By John Walker on July 13th, 2010 at 12:32 am.
Have you ever played a beat-em-up and thought, “What this needs is to be in much brighter colours, with a far larger mix of combat styles, and a billion other people on the screen at the same time? We all have. Which is why there’s a Zone 4: Fight District. Watch the trailer below. If you can survive it without wanting to stare at a grey wall until you calm down.
It will offer up to 16 player beat-em-up combat, and looks like utter mayhem. Which perhaps is the point. Terribly silly and Saturday-morning-cartoony, and with all-important “WHOOPS” text appearing.
Watching the trailer feels a bit like opening a window into the world of what it must be to have ADHD and drink a neat bottle of orange squash cordial. I’m fairly sure I should now run around the house karate chopping at invisible foes until I break something valuable. Like my leg. What I need is a mum to tell me to sit down and read a book.
The game is entering its closed beta now, with sign-ups available on their site. And it will be free to play, they say, when it’s out.
13/07/2010 at 00:56 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Free to play as in yeah, you can play as much as you like, but do you see that shiny armor? THAT COST MONEY! And do you want a better weapon, so you can compete with others? THAT COST EVEN MORE MONEY. More slots? MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!
Uuurgh…free to play, riiight.
13/07/2010 at 02:07 JohnnyMaverik says:
Free to play isn’t always like that, just mostly like that, but now and again they actually do it right, as in “do you see that shiny armour? One day that could be yours, just raise your level by 14 and then do the quest. Alternately if you’re lazy and greedy you can buy it for ten quid”.
13/07/2010 at 12:41 Jakkar says:
Unusually pessimistic of you there, Frankie. I approve!
13/07/2010 at 00:57 Samuel Bass says:
My inner “kid who spent far too much pocket money on Double Dragon at the local fun fair” totally wants to play this.
13/07/2010 at 01:31 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
I like the “judo” kicks.
Hey Judo people! Do you guys kick people? In the head, when they are not laying on the ground? I suspect not.
13/07/2010 at 03:01 Tacroy says:
Yeah, most of them faked the style with reasonable style, but Judo just made no sense. Sure, call it Karate or something, but that’s just not Judo – the combo finisher wasn’t even a throw!
Which is kind of weird honestly – they could have chosen a bunch of other distinctive styles ranging from Shotokan (short, powerful, slow strikes) to Wing Chun (kind of like the Capoeira guy but with more elbows and circles), but they picked a generic punchy-kicky style and called it Judo of all things.
13/07/2010 at 09:54 The Pink Ninja says:
Why does it matter? If you’re not using Boxing you’re a pussy
13/07/2010 at 12:38 neems says:
Is it perhaps a joke, a la Austin Powers’ ‘judo CHOP!’
13/07/2010 at 02:02 Antialias says:
It’s the obscure school of Judo known as ‘Karate’.
13/07/2010 at 02:41 OctaneHugo says:
“GAMES…WITHIN A GAME”
I think they call those gamemodes.
13/07/2010 at 02:55 Kelron says:
This looks like a game I do not ever want to play.
13/07/2010 at 03:21 Sam says:
I don’t think the keys or sign-ups are out just yet.
http://nforum.ogplanet.com/zone4/forum_posts.asp?TID=163078
13/07/2010 at 04:26 Spacegirl says:
this series went downhill with Zone 3 : Reading District imo.
13/07/2010 at 05:49 P7uen says:
@Spacegirl: Agree, I’ll skip this one.
Waiting for the HD remake of Zone 2: Red Light District
13/07/2010 at 07:15 Wulf says:
No one ever appreciates Zone 1: Green Hill Zone.
13/07/2010 at 12:03 DrGonzo says:
Wulf wins!
13/07/2010 at 05:03 dadioflex says:
Am I the only one who thought it looked cool? A PC version of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Nice.
Missing style for me is Saturday night/Sunday morning city centre style – nothing but kicks, cos you don’t want to drop your chips.
13/07/2010 at 12:54 Koozer says:
How dare you compare this to Super Smash Bros. Away with you!
PS. Kirby for the win.
13/07/2010 at 07:03 Spoon says:
The company that is making that (or running it in the west, whatever) already has one of those games that you can play right now, called Rumble Fighter. You see how its got those different fighting styles? Expect the good ones to cost actual money, so if you don’t pay you will get your face kicked in.
13/07/2010 at 07:14 bakaohki says:
Is this for Wii, or for some kind of a spiced up SNES? I really really would’ve loved this game 20 years ago though.
13/07/2010 at 08:51 Tei says:
Games like this one can evolve into “Programming MMO”. Somewhat like core-wars. Just need a scripting language,so you don’t control directly the character, but write a event driven script that control the character, to fight with others script driven characters.
13/07/2010 at 12:05 terry says:
I dimly recall an old shareware DOS game* which played like this. The player controlled a robot that was loaded out with various weaponry and armour (which also affected the handling/damage) but instead of directly controlling the robot, there were commands that controlled basic actions and movement that could be assigned in any sequence. Then you saved out your command list to a text file and put the robot into an arena to do battle. The fun came in when you had a whole bunch of people figuring out different builds and approaches – it ended up a little bit like Robot Wars in ASCII. Maxis’ Robosport is probably the closest thing to a spiritual successor.
*Cursed as I am with a terrible memory I can’t remember what it was called, but I got it on one of my earliest 5 1/4″ disks, along with SPACEVAD.COM and SLEUTH.COM, so it must’ve been released around 84-85.
13/07/2010 at 12:18 innaface says:
Dunno what the whinesing is about..as long as it supports a controller/gamepad on PC, too, and doesn’t go either empty or to lag-hell, this could be a fantastic way to waste away those spare 30 minutes now and again, IF they were smart enough to allow that kind of instant access.
I just hope that there is some sort of classing/balancing, coz I don’t want to spend most of my time with the equivalent of a streetfighter 4 tournament champion owning everyone while a dozen people are having zero fun.
13/07/2010 at 12:42 Jakkar says:
No. It looks more like Neverwinter Nights with combos than a beatemup. Do not want.
.. Although ‘Neverwinter Nights with combos’ could as easily be The Witcher. This could get complicated. I need to start writing these down D:
13/07/2010 at 18:16 Salem5 says:
Free to play = Pay to win…
Unless they state otherwise, but even Battlefield Heroes does it know, who to trust?