Games with the best melee choreography?

It seems not many gamers care about melee fighting choreography in games and this obsession is unique to me.

For example

It pissed me off how the agile,acrobatic combat of Witcher 1 turned into a boy waving a stick in Witcher 2

Many people said Darksiders 2 was the best ''fighting'' game so I thought if its a good game in terms of ''fighting'' then that means it has a good fighting choreography.

But I was wrong. Darksiders 2 melee choreography really looked retarded

It seems that most fighting or button mash games like Darksiders 2 or Force Unleashed 2 were designed to be 8 year old friendly.

Since kids want to just button mash and get good outcomes that would please their 5 second attention spans

But melee choreography is not the only thing I look for in fighting,or hack and slash games.

If a good melee choreography of a game is not accompanied by a sophisticated control of the character then the game is ruined.

Best melee choreography I ever seen in a game was

Heavenly Sword,Revenge of the Sith and Matrix:Path of Neo

Seeing how many few mentioned these games on the forums for any feature again shows that not many have this obsession.

Especially Path of Neo.

I liked that game more than Max Payne 2

I am really looking forward to any other games you know that have good melee choreography

the batman fighting system is very fluid. is that what you mean?

or perhaps you mean something like dark souls, where precise timing, and anticipation plays a role?

Super Smash Bros. Melee. It even has Melee in the name

Tekken for sure

Uhh

Virtua Fighter..

Uhhhh.....

Dead or Alive.

Yeah I meant something like Batman Arkham City.

I almost forgot to mention that game.

Dark Souls though has combat for masochists.

The combat of Dark Souls is hard not because the sword combat there is realistic and complex like in life but because the developers are lazy to fix the stupid combat design.

I don't get it, do you mean things that look good? If so Batman is the best for that, Assassins Creed has some pretty cool executions as well.

I know many guys will find an opportunity to gain credit and respect by flaming me with their wise cracks since I criticized Dark Souls. This game is a shrine in GameSpot

@l-lord:

very interesting. i love the batman fighting games, but i also love dark souls.

i hope fromsoftware remain lazy and fix nothing (combat related) in dark souls 1, not even the backstab mechanic.

but i like the idea of this thread. a really well put together fighting system looks amazing in motion - hence why i went straight for batman.

@bobbetybob: Yes melee that looks ''good''

Ever seen fighting in movies like Undisputed 2,Once upon time in China 3,Raid,Fearless,transporter,Onk Bak,Drunken Master?

That's what I meant.

The fighting doesn't have to be asian

Proably assassin's creed 3. The combat is utter crap (I mean really hideous), but the choreography is great. Obv it's easier when you do "tap a button to watch something cool" -kind of combat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y6SsGODcGw

Whoa nice. Thats what I was talking about

Arkham Asylum really stepped up to have good fighting choreography, and smooth and simple combat mechanics that really wowed me. I personally liked it way more than Arkham City, has better pacing and story and better characters exposure, better unlockables that really made me take interest in the world. I'd try that one firstif you haven't tried them yet and want something with good fighting choreography. This game wasn't even on my radar until I ran out of things to play so I saw it got good reviews and thought hell why not, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Sleeping dogs

Chivalry=best melee combat in a game.

The Batman games are pretty good.

Devil May Cry 3 and 4. Holy ****. U'den Flameworks knows their shit.

What's awesome is that (AFAIK) it's all mo-cap.

Skyward Sword, The final boss was the final test of all the things you have learned in the game.

Arkham games for miles and miles. Every time, it still shocks me how cinematic they made the fighting look in those games

Arkham and Sleeping Dogs (honestly underrated)

Sleeping Dogs.

Also, Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast did thing quite well.

Arkham City, hands down. The fact that someone could interrupt you while mid-fight and you had to be prepared to block at any time elevates it well above anything else.

Some of the games that impressed me in terms of melee combat choreography...

• Street Fighter II - From the Hadoukens, to the Dragon Punches, to the Hurricane Kicks, this game was pretty much the big daddy of fight choreography in video games.
• Streets of Rage 2 - This game had some of the most impressive fight choreography in the 2D beat 'em up genre.
• Dead or Alive 2 - The unique counter-attack system of this game made for some of the most impressive fight choreography I've seen in 3D fighters.
• Devil May Cry - The big daddy of modern hack & slash brawlers. The stylish fight choreography, with the swords and the guns, was pretty incredible when it first came out in 2001. Nowadays, many hack & slash games do it, but it was unique when DMC did it first.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - I really liked how the Prince fought multiple enemies at the same time in an acrobatic fashion. Plenty of games do that now, like Arkham and Assassin's Creed, but it felt unique when The Sands of Time did it first a decade ago.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - The stylish manner in which Raiden fights with his sword, not to mention all the slicing and dicing, looks impressive. The fight scenes are very well choreographed too.

Choreography. It's an odd thing to look for in a game, but I love punchin' stuff.

Batman: Arkham City. It took everything that was awesome about the combat system from AA and cranked it up to eleven. If you've never played Batman: Arkham before, though, definately start with Arkham Asylum- playing City first would make the combat in AA feel sub-par, where it actually had a lot of character- slo-mo finishers and superior sound effects.

Captain America: Super Soldier. Everyone got such a kick out of ripping on it, claiming it was an Arkham ripoff, when it was actually a very different experience. And it had quite a few moments where knocking a HYDRA nazi's teeth in actually made you cringe.

Sleeping Dogs. Not only does it have a weighty and empowering gunplay mechanic, but the hand-to-hand combat was incredible to behold(if a little spotty in it's execution). On top of that, there were also a number of outfits based on legendary kung fu flicks that gave you access to special animations based on the fighting styles used in each movie- the traditional chinese garb gives you Wing Chun moves, the tattered rags lets you used drunken boxing, and so on.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows. Each turtle has their own fighting style, which plays directly into certain mechanics- Raph excels in special moves and counters, Michaelangelo's got speed and flashy combos, Donny has wide sweeps and special knockdown moves and Leonardo is kinda jumpy but otherwise is pretty all-around. The choreography isn't as impressive as some of the other games I mentioned, but once you get the hang of it, it is eminently satisfying.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, best melee combat I've ever experienced.

Assassins Creed series. When it first came out, I was pretty amazed at how great realistically the choreography captured the combat.

It's a damn shame that the series' combat never really evolved past counter-spam. Could have been something really special.

Uhm Batman and Dark Souls, Jake Muller from President Evil 6 ?

not really sure what you're looking for, never played Revenge of The Sith.

what about Wrestling, theres bond to be some choreography there right ?

And Dead or Alive is far more choreographed than the stiffly animated Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat (basicly any 2D plain fighting game) and that damn ankle tapping Tekken.

It's a good game and I play it but its choreography is non existent

Smash bros

Woot.. AC it is then.

RYSE - Son of Rome.

Poetry in motion....

Definitely not the Batman Arkham games. It looks good from a distance but if you look closely most of the hits don't really connect and it just looks plain ugly up close and in slow mo. It's not the worse but I hope the devs kinda polish the combat up a bit for the next gen batman game. It's definitely not as bad as the Elder Scrolls games, or Ryse...

Chivalry did first person sword melee really well. What Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind melee should have been. However my fav has to be the Assassins Creed games. AC 1 and AC 2 was a bit easy and repetitive in terms of melee but it looks really nice and smooth. Brotherhood made it better with the larger no. of unique weapons you can use during a fight.

melee choreography in DOA? I just notice the jiggle physics

Call of Duty knifing

You think you're funny?

Sleeping Dogs

Remember Me.

Metal Gear Rising

DMC

DmC

These games just reek of of badassery while in motion

Batman Arkham series is way up there. Probably the best brawler system out there. So goddamn fluid.

I also like the fight animations in Saint's Row 4. Not really a fighting system, but they look pretty good.

Sleeping Dogs was pretty good, but for some reason my timing sucked in that game and the combat was more frustrating than fun most of the time for me.

Ninja Gaiden still holds up as well.

DmC, mgr revengeance and batman ao... have the most stylish combat in recent memory

Batman Arkham City and Origins in the first place.

Assassin's Creed series and Ryse.

@Peredith said:

Sums up how I felt about Force Unleashed 2 and Darksiders 2 and how most brawling,hack and slash games seem to me

Batman Arkham Asylum. Also, Devil May Cry 4, since most enemy attacks are choreographed in a way that the enemy moves are readable.

Metal Gear Rising less so, especially with some of the final boss's attacks.