I'm just wondering what you all think are some of the coolest melee animations in games. Not most accurate, but just coolest. I'm just gonna list a few to get started

Assassin's Creed series, esp. the fisticuffs counter from 2 that's gut-punch followed by palm-strike to the throat

Arkham Asylum/Arkham city

Skyrim, specifically the power attack flurry thing with double daggers

Dragon Age 2: pretty stylized animations, but especially the double-daggers ones.

Jade Empire. Just Jade Empire.

I always liked the Prince of Persia melee combat.

Assassin's Creed: Dagger animations. Stick, twist, lift ouch that's got to hurt.

Dragon Age 2: Staff twirling. It made casting extremely awesome visually.

Skyrim: The new Archery kill animations.

the GBA fire emblem games had great, over the top animations, especially for the critical hits.

Killzone 3 has great melee kill animations for an fps.
Saints Row 2 - three different fighting styles with different combos.
Saints Row 3 - the nut punches and combat with the awesome button.
Dead to rights retribution features cool (but sadly pointless) combo moves.

guitarsniper:
Assassin's Creed series, esp. the fisticuffs counter from 2 that's gut-punch followed by palm-strike to the throat

Yeah, I like 'em, too. The slow-mo stuff from AC:R is very gimmicky, but it makes the kill animations a little cooler, especially with the stomping. -_-

Here's a good gem that everyone missed.

Real good game, just a bit too short. It's around $15, last I checked.

sextus the crazy:
the GBA fire emblem games had great, over the top animations, especially for the critical hits.

H-how the hell do they make them seems so visceral? They just feel so painful and real. I think I'm going to have to take note of that. That one at 4:34 was especially painful, as well as all of Lyn's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYIkqVviXTM

Def Jam Fight for NY. A game that made me stare at the screen in disbelief with each blazing move

him over there:

sextus the crazy:
snip

H-how the hell do they make them seems so visceral? They just feel so painful and real. I think I'm going to have to take note of that. That one at 4:34 was especially painful, as well as all of Lyn's.

The reason the crits seem powerful is because the weapons are treated as though they actually have weight, so hits seem like they have force.

Personally my favorites are the warrior animations.

What, no Human Revoloution love?

So badass!

sextus the crazy:

him over there:

sextus the crazy:
the GBA fire emblem games had great, over the top animations, especially for the critical hits.

H-how the hell do they make them seems so visceral? They just feel so painful and real. I think I'm going to have to take note of that. That one at 4:34 was especially painful, as well as all of Lyn's.

Personally my favorites are the warrior animations.

Oh man I completely missed that one! I think most of the oomph! comes from the way they just totally full stop upon hitting the enemy. The way they leave a freeze frame for half a second and the huge screen quake is probably part of it too. everything just goes slow then fast then slow and it works brilliantly.

OT: I think that some of the batman games' animations are pretty great, they feel really great to pull off when you do actually flowing timed attacks rather than button mashing. Also the third Katana in No More Heroes has amazingly cool finishers:

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Gotta love them dual daggers.

I actually love the punching in Duke Nukem Forever. His oversized fists slam right into an alien, and then the (broken) physics engine takes over. We get to see people fly back twenty feet before hitting a wall or skidding to a stop. Its fun.

To bad the rest of the game couldn't be that cool.

I was always a fan of the weapon trails in games such as Soul Calibur. Made watching the fights a pretty sight

Props for the avatar.

The killing blow animation with double daggers in Dragon Age: Origins were something I was really impressed. Dragon Age 2 too.

And I like the back-knifing animation in Battlefield 3.

The lack of Bayonetta here disappoints me. Perhaps not the "coolest" exactly, but it is over the top and oddly hilarious.

-Creating a tornado by spinning on a stripper pole
-Summoning giant fists/feet to slam enemies
-Kicking/punching while following up with a weapon on that limb
-Chainsawing an angel in half while you sit on it
To name a few, though Bayonetta's movements in her combos in general are also very neat to watch (...not in THAT way, if that's what you're thinking)

And those are just melee

Dark Messiah for sure. Be it magic, melee, archery or stealth, it all looked and felt great.

You guys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2uqkJgwuc

God Hand.

Bayonetta is fairly sweet, along with DMC and Ninja Gaiden.

Dark Messiah is the master of FPM (first person melee).

Splinter Cell: Conviction.
Ridiculously awesome Krav Maga takedowns.
It helped that the character models and animation were top notch.

him over there:

sextus the crazy:

him over there:

H-how the hell do they make them seems so visceral? They just feel so painful and real. I think I'm going to have to take note of that. That one at 4:34 was especially painful, as well as all of Lyn's.

Personally my favorites are the warrior animations.

Oh man I completely missed that one! I think most of the oomph! comes from the way they just totally full stop upon hitting the enemy. The way they leave a freeze frame for half a second and the huge screen quake is probably part of it too. everything just goes slow then fast then slow and it works brilliantly.

Not gonna lie, the warrior axe crit animation is perhaps one of the most pimp things nintendo has ever made.

sextus the crazy:

him over there:

sextus the crazy:

Personally my favorites are the warrior animations.

Oh man I completely missed that one! I think most of the oomph! comes from the way they just totally full stop upon hitting the enemy. The way they leave a freeze frame for half a second and the huge screen quake is probably part of it too. everything just goes slow then fast then slow and it works brilliantly.

Not gonna lie, the warrior axe crit animation is perhaps one of the most pimp things nintendo has ever made.

I'm more interested how they got some of the frames, they look almost like vectors rather than pixels. It's a shame that the 3-d games don't look nearly this sweet.

prototype 2. The entire game

I'm going to have to go with the big K himself, Kratos. His fighting style can only be described as brütal. Yes I put the umlaut in because it is THAT brütal.

I'm not the biggest fan, but Gears of War's chainsaw lancer kills are downright incredible. Gory, weighty, lots of screaming in pain and body parts being violated. ...wait that sounds wrong somehow.

Black Arrow Officer:
Deus Ex Human Revolution destroys all of the other posts in this thread.

Spoiler: Click to 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

My clubbing is augmented.

Well he did stab a guy in dick, so I guess you win.

Dawn of War sync kills.

Although Deus Ex is fun to watch as well.