I've been fucking around with a combo counter in Armed Decobot mostly for fun. I'm not too serious about its implementation but here's an interesting question that came to mind when messing around with it :
What are the combo counters actually trying to test?
These counters, while existing in other forms for ages, are mostly influenced by fighting games, or shmups which are themselves influenced by fighting games (DP's chaining was influenced by SF's combos). In fighting games, what they're testing is relatively clear - it's the player's knowledge of states, moves, hitstun durations, etc. both for their character & their opponent. It's basically testing your ability to navigate a bunch of states. It more or less directly corresponds to what the games are about
Once you take that mechanic, rip it out of fighting games, and bring it into beat em ups however things become a lot less clear. On the surface, it might look like you're still testing the same thing, but that's not really true anymore. The first issue is simply that hitstun states are pretty free in beat em ups - they are lengthy, they are pretty easy to get & enemies don't immediately punish you if you're a little bit late. The main challenge is getting hit by other enemies, not the one you're attacking. Hell, the games often barely even have anti-infinite systems of any kind.
The second and perhaps bigger issue is how these games tend to handle hit counting. A single attack hitting multiple enemies counts as several hits, thus the more clumped up enemies are the easier it becomes to build (though not necessarily sustain) the combo. The skill being tested shifts towards grouping enemies, and general crowd control. The more strict the combo system, the more rewarding grouping becomes as well.
But this isn't solved if you make it so that 1 punch landing = 1 hit, no matter how many enemies it hits. Because now as soon as a hit lands on more than 1 enemy, you've fucked up because you wasted a valuable resource - the enemy's HP. The game's logic then dictates that the proper way to play is split up enemies - simply a different kind of crowd control.
This problem is less extreme in shmups because these counters test your ability to link together attacks & enemy kills, which are static. There's no conflict between the game itself & the chaining system like there is in bmups (where enemies move around & away, and your goal is to control their positioning).
I think this weird conflict is why combo counters in beat em ups always felt "off" to me while playing. It feels like a system that doesn't truly know what it's going for. I don't really have any kinda solutions to this, but it's definitely interesting to think about how to repurpose this mechanic in the bmup context.
Also watch Anthopants' SOR4 runs they're the funniest shit ever
