This video makes me appreciate just how dynamic Super Smash Bros is as a fighting game. It's got quick moves, highly useful but not OP shielding and blocking, but most importantly, health being directly related to how far you get launched, which makes you consider the environment and what direction you're fighting in.
And how Sakurai made a series that can be enjoyed by casuals without the need for crazy strats but can also be enjoyed by veterans and pros for the complete opposite reason I’d say he was successful in accomplishing that not enough games do that imo
@@jonathanwilson7949
Idk, i feel like that was true at least til Brawl but since then, especially with ultimate, smash isn’t really appealing to newer players. Sure, it may just have to do with the stigma of it being a “sweaty” competitive game now, but with the insane roster it has now it can be intimidating especially to those who don’t have much experience in games, much less fighting games which are notorious for having a really steep skill curve.
I do remember being able to play smash 64 and melee without feeling super overwhelmed, mainly because the roster was short and mostly made up of extremely familiar characters. And at that time, even tho there certainly was a competitive scene, it wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now.
Not to say that this is any fault of Sakurai, just noticing how over time smash has become less accessible to new players which used to be central to its ideals
One thing I wanna throw out there about Batman's combat system being too lenient with its Counter system is that it complements what the game is trying to achieve. The combat isn't trying to have an intricate combat system that makes you feel like a tactician, it's trying to make you feel like an unstoppable force against the common enemies. In the movies and comics, the henchman aren't typically going to be taking batman out, so the game wants to empower you by making it easy to take out waves of guys at the same time.
MrSecksee well it's a good thing to make the player feel like an unstoppable force...but I think Devil may cry 3, Bayonetta 1 and 2, Transformers devastation and a lot more, have better combat system and still make you feel like an unstoppable force.
@@ManagerBlackwood way to completely miss the point of his comment. The game throws harder learneing curves in different ways. Some enemies cannot be countered or use special weapons that need certain techniques to counter. The predator sections have varied mechanics with enemies that have radar or special guns, etc. Point is, Batman's combat system is prefect for the game and any criticism of it is kinda tone deaf
@@MrAndrewaziz that's the thing, right. we need to critise in context.
This is a cop out. All action games have the same goal without resorting to the absolute bottom of the barrel combat system that is Bamham. What you meant to say is that the game is meant to be marketed to the lowest common denominator.
I mean, shouldn't you also feel like a tactician while in a brawl as Batman?!?
Imagine if he made this vid after Sekiro came out.
Exactly
someone inform me
For me it was decent but not perfect at all
@@cherrydragon3120 Then your taste is trash
@@kestanecihasanpubg Sekiro is the definition of a perfect melee combat system
Arkham's Free Flow is my favorite combat system. Yes, Batman automatically moves between enemies, but it is so fun to beat up 50 enemies while traveling in circles. And I think it's perfect for Batman. Just my opinion though.
And it takes skill to pull off amazing combos
@@SuperBeybladerocks lmao
Also trying to implement all special takedowns and quickfire gadgets into a single combo is satisfying as hell. Especially when ot goes to 100+
I love it too, although I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite. It works great for Batman, and the variety of enemy types does make it much more than button mashing and waiting for counters
@@scepta101 Even when it's just basic goons, the combat system is far more than just button mashing. The Arkham games are possibly the least button mashy games I've ever played. The penalty for button mashing is severe in those games. This is the game that taught me to stop button mashing. Every game I played before this let me get away with button mashing without much consequence. But Arkham taught me to only press the button when I want to actually do something, not just in anticipation of spamming attack as quickly as possible. In Arkham, every attack must be thought out and planned and pulled off with a single button press. Press the button too quickly and your attacks are far less powerful. Repeatedly press the button too quickly and your attacks will miss altogether and you will eventually get hit with an attack that you can't deflect, either of which has the drastic effect of weakening your next 2 attacks to the point where they have a very short range and do literally no damage.
The game is genius, though, because you can get through the game by button mashing.
But you're not Batman. You're just another goon punching his way through the game.
But learn to play without button mashing, and the game transforms into something else entirely. It becomes a tightly choreographed action movie with some of the most amazing fight scenes ever.
Something you missed out when talking about the satisfaction of a good system is the enemy reactions. I've worked on a game (for a well known studio) and during development we would get enemies that weren't finished so they didn't have all their reactions set up. It's amazing how completely different it feels. Like even if their health is going down, if you don't have reaction animations, and ideally also audio and VFX for each detected hit, it doesn't actually feel like you're hitting the enemy at all - even if you can see the contact or the weapon go through them.
Another thing worth mentioning is auto-targeting. Even in games where there's no manual lock-on, e.g. the Arkham games, the combat system will select a target and turn the player character towards them, and usually move towards them (up to some max distance) if they are too far away for the attack to land. But it's this direction alignment during the early phase of the attack that's critical (the enemies do it too of course). During development we could turn the auto-targeting off and it's amazing how completely broken games feel without it. You think you can move your stick in the right direction to land an attack on the enemy of your choice, but it's actually incredibly hard with human sized enemies. One major game that doesn't do auto-targeting is Monster Hunter. This is because it matters which part of the monster you hit, so you need some choice over that. But it doesn't feel broken because the monsters are big enough that the attacks usually land.
Funny you mention Monster Hunter's lack of targeting helping it since I feel it's a better representative of your first topic: the enemy reactions. I played a Monster Hunter game on my PSP back in the day and I just couldn't get into it at all because there WEREN'T any enemy reactions. It felt like my giant wind-up and recovery animations did *nothing* to these creatures. I recoil when I'm bit by a bug or scratched by a kitten and I just cut through 3-4 inches of flesh on this beast and it didn't do anything at all to react to it. It was entirely unsatisfying and it was the primary reason I put the game down. Dauntless, a Monster Hunter-like which just went into open beta, fixed this by having the body part react to the attack, at least a little bit, and giving it visual scarring based on the kind of attack used on that body part. I actually feel like I'm carving into this beast instead of my weapon passing through it like dropping a knife into a tub of butter/spread.
@@VoilaTadaOfficial Modern Monster Hunter games have way more satisfying feedback and enemy reactions than the first games. MH4U and World Iceborne have the best combat systems of the franchise, you should give it another opportunity.
11:22, this, THIS. I can't stress enough how important enemy design is in just about every single player game where you kill things, it's the pillar which sustains everything else. Developers often forget about this. No matter how deep the mechanics of your game are, if you don't design enemies that force you to be good at every single aspect of the combat by behaving in many different ways and not just a single one, adapt to your playstyle, and make you turn your brain on, all the work you've done is wasted.
Reminds me of Prototype. They created this character with all of these awesome, crazy moves.
"Pretty cool. So who do I use them on?"
"I dunno. Dudes? Like, army dudes."
This is where Mirrors Edge catalyst failed. The enemy AI is retarded. They don’t chase you, they don’t learn from spam moves, and they have like one attack each; except the sentinels. But they aren’t in free roam so what’s the point.
I'm glad you pointed out how some systems adapt to your playstyle. I wish more games did this.
The Mr. Freeze battle in Arkham City is a perfect example of this and really breaks up the monotony of the attack system.
as an aspiring game creator, thank you for all of these videos. They make me think about things more deliberately and I fell like it is really improving my sense of design
This channel is quickly becoming my favorite! I'm not even a combat-type gamer (stealth ftw) and I'm still loving this!
Old-school samurai movies like Sword of Doom or Sanjuro are just that anticipation-impact-recovery structure stretched out to two hours.
"Tales of Symphonia" has one of the greatest combat systems in my book, its got two attack buttons (simple and special) the simple attack can be used for crowd control on its own, to push back enemies when pushing the thumb stick laterally, 'float' enemies by pushing the thumb stick up and knock down enemies by pushing the thumb stick down.
You can decide what specials are linked to each direction on the special attack button so you can build the combos to your liking, for example I would use an upwards spinning special on the Up + Special command to allow me to get any enemy high in mid air and then "Rising Falcon" on the Just Special command, a move that jumped you up and back before flying back through your starting positions blades first.
And that was just one of the characters, it worked differently for each character even using the same buttons for ranged spell casters
I would have loved to see you talk/mention Jedi Academy. It's an ancient game, that has incredible action gameplay. It still holds up to this day. My belief is gameplay, ages the best. Hence why we can play Mario 64 and still enjoy the game.
Honestly, I have to disagree. Gameplay can age the best, but so can visuals, or sound design. I played Super Mario 64 on the Switch recently and I think the gameplay was pretty atrocious, it felt clunky and awkward. It's not aged well. But somebody who grew up with that as their standard is going to think that all things considered, it plays pretty well. Yet I'm sure both of us can agree that the game's visuals have aged like a jug of milk. Meanwhile, if you look at a game like Terraria or Hollow Knight, those games are probably always going to look acceptable regardless of how you feel about their gameplay because of how stylized their visuals are.
"we don't want the player to aggressively chew through enemies without ever thinking about defense" - So many games to list, so little time...
Let's list some anyway, shall we.
I'll start with God of War
Broforce. Really underappreciated game
Then the combat should reward interesting choices.
Devil may cry is often easy to just beat especially on lower difficulties.
But to get that coveted SSS rank or equivalent you need to really think about your choices, even when you're mowing through enemies.
@@aniketraghav1328 he showed an example of God of War having enimies attcking you at once so you wouldnt have a chance to do that. So idk what youre talking about.
@@tylerwagner1978 There's more than one god of war game.
My favorite combat system:
Insult Swordfighting from The Secret of Monkey Island.
Plenty of attack/defense options.
Constant switching between attack and defense.
Abilities are learned from opponents.
it's not insult swordfighting, it's just s.word fighting!
“I’ve heard you were a contemptuous sneak”
“Too bad no one’s ever heard of you at all”
"Yeah? Well, you fight like a cow!"
Didn't know that there was a transformer beat'em up game
It's a good'un!
Mark Brown lol
It was free for PS Plus subscribers back in 2016.
Pirate it because Activision have removed the game from online store because they don't care.
Jonok fuck activision
Evades in BOTW are all over the place though.
It still boggles my mind that they used some weird "threat area" mechanic to determine whether or not you pulled off a perfect dodge instead of using the ennemy attack animation itself.
It leads to very frustrating moments where you pull off an awesome dodge at the right moment but the game doesn't register it as a perfect dodge because you weren't in that arbitrary "threat area" even if you went right over the ennemy sword.
On the other hand; sometimes you pull off a random perfect dodge from miles away on an attack that would have never hit you.
That game's combat system is a mess :/
+1, For me, if they have reduced the use of the flurry rush would have been better.
In the later third of the game, I remebered the only enjoyment I get from using it happened once to avoid an enemy and use the bow to kill another enemy while falling off from a wood tower.
yeah,the evades are a bit weird.like,its technicly impossible to actually time it for some lynel-attacks,but when you actually do it,you basicly do it when the attack should have already hit you.and there are those weird attacks where you get hit even if you use the dodge
I think they were trying to find a middle ground between difficult and easy. Using the enemy's attack animations alone would have made for very easy perfect dodge, especially since the game doesn't have very many enemy types to learn. On the other hand, they could have made enemies telegraph less, but that would have made dodging too difficult. It would have hurt the aesthetics, too, since there is inherent charm and game-feel value to expressive enemies with exaggerated animation.
So they took the middle ground of giving enemies relatively predictable telegraphs, yet limiting perfect dodges to a specific threat zone so you couldn't flurry rush spam. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good solution. Or at the very least, not implemented carefully enough.
As it stands, the game would have been better off without the perfect dodge. The perfect dodge really does nothing but lessen the incentive to try risking a parry, despite parries being far better implemented and balanced.
Like most aspects of BotW, the combat is imperfect, yet has great potential.
But even when you miss a dodge, you still tend to not get hit and have an opening while the enemy is in it’s follow through and anticipation animations
@@Graphomite There's a few enemies that do have small telegraph windows in Botw. One is Lizalfos with great-swords. Their anticipation window is deceptively small with great-swords compared to the other weapon types. The other ones are Bokos and moblins with spears. They have one attack in particular which is just ridiculous. One frame they're running towards you, the very next frame their spears are in your gut. There's zero anticipation window for them.
I've never really understood combat scoring systems. They always seem so arbitrary to me, in both how you get them and their purpose. I've never felt encouraged to play any differently or better just to receive more points or a higher grade. I don't know if that's just me, or maybe I haven't played a game that really gets it right.
Also, I can't believe you used the phrase "hits like a truck" and didn't set it to that footage of Optimus Prime's special attack. Rookie error.
Game Score Fanfare I don't think they're that hard to understand. Your combo score builds by landing attacks in a row without getting hit. Each attack is assigned some value based on its difficulty to perform. The algorithm decreases the value of the attack each time you perform it in the same combo.
Well I imagine it varies for each game. But sometimes they just have these random parameters like "Finesse" or something but never teaches you how to score higher in it! That's my general impression, but I haven't played a whole lot of action combat games.
Some games, like devil may cry, give you more orbs the higher the score you get which in turn you can use to buy new items and combos. i think thats a pretty good example of a scoring system which encourages you to do well, but i agree with you than in most games its pretty useless.
I have never once cared about a combat score
in DMC it is huge difference in orbs (your upgrade resource and money) between C and S ranks etc. So it DOES matter. Other games might just implement it as a bonus feature, or something to be comparable
My favorite combat system is in Breath of the Wild because of how it works together with the physics engine. It feels like combat is part of the open world and not another mode because the things you do in the open world also work in combat. Not only that, but the engine allows for crazy maneuvers like getting an aerial attack with a spicy pepper and a fire arrow or throwing a rock at your enemies.
This creativity of mechanics is also why botw doesn’t need a proper skill tree, because different play styles are viable just based on mechanics
I love the combat in hell blade: senua's sacrifice, or at least the implementation of audio cues for when enemies will attack you when they are off screen.
I totally agree with that bit about satisfying impacts. I mostly played as Alvin in Tales of Xillia because he's the only one who didn't feel like he was slapping you with a wet noodle or a whiffleball bat. It drove me crazy, and now I know why.
One of my favorite impact animations in recent memory is the greatsword true charge slash impact in Monster Hunter World. There's a solid second where the sword freezes in place at the point of impact before finally crashing down to the ground, and it just feels amazing.
I think another important aspect of fighting systems is having a "punish" reward. Something that lets you unleash a series of strong attacks after successfully defending yourself or attacking the enemy in certain ways. Revengeance lets you cut through weakened enemies, Bayonetta lets you slow down time, and Zelda has that satisfying flurry rush. I think rewarding the player with an opportunity for unique attacks and strategies is vital to a great combat experience.
The level of thought and detail you put into these videos are just engaging and breathtaking. Time passes by quickly when watching them. And I have a newfound appreciation for games and game designers. Thanks and keep it up!
I really want to hear your discussions about the combat system of Sekiro: Shadow dies twice, though it is already a perfect example for this vid
Ninja. Gaiden.
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix has a great combat system when you play on Critical mode. Because of the halved HP and strength of the bosses you can't really jump in and mash X to win. Instead you have to learn the enemy's attack patterns and find counters with either magic, summons or limits. But at the same time you still feel powerful due to the glass cannon nature of the mode. Once you take that mentality to the whole game you find a lot more to the combat system than you may have thought.
Not to mention the Revenge Value system where bosses will always counter after you hit them with a set amount of combos to prevent stunlocking them and also telling you not to get greedy with your attacks.
It's a system that hasn't been seen since in the franchise since you either have bosses that just don't get stunned in Birth By Sleep or you have a single spell that trivialises the game in 3D.
SonOfDickins i hope RV comes back in 3
I just want to point out 2 thing:
In critical you have esentially 1/4 of the HP than in beginner (Sora gains half the HP, and he takes twice as much damage), and RVs don't count succesful comboes, it adds a value on each hit (The value being dependan on what the hit is) and once it reaches a certain treshold (Lingering Will's is 25, for example), the boss does an attack and resets the counter, and yes it's a really good system which seems like it might be back on 3 if the super boss from 0.2 is anything to go by? (Or at least they are letting bosses get stunned and giving them predictable and dodgable counters which, fun fact, Vanitas did at the end of Ventus' story and it feels so good you wonder why they didn't do it with the rest of the bosses)
SonOfDickins I'm currently playing through KH2FM on critical mode and revenge value is never acknowledged by the game. I guess that's why it feels like some enemies randomly avoid hit stun. The player wouldn't be able to spam x if enemies blocked or dodged instead of magically brute forcing their way through. Sora's attacks are floaty and hard to cancel. The parry takes about half a second to startup and recover making it extremely clunky. In order to avoid getting caught in boss fights the combat devolves into hit 4-5 times then run, spam cure if you made mistake. Revenge value is a cop-out for designing a combat system and bosses that eliminate spamming in a natural way.
dandre3K
Revenge value wasn't discovered until literally years after the game released. It's a hidden mechanic that had to be discovered by fans. And it's a great system. I would link you to a video or two that explains it better than I ever could, but it seems like you've already made up your mind, so I won't.
Also, if you know that the guard takes half a second to startup, then work around that. And if you want to know what floaty combat feels like, play any Kingdom Hearts after 2FM, because 2FM isn't floaty.
SonOfDickins yeah the only good thing about that game is its combat system on a difficulty only available in Japan for 10 years. It’s why speed runners like it because they skip the bad parts. The first game was clunky but it was infinitely more charming, had a better atmosphere, more varied and interesting level design, better writing and narrative and overall just a better package.
"Everyone looks at the controller and whines,
[in a whiney voice] 'There's only one attack button'. Will you gimme a break? Just because there's only one button *called* attack, doesn't mean it's the only one you can use. It's called a manual. Try to show a little initiative at least."
- Tutorial Guy from Spiderman 2
"Hitting a Monster with a giant Sword"
*Shows SnS as a Weapon*
Uff
Good Video!
Pretty sure that was dual blades.
I really enjoyed the combat of Dust: An Elysian Tale. I really started learning, memorizing, and chaining different combos just as I hit the end
All made by one guy. It's an amazing game
I think the "crunchy attacks" you mentioned is one of the reasons I love hand to hand combat in Red Dead Redemption 2. In general, Arthur feels like a real dude, he has weight to the way he walks, jumps on his horse and especially punches. The combat system definitely isn't stellar, but the sound design when a hit connects really makes it quite fun!
Happy we got a section on just making sure your combat system has the sense of impact and weight to them, it's tragic when a fun combat system leaves out that.
That's just the worst, you pull off an awesome move but the ragdoll or sound effect sound off. Yish
I like the casual mention of "throw in some innovative new mechanics" at the end :D
Ninja Gaiden 2 is my favorite for combat, what did you think of it Mark?
- Enemies became slower but more violent when they lose limbs, making how you approach much more dynamic
- sharpness/bludgeoning increases with weapon level ups
- each weapon has over 60 moves
- You can run on walls and water mid combat to make each scenario more unique
- Satisfaction linked to combos, one combo you can slice an enemy to pieces then flying pile drive them before their body explodes into the chunks you cut them into earlier
My absolute favourite melee combat system is that of Infinity Blade. It's incredibly intuitive, and feels very smooth.
One combat system I really liked was Prince of Persia Warrior Within. A nice amount of combos, the ability to pick up enemy weapons to add variety and strategy to your play style, using the environment both as defensive and offensive opportunities.
Such an amazing game!
The parry counter part made me think about Doom eternal glory kill system, as you have to deal enough damage to an enemy before it activates.
HEY HOW COME YOU DIDN'T TALK ABOUT THIS ONE GAME I LIKE IN A VIDEO THAT'S ONLY 17 MINUTES LONG!
Seriously, some of you people in the comments need to chill the hell out.
mjc0961 shut up
I think in the part he tlaked about brutes forcing you to change strategy woudvle been a great place to talk about the different enemy types in Bat:Ark Series tho. They have many great enemies that force you to do so in Ark City. The league of shadow girls teleporting forcing you to use the gadgets, the armored guys that need to be stunned first, the lightning rod guys that need to be hit on the back...Really a Video on enemy types may just be a good follow up video/part 2.
Especially when you already either mentioned or shown 43 games in this short span of time!
But we love [ Insert games here ] and it got a [ good/bad/interesting ] combat/melee system! Let's share the love.
Wish I could like this comment more. All of Mark's points broadly cover the majority of how combat systems in games work, even if everyone's favorite niche game isn't represented. Yet, some act like it's a personal affront and slight to their very existence and livelihood as humans on this Earth that Mark didn't include it.
I think that Monster Hunter's combat system is great: Every hit feels impactful, you really need to think about positioning and every weapon gives you different defense mechanics. Oh, and the enemy design is alright too I guess :D
Too many attacks with a lot of wind up and cool down, and since most of the monsters that you have to fight have a lot of super armor, it gets pretty irritating too try and land an attack.
the "collision query" could be better in monster hunter. the weapon is often in the monster
Doc Louis try gittin gud?
I dunno, I didn't feel like the the hits had much impact at all. Maybe it was just a problem with 3 Ultimate which was the only one I played, but I doubt it. Beasties that big need to be able to shrug off any single attack like it's a light breeze, and it wouldn't work otherwise, but it leaves any hit feeling pretty weak.
Play Greatsword. The monsters don't flinch on every attack, but when you break a part, they'll reel back and you'll get a visual effect of the part breaking, or you may even knock them out if you play hammer. I've yet to find a more satisfying feeling in a video game compared to landing a full charge greatsword swing on the head of a charging monster only to see and hear their face breaking and them reeling backwards only opening themselves up to more damage. Them having constant super armor makes it all the more satisfying because when they finally do flinch, you know you just hit them really hard.
Finally, somebody talking about combat snapping!
I don't know what it is, but the intro to this video is so damn satisfying
Bayonetta has such a great combat system! You have tons of weapon choices that change your options, the combos use 2 buttons making the basics easy, and just how the game tricks you into learning combos. You start off mashing but then find hard monsters and learn some simple combos, like the PKP for wicked weave or PPPKKK for crowd control. After you learned a few, you decide to learn some others (usually in the training loading screens), and over time you learn them all. It also helps that most layouts share simple combos (PKP or PPPKKK), plus over time you learn certain weapons bring their own special combos. Plus the scoring system relies on you varying your combos for a good score.
Happy to see some Transformers Devastation in this video! I'm a massive Bayonetta fan, as well as a big Transformers fan, and while TF Devastation wasn't as polished or varied as Bayonetta overall, it was still a really great title that I'm glad I got to play. Not many people give it the time of day which is unfortunate. Lovely visuals, especially if you're a fan of the G1 characters, and great music, too!
Kingdom hearts, particularly KH2 has one of my more liked enemy come back mechanics to prevent most bosses from stun locking. players call this the revenge value, most attacks in the game have a set value towards this and when a thresh hold hits it makes the boss in question retaliate. This was mostly only used for the bosses that could even be stuned from attacks to begin with, so larger enemys didnt really have much of this. it made alot of the humanoid boss battles vary memorable because of the fact you had to see how many attacks you could get in before they hit there revenge value then learn how to deal with there attacks effectivly to punish the boss
Didn't KH1 have something similar to it too? I remember in the Sephiroth fight specifically, where it was much better to NOT execute a full attack combo on him because he'd just teleport out of the last hit. (Though I definitely remember more using partial attack combos against Xigbar in KH2...)
@@Stratelier from what i remember only 2 bosses actually have a small enough RV to ever make a difference, which is riku in hallowbastion and sephi. and even then rikus is high enough were unless you going for those big combos doesnt actually consider for most people since the basic 3 hit combo is generaly what most people got. sephi on the other hand from what i recall just breaks out of anything after 5? hits in atlest 1 phase. unlike almost ever other entrys in the KH series, KH1 has limits with how combos work to get the longest combos that only certain setups can break.
@@Stratelier For me, he'd always just do that attack where he says "Time to die" and raises volcanoes out of the ground.
Most games: Our combat system is extremely intricate, about 21% of our efforts went into designing it!
Minecraft: clicky clicky
Haha clicky clicky sounds like they did it deliberately to wind up other games companies
pre 1.9 java minecraft has, hands down, my favourite melee pvp combat system ever. I think what sells it to me the most is that it wasnt made by the devs (as seen by the fact that they chose to ruin it in 1.9), it was made by the players - over years of discovering the limits of minute mechanics and how best to manipulate an array of unintended features. It's only downfall (to my mind) is how influential latency can be.
Minecrafts pvp is pretty good actually, or at least it was before 1.9
@@hxrl5838 yep its probably sounds wierd to someone who never played pvp minecraft but its really good, especially how you could use stuff that wasnt intedet to fight in pvp like rods fns and lava
@@hxrl5838 before I reply a disclaimer: no offence in any of these sentences, if ur offended I'm sorry
I am confused about people that love pre 1.9 combat. now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with liking it. I'm just confused about how in many games spammy playstyles are looked down upon, while in the minecraft community the pre 1.9 combat system that literally involves spamming your sword is the preferred option. now I do have to agree that it was cool that we could use things like rods for combat, but I do not understand why people complained about the removal of mashing m1 as a viable strategy.
TL;DR: me not getting why people prefer spammy combat system go brrr
15:50 Me 2 seconds after my parents leave me home alone.
I understood tht reference
soumya ranjan kanr ohh hahaah.. Wait, beat my meat......
You do need to be very careful with how and when enemies escape from stagger. If an enemy can break out of stagger arbitrarily, or whenever it wants to use a certain attack, it can end up feeling like it's never possible to punish the enemy ala the superbosses in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.
If your enemies can stagger, the when, why, and how should be given careful thought, and be something able to be understood and learned by the player, or you end up destroying the purpose of having stagger in the first place.
I think you forgot the importance of mouvement, is your character fast or slow? How many moves does it has? It plays a big role into how the game feels.
He mentioned that quite a lot, no?
Devil May Cry is GOD TIER in the Action Genre. Im glad i live in this glorious time to see another DMC
I find it too easy. The constamt juggling of enemies make the game less satisfying and more mainstream easy.
My oppinion tho. You can have a lot more fun with it then i did i guess
@@cherrydragon3120 I think you didnt play on DMD, since enemies activate devil trigger and CAN NOT be staggered (or at least it takes like 30 attacks to acctually juggle them). Give it a try
Yeah... no not really
@@cherrydragon3120 dmc it's bout having fun with the combos not about surviving, I find it challenging to get an S rank in every mission
DMC is not about just beating the level, at all. A 5 year old could mash through a DMC level on the first few difficulties. DMC is about keeping your SSS for as long as possible and feeling like a badass.
When you talk about dodge and Parry, you got DMC3 there but never brought up the perfection of Royal Guard and Trickster (DMC3) and Table Hopper from DMC4.
Royal Guard is a high risk high reward style that took a ton to master. The Perfect Royal Block only negate the damage but that doesn't stop the enemies from attacking. This mechanic was essentially Parry from Street Fighter Third Strike. The timing window was very strict in order to prevent abuse and it will fill up the anger gauge. You have to manually do the Royal Release and in order to achieve maximum counter damage and the window is the same as the Perfect Royal Block. This required you to learn the enemies' patterns and the cue sound of their animation attack as well.
Trickster was an advanced dodging system that allowed you to ground dash, Air Dash and Air Trick teleport to avoid the enemies incoming attacks. You still have your regular dodge which was very quick and a perfect dodge remove the recovery window. Table Hopper was basically Perfect Royal Block but in dodge form. It will not stop the enemies from attacking but if you timed correctly, you could even dodge a constant beam attack with ease if you master the mechanic.
You could just talk about how risk and reward of Dodge and Parry in DMC3 and DMC4 and it would be good enough.
It may seem small but lets thank mark brown for always putting the music in the description
I thoght that begging song sounded nice found out its called saynara (blue wednesday)
10:30 I'm surprised you didn't mention kingdom hearts 2 here, Kingdom hearts 2 has a system in it where it's kinda like dark soul's poise system but like backwards. Enemies can be stun locked from the get go, however if you stun lock them for too long, they'll counter you.
I think KH BBS and KH DDD would like a word with you hahaha
The fact that this video mentions Transformers Devastation multiple times makes me want to cry tears of joy. Criminally underrated game and I could even go as far as to say as being one of Platinum's best purely for the combat system alone. Yes, even better than Bayonetta.
I await angry replies...
I don't blame for saying that. Transformers Devastation IS criminally underrated.
That's a bold claim. I never got to play Devastation, what do you think sets it above Bayo?
Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning magic attacks has some good wind up sequences. they just feel, timed so perfectly when i hit the buttons. i wish someone could remake it
The Gunlance in Monster Hunter will force you to think about all of your moves, there was a an attack where it takes like 5 seconds to finish and you can't cancel it and this is only executable after stringing a chain of attacks.
Using this weapon increased my reaction time and observation in enemies, making fast games like DMC very easy. It's awesome how it affects your way of thinking.
Bloodborne has some amazing collision detection I saw videos of people swinging and hitting bullets because they where shot a fraction before or after the parry window.
I'd like to add on a way to perform parry in a good way:
There are fundamentally, I have found, two different ways to design parries in fighting games.
One is when the timing is based completely on the enemy's animation, where you "just" have to press a button at some arbitrary correct point during the enemy's animation.
The other much more interesting way is to have a parry animation in an of itself, making so that some arbitrary point in the parry animation must happen at the same time as the arbitrary point of the enemy's attack animation.
The former is seen in Dark Souls 1 and For Honor, the latter in Dark Souls 2 & 3.
In Dark Souls 2 & 3, there are 3 parts to the parry: The startup, the active parry frames, and the end. If the enemy hits you during the startup or end, you will receive extra damage, but if they hit you during the parry frames they get parried.
This might seem like an unnecessary complecation but it actually have a very important gameplay implication.
In the first way to do parrying, particularly in a competitive multiplayer setting, a player can theoretically always parry every attack ever, because the player will always have the ability to react after the enemy has begun the attack animation. For Honor has sometimes been criticized of being a glorified starring contest because of this. At some point people simply become too good at reacting to enemy animations, and the game become less about trying to outsmart the opponent, and more about clicking the button at the right time from literally hundreds of hours of experience. There simply is no penalty for doing an incorrect parry, because you can simply cancel if the enemy change animation. Parrying become a non-existing risk/high reward at really high level play, encouraging turtle play.
The other way to do parrying will in many cases disable you to make a parry after the enemy begun the attack animation, because of the start up. This means you have to enticipate the enemy movements and parry before the enemy even begins to hit. So it becomes more of a way to punish repetitive play, and less about learning how to press a button the correct time over and over again.
While I in many cases appreciate the combat of For Honor, I consider their parry mechanic to be a giant unnecessary mistake, that Dark Souls handles a lot better, and which could easily be used in For Honor as well. Note also that some items in Dark Souls 3 enable you to begin parry after enemy attack(caestus), which I also consider to be a flaw in Dark Souls 3.
Lastly it should be noted that I'm not a high level player in either Dark Souls or For Honor, so I am probably talking way out of my knowledge.
I agree with you, so I'm not saying that, but reading "I am probably talking way out of my knowledge" after such an interesting opinion gives you even more credits. So many people don't even dare to consider there might be some oversight in what they think.
Yeah that's how DMC has done it since the beginning of action games, the second that is. That one is also the most common though. The first came with Assassin's Creed as far as I can remember.
As someone who likes fast paced, airborne, combo focused attacks, but my sister prefers more methodical, simple attacks that don't go any higher than a small jump. Truly good combat can easily force me and her into another's territory without realizing it because it's fun.
8:41
"A parry/counter can become overpowered and make fights into a waiting game"
Me:*cries in komaki drop*
Transformers Devastation was very easy but I LOVE the combat SOOOOOO much. Thank you for including it!
These videos are SO GOOD! I have been wanting a channel to watch like this for long. This stuff is so good that I missed 3 seconds and just reminded because I wanted to know what you said. Such great tips, thanks!
I would love to see an episode on what makes a good turn base combat. Like the ones in Final Fantasy or Paper Mario.
How to make a good combat system
1. Open the code for Shadow the Hedgehog
2. Copy + Paste
3. Profit
King Luigi a good combat system is also a unique one
It's just a joke :)
Can confirm, I did this and my came made 17 million pounds and won game of the year for 32.8 years in a row and cured my skin and cleared my depression
I imagine that do so does make your "came" really valuable. As it is all the girls think about--shadow the hedhog's came that is.
King Luigi instruccions unclear, now the protagonist of my game is asking where is the damn forth chaos emerald
A video about melee combat without mentioning Kingdom Hearts!? (Loved the video)
Well, my favorite combat system is from this very underground game, called "GetAmped". It feels so good playing and making combos.
From my experience the "anticipation" stage of an attack is usually referred to as Start Up. We call the early parts of the animation it's starting frames.
The difference in terminology comes down to whether it's discussed as a high concept between game designers or a technical component as programmers and gamers tend to do.
Calling it anticipation is important here because it points to the important part of the start-up animation for game designers.
"Make every attack hit as hard as a truck" 16:50
You missed the obvious opportunity to put in footage of Optimus Prime ramming into an enemy. Sad. 😥
These videos are really interesting, thank you Mark Brown
how to comment on youtube goddamn new layout, without "answer" tab!?
As much as I like Skyrim, the combat system in that game puts me to sleep.
Thats why you go with assassin archer build 😂💔
@@shiroshiba9791 Non direct combat gameplay is the best. Trying to kill enemies with physics chain reactions makes skyrim entertaining.
What TES6 needs is some martial skill and lethality. Like thrusts are fast but cuts knock away thrusts, 2h weapons break 1h weapon blocks but not vice versa, etc. sword-chess.
@@shiroshiba9791 Honestly that's even worse. At least with the normal combat there's some sort of risk of dying and there's *some* nuance with power attacks and blocking.
Stealth archer? Just kill everything, one after another, with literally no risk of dying because enemies couldn't find a fucking billboard if they tried.
it’s literally just r2 until the enemy dies
Great video! Really captures how interconnected everything needs to be. One suggestion, when stating frame counts clarify if is at 30 or 60FPS (as some games are different on your video but I assume its 60 based on the timing shown). This is useful as well during development, when working with animators they are probably authoring @30fps, in-game could be @60fps (or both if covering multiple hardware). For Killer Instinct we designed & animated @60fp. Ryse we kept our lingo at 30fps across the board during development (but our dev pc's ran it at 60fps). Some past games animated at 30fps, ran at 60fps (and combat tools hooked things into the 60fps real-time animation).
I also heard that sometimes of the devs want to make the attack seem stronger they pause the frames a bit. For example Ninja Gaiden's attacks where you have to charge it up.
Great analysis and suggestions. Though I'd love some footage from Kingdom Hearts, imo one of the earlier 3D action game with really rewarding combat system and cleverly balancing melee and magic attack mechanics.
"Swinging a giant sword in monster hunter"
displays clip with the smallest weapon in the game
Doesn't get more intense than Balloon fight! 🎈 🎈
Used to love a series of vids called Digressing and Sidequesting , sadly its not a thing anymore but coming across this connect more than fills the hole left behind. Thanks for the good vids, you got a new sub here!
Great video! I am working on a game that has an extraordinary combat system, including damaging limbs, damaging organs, bleeding out, disarming, parrying, potentially breaking your opponent’s sword if your sword is made of higher quality metals, or if their sword has been heavily used. The combat system even allows for dismemberment of limbs, which can be replaced if you use magic to replace it.
I think the video is more about how to do a *satisfying* combat system, not necessarily a good one.
I say this mostly because I don't think all of the examples shown here are good combat systems. Most notably the new God of War. Why? Because there was one very important detail that was left out of the discussion: pacing and scaling of the combat.
Let's take a look at bayonetta, for example: The difference between the difficulty of enemies in the first level vs last level is huge: They deal more damage, are immune to witch time, don't get staggered as easily, if at all, etc while the difference in the player character is mostly not present: a few extra moves that give some mobility options, but those aren't as huge. The biggest difference is in player skill and how he can now perform combos with muscular memory instead of actively thinking about them, how he can instinctively dodge attacks, etc. And playing in a higher difficulty level just further drives this home. The player has to improve, not the character.
Now let's compare this with the new God of War. Even though the combat feels satisfying as heck with beautiful animations and probably the most visually impactful attacks I've seen, if you play the game on a hard difficulty, the pacing is just a slog and the scaling is mostly grindy. This comes down to one very very very bad decision, imo. The fact that enemies attacks can de blocked/parried *based on kratos' defence attribute*. This, paired with frequent high number of enemies encounters, makes it so some fights are pretty much literally impossible, as you'll get otk'd with no real way to counter it, as it is fairly easy to get hit when you try to go on the offensive if you're surrounded.
Fast forward a bit when you've upgraded your gear (not your skill) and now you can block attacks but are still one shot. This leads to staying in a corner with the shield raised while spamming ranged attacks for upwards of 20 minutes (yup, I've done this at some points) until you finally win. Fast forward some more when you no longer get one shot and you can go to town on rooms packed with enemies, and this is where the combat feels right at home and makes you feel like a badass. The thing is, you didn't earn it.
While in DmC/bayonetta you become a badass and stylish by learning the game, in GoW you do so by leveling up, which, for a combat focused game, doesn't make it a "good" combat system.
Not really. I actually kinda like jrpg's, for example. I believe with god of war my main issue is a problem of expectations. When you see an action combat system with rolls blocks combos and parries you expect it to be pending more towards player skill and less towards character skill and I was playing GoW that way, trying to "skill up" my way through the encounters (unsuccessfully due to the aforementioned rooms filled with one shot enemies) and ended up very disappointed after realizing you can just outlevel/outgear everything and steam roll though them.
For example in dark souls, even though you can grind levels and gear (for the most part) the game never feels hinged towards that approach, as you can never steamroll anything (unless you grind for an absurd amount of time)
I think it really depends on your play style. I think I relied really heavily on skill throughout the entire game because of how I outfitted kratos I intentionally made a build that required me to constantly move, attack, and defend, while limiting my rune attacks because of long cool downs. Of course the difficulty setting also dictates how much skill is required versus simple level up.
The same argument can be used against Soulsborne games though. Just cause there is leveling up, doesn't mean you don't need skill in the combat
@@jriibzmodus4792 No it can't. His point is how vital game mechanics are tied to stats in GoW, this isn't the case in Soulsborne games.
I came here just to like a comment in this vain. I concur! I just question the lowercase 'm' in DMC.
the revenge value system in kingdom hearts is also interesting
While I agree wholeheartedly with this video, I feel like a point that was missed somewhat is more of the player's perspective of action combat. Good action combat must also mean that your on-screen character does as the player instructed. this is not much of a problem in fighting games, but in games like the Batman games I find there are a lot of times where I don't hit the enemy I intended to hit, but roll with it, because hey, at least I did damage to an enemy, right?
bryan rustenhoven Games like batman aren't meant to provide an immense amount of difficulty. These games were created to be style of challenge. You were meant to be the batman or be a nimble assassin.
I was looking for this comment. It should have been in the video IMO. The character should be controllable. Does it do what you intended to do? Also, imo locking out movement should be used sparsely. Nothing is more infuriating then accidentally starting a move with a recovery time of 5 seconds and not being able to do anything.
The Batman games gets shat on a lot, but they're actually really well-designed when it comes to the combat. The problem is that on Normal difficulty and below you basically don't have to play as the game was designed, so mashing attack and counter is more effective.
The hallmark of a good combat system is that it makes the player think and make decisions. Batman (especially Arkham Knight) throws in a lot of enemy types and situations that forces the player to make tons of decisions while also giving the player a bunch of tools, moves and "supers" (burning combo meter for specific super moves or keep the combo going for a passive buff?).
In the Batman games, spacing is also important. Partially for the reason you mentioned (so you make certain abilities and attacks hit the right target).
In addition to what I've said, "combat" can even start before the enemy even notices you. You can for example perch atop something and looking over the enemies present to decide how you will tackle the situation once you engage. Making the player think and already make decisions.
In all honesty, I consider Arkham Knight to have some of the very best combat systems out there. Partially because it's more unique and doesn't fall into similar territory/overlap like many other games do (Ninja Gaiden, DMC, Bayonetta, Nier Automata, etc.). But again, you pretty much need to play it on a higher difficulty setting to actually have to play the game as intended, so a lot of people disregard it as generally bad.
bryan rustenhoven the Arkham games have poorly designed counter combat. You can beat the entire game by just spamming the triangle button. It’s not engaging and it means that you tractor beam to foes you didn’t mean to hit. The Arkham games have great stealth,but poorly designs combat. Spider-Man PS4 foxes you problem. It lets you select enemies with the camera to shoot at in combat instead of useless quick fires.
well you are a ninja so snap choices is in character for the arkham games.
The amount of Transformers Devastation love in this video is much appreciated.
Gonna be honest here, I really think that you should have MILLIONS of subscribers. Not only is your content helpful for developers like me, but it is also entertaining, and well made. Keep on keeping on.
Have you ever considered analyzing the system of aggro and tanking in RPGs? I always wondered how aggro works in games like WoW, XC, etc.
So, I've been wondering for a long time: Are you going to do an episode on fighting games?
Liked for "melee" pronunciation. Ok maybe that wasn't the only reason, but still...
meleeh
I mean, it is the correct English pronunciation
in mount & blade games, the best things of melee combat is four directional attack & parry/block, cancelation, and stamina doesn't exists, that made it my favorite game ever
I'd love to hear you talk about Monster Hunter and the radically different playstyles that result from the weaponry in a future video. The Insect Glaive and Hunting Horn are especially quirky and fun.
It's interesting how Capcom made the combat satisfying for weapons that play very differently (and fill different combat roles) but still face the same enemies.