Good beat'em ups?

[Gamingking]

Recently i've been playing God Hand on PS2, And was wondering what are some good Beat'em ups on PS2, Xbox, 360, Gamecube, PS3 or Wii. If there are any Japanese PS2 beatem'ups that are worth getting i'm interested in those. I'm trying to find some 2 player beat'em ups aswell.

Any help would be appreciated.

[kedawa]

Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks is shockingly good, considering how horrible the MK franchise has gotten. It's basically a co-op beatemup set in the MK2 storyline.

God of War series: You may have heard of it. Solid single-player beatemup.
Yakuza series: not exactly a straightforward beatemup, but it has lots of satisfying fighting.
MadWorld: It's very stylish and very violent, and looks like a pretty solid arena brawler.

[Gamingking]

I've got GOW both of them. Yakuza I have heard of and been debating on getting the first one. I've heard different reviews about it.

[Jorpho]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76632
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92929
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53823

But admittedly, those are rather old threads.

Viewtiful Joe springs to mind immediately, but maybe you're looking for 3D titles. Spike Out, perhaps?

And for something completely different:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/nightstorm/night.htm

EDIT: Missed http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106235 and http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138949

[Gamingking]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76632
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92929
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53823

But admittedly, those are rather old threads.

Viewtiful Joe springs to mind immediately, but maybe you're looking for 3D titles. Spike Out, perhaps?

And for something completely different:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/nightstorm/night.htm

What system is Spike Out for? Is it one or 2 player?.

Yeah I have both Viewtiful Joes.

[garagesaleking!!]

Even though Strangehold is more of a shoot em up rather than a beat em up, I think anyone fond of destruction would have to love the game.

[SpaceHarrier]

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Lord of the Rings: Return of the King for the Gamecube. For a licensed game, pretty fun stuff.

[Jorpho]

What system is Spike Out for? Is it one or 2 player?http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox/spikeout-battle-street

(I thought there were other games in the series for other platforms, but I guess not.)

[old_skoolin_jim]

I absolutely love the Yakuza series, although I'm only halfway through the 2nd. I like to think it's what Shenmue could have been if it switched out all the "Excuse me, have you seen any sailors driving black cars?" and gumball machines for profanity-laden ass-kicking and exciting mobster-trying-to-go-good storyline.
Also, for 360, Castle Crashers. That should be blatantly obvious by now though- 4-player online co-op hack-n-slash adventure with a great sense of humor.

[kedawa]

Spikeout started out as a coin-op.

[kupomogli]

God Hand

Well, you've already named the best. There aren't any even half as good as that game. Seeing as this is in modern gaming here's a list of some more of my favorites from PS2 onward(a couple GBA which is somewhat modern.) Also. All these releases are going to be US only as I haven't played any non US ones. I would also really like to play OZ/The Sword of Etheria, though don't want to import it(JPN/PAL only.)

Urban Reign PS2

Urban Reign is a sort of combo oriented beat em up that uses the left stick to move and the right stick as your attacks. Similar to Jet Li's Rise mixed with Fight Night Round 2, 3, and 4.

The game is staged based so once you complete one you can go to the next. There are are a ton. I think 100? Anyways. The difficulty jumps up pretty high somewhat early into the game, but it's still good, just gets extremely hard.

Batman Arkham Asylum PS360

While two thirds of the game is both exploration and stealth, Arkham Asylum's also filled with a lot of beat em up combat. It's really good because it's played in short bursts with a lot of enemies rather than over and over battles like pretty much all beat em up games. Everything is spaced out enough from each other so that it really doesn't ever get boring. If you happened to want to do just beat em up and just stealth, you can always do the challenges once you acquire them.

Dragon Ball Z Legacy of Goku, Legacy of Goku 2, and Buu's Fury GBA

First off. Don't ever play Dragon Ball Z Sagas. Game is terrible. If you want some fun adventure/beat em up titles though. The Legacy of Goku series are perfect. It takes you through pretty much the entire Dragon Ball Z saga and follows the storyline perfectly without having to wait two episodes for a character to charge a Spirit Bomb or Kamehameha . There is a lot of filler stuffed in there for added length but overall doesn't matter. Very good series.

Yakuza

If you're playing it just for the beat em up aspect you'll probably be disappointed. Infact. If you ever remembered when the Yakuza demo came out, I honestly hated the game. It wasn't until later that I played the game and fell in love with it. The demo does not do the game justice. The gameplay honestly doesn't have that good of a beat em up style gameplay by itself, but the setting, the storyline, everything else about the game really fills the void so the beat em up gameplay is good enough to carry the rest of the game along.

Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2, and Rogue Galaxy

The second Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy would really be the only ones I choose, but a lot of people seem to like the original Dark Cloud. I think Rogue Galaxy is the best with its settings and gameplay additions added onto the others, though the storyline isn't that great. If you don't mind the story you'll love Rogue Galaxy though.

Castlevania Lament of Innocence, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Dante's Inferno

All of these games have a style of gameplay to where you can sort of customize your attacks in a seemless fashion where the action really never slows down too much. All of them are good, though DMC2 and 4 have a terrible storyline and DMC 2 has somewhat mediocre gameplay without playing as Trish who plays like Dante on DMC(you'll understand if you ever play DMC2.)

Castlevania Curse of Darkness, Dynasty Warriors

I hate Dynasty Warriors. I dislike Curse of Darkness almost as much. CoD is pretty much Dynasty Warriors with a Castlevania setting and extremely long hallways. However, what CoD actually does is add some extras to the DW formula. So basically you have air attacks, but if you hit attack and immediately jump after, you can sort of kick the enemy upward and follow them upward to do an air combo on them, that's about it. If you finish the game you're allowed to play as Trevor who is different than Hector and plays similar to Leon from LoI. An extremely watered down version of Leon with a limited attack selection. Dynasty Warriors strictly has the press one button to attack and then press the other as a finisher, which is also the base of CoDs attacks except with Trevor.

[Only16bits]

The best beet'em up are in retro consoles.

[garagesaleking!!]

I forgot about return of the king, a real good game. Im in the mood to find my xbox version and play it, I hope it works on 360.

[Gamingking]

I bought Urban Reign about two days ago. It really wasn't what I expected and I had thought it was a two-player storymode.

I've got a modded PS2 too play Japanese PS1/2 games if you know any of those titles aswell..

[kupomogli]

The best beet'em up are in retro consoles.

You must have not played God Hand.

While the retro consoles had some good beat em ups, I think the newer beat em up games are much better. I also think some of the earlier ones are extremely overrated.

The Final Fight and Streets of Rage series, as well as every other beat em up similar to those. You've got one attack button, you can do a jump kick, or a special, and even grab the opponent when they're staggering and do up to a three hit combo but that's it. They're fairly repetitive and extremely overrated. Batman Returns for the SNES is the only one that uses the same formula that isn't as repetitive due to the ability to grab multiple people at once, allows you to throw enemies into the environment, breaks it up a bit stage by stage with different aspects, and also even when fighting you'll be using the batarang combined with attacking.

Starting with the awesome NES beat em ups it seems beat em ups devolved into Final Fight clones. The arcade Double Dragon games would be the best earlier beat em up titles except the NES version of Double Dragon 2 is better. Then now they're better than they've ever been with the releases of games such as God Hand or Batman Arkham Asylum.

[aclbandit]

Recently i've been playing God Hand on PS2, And was wondering what are some good Beat'em ups on PS2, Xbox, 360, Gamecube, PS3 or Wii. If there are any Japanese PS2 beatem'ups that are worth getting i'm interested in those. I'm trying to find some 2 player beat'em ups aswell.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have no advice. But currently, I'm near the end of God Hand (been playin' it basically nonstop the last few days), and it's AMAZING. I got a little worried about the quality of the game in the first few minutes due to the camera glitching through walls, but that was the ONLY issue the game had (and now, I'm not so sure it's a bug, but rather an intended feature to ensure the camera can always see what you're doing. Hmm.). For a modern beat-em-up, it ain't half bad :P

[hbkprm]

river city ransom and final fight

[Cantaloup]

Also, for 360, Castle Crashers. That should be blatantly obvious by now though- 4-player online co-op hack-n-slash adventure with a great sense of humor.

I also suggest Castle Crashers.

[Gamingking]

I have no advice. But currently, I'm near the end of God Hand (been playin' it basically nonstop the last few days), and it's AMAZING. I got a little worried about the quality of the game in the first few minutes due to the camera glitching through walls, but that was the ONLY issue the game had (and now, I'm not so sure it's a bug, but rather an intended feature to ensure the camera can always see what you're doing. Hmm.). For a modern beat-em-up, it ain't half bad :P


The only thing I didn't like is you basically just start out. It doesn't have a opening or any beginning story to show.

[BetaWolf47]

There's Mystic Heroes for Gamecube and PS2. It's based on a Japanese novel, and it's got a chibi feel to it compared to Dynasty Warriors. It's admittedly not as good as other Koei games, but its not too shabby either. Just beware of terrible voice acting.

[Baloo]

Although it really doesn't live up to the expectations of Turtles in Time in arcades and SNES, Turtles in Time Reshelled really isn't that bad. The gameplay is still there, and there's four-player support, which is great. Too bad the lighting is total shit, the turtles are hard to distinguish between, and the music is pretty much nonexistant.

[kedawa]

If you want to emulate, or have the option of playing japanese saturn games, capcom's Dungeons&Dragons beatemups are pretty damn good.

[Mysterio3000]

Sega Ages Hokuto No Ken (Fist of the Northstar) for Japan ps2 is a good one. It also includes the original Megadrive game as well.

[The 1 2 P]

I definitely recommend Double Dragon for XBLA. Well, I would recommend it but unfortunately it's no longer available for sale. You'll just have to pick up one of the old school versions of it, preferably the Genesis one.

[Kid Fenris]

If you want to emulate, or have the option of playing japanese saturn games, capcom's Dungeons&Dragons beatemups are pretty damn good.

On that note, Capcom's Alien vs. Predator and Battle Circuit are also excellent. Battle Circuit is available on GameTap, but Alien vs. Predator isn't. Legal reasons, I suppose.

[runinruder]

Chaos Legion, Drakengard, Crimson Sea 2, Crimson Tears, Blood Will Tell.

[Neil Koch]

One game that I ended up really liking from Xbox1 (might also be on PS2) was Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance. It's kind of an odd combo of Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, and Final Fight.

There's some compilations that have old-school beat em up goodness, like Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection that has the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe games.

The Warriors (Xbox1/PS2) is a cool semi-open world/beat-em-up mashup based of the cult 70's movie. There's a bonus mode that has an oldschool side-scrolling style game.

Madworld on the Wii is a stylish and fun beat em up. It's dirt cheap now and well worth picking up.

[WoodyXP]

I like Ninja Combat for the Neo Geo.

[aclbandit]

I like Ninja Combat for the Neo Geo.

That's one that usually ends up on the lists of "BAD" Neo titles, but I really enjoy it. I know it's not A+ entertainment, but it's fun.

[Mimi Nakamura]

The best beet'em up are in retro consoles.

THIS.