Nostalgia Factor:
I am a giant fan of the original Double Dragon for the NES, but as a kid growing up I never had much opportunity to play its sequel – Double Dragon II: The Revenge. One of my childhood friends owned this game, but we only had the chance to play it a small handful of times before I moved out of the neighborhood and never saw him again. Brian, if you’re alive and reading this 30 years later – hope you are doing well!
Recently I noticed that this game was on sale for dirt cheap on the PlayStation Network, so I decided to download it and give it a shot. I don’t have many memories of this game from my extremely brief time with it as a kid, so this was almost like this was my first time playing it. How would it compare to the original Double Dragon? Let’s find out!
The original Double Dragon was a simple “beat up the bad guys and rescue the damsel in distress” type game. No frills, nothing special about its storyline. Double Dragon II opens things up a little bit more.
If you’ve seen the movie Double Dragon (awful movie, but I actually had fun watching it!) I think this game is set in the same universe. Correct me if I’m wrong? Anyway, the year is 19XX, and the world is recovering from nuclear war. Crime syndicates have risen to take control of the remaining cities. Billy and Jimmy Lee are two vigilante crime fighters who are standing up to these syndicates. They are known as the Double Dragons. Well, they must have messed with the wrong person because in retaliation to their vigilante ways, Billy’s girlfriend Marian is murdered.
Billy and Jimmy set off on a quest to stop the Shadow Warriors and avenge Marian’s death. The rest of the game consists of you tracking down and following this crime syndicate, beating the shit out of everyone in sight. Eventually you make it to the end of the game where you defeat their evil leader. With his dying words, the evil dude tells you of the prophecy where an angel falls from the sky on the night the two dragons soar.
You guessed it – Marian then comes back to life. The credits begin to roll.
Well, I mean, it’s not the deepest storyline in the universe but at least they tried.
Gameplay:
Right off the bat you’ll notice that this game corrects the biggest flaw of the original Double Dragon. Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a two player co-op mode! I actually played through this game in single player mode, as I do for all of my game reviews, but it is nice that people have the option to play with a friend if they’d like.
As far as single player goes, this game is similar to the original NES Double Dragon in the sense that there are jumping and platforming segments added to the game. I haven’t played the arcade version of Double Dragon II, but I’ve read that it is more of a “by the numbers” beat ‘em up that omits the jumping and platforming sections. Controlling your character, you operate on a 3D field as you punch, smash, and jump kick your enemies into oblivion. Normally in games like this you punch your enemies by facing them and hitting the attack button. In this game, however, the B button punches to the left and the A button punches right. I was skeptical of this scheme at first, but I got used to it quickly.
Press both buttons to jump, and hit the attack button in mid-air to unleash a jump kick. Punching and jump kicking are all you really need to do well in this game, but I found the uppercut and the spin kick to be occasionally useful as well. There are other moves you can utilize like grappling with and throwing your enemies, but I never went out of my way to initiate these attacks. If they just happened, they happened.
This game is unique in the sense that you have to beat it on its highest difficulty level in order to get the full experience of the game. I played on the default normal setting the first time I played this, and I was surprised to find that I couldn’t see the real ending when I got to the end of the game. I wasn’t quite ready to tackle hard mode yet, so I switched to easy and found that easy mode only lets you play the first two or three levels. Now that I saw what easy entailed, I switched over to hard mode. Hard mode contains nine stages, with a special boss at the end that you have to defeat. Beat him and you beat the game once and for all. Don’t let the word “hard” fool you. I didn’t notice a significant difficulty spike from normal mode. The game is simply longer. Maybe the enemies are tougher or deal out more damage. If so, I didn’t notice!
Aside from that, there’s not much to write about Double Dragon II’s gameplay. It’s very similar to the first Double Dragon, which I’ve already written about. Anything further I write will just be me repeating myself, and I don’t like to do that!
Graphics:
When you fire this up, the first thing you’ll likely notice is that there are brief story sequences at the beginning and end of each stage. While they are nothing too horribly impressive, they look alright and they help deliver a nice sense of atmosphere to the game.
The game itself doesn’t take too many graphical leaps from its predecessor. The characters basically look the same, although there is a wider variety of enemy types this time around. There are more details in some of the backgrounds. It’s a decent looking game, but not one I am jumping out of my seat over.
It does bother me that the game is so dark, and that every stage seems to be either purple or green in color. This game definitely has its own unique visual style, but I can’t say for sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Sound:
As far as audio goes, this game is pretty much on par with the last Double Dragon. The sound effects and the music are pretty good. I still prefer the music in the first game, but hey that’s just me. Could be nostalgia talking here, as I played the original Double Dragon dozens and dozens of times growing up, and this one I only played through three times. The music didn’t have as much of an opportunity to start growing on me.
Overall:
I know a lot of people out there like this game more than the first Double Dragon for the NES, but I beg to differ. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up with this game and I don’t have nostalgic feelings attached to it, but I think the first game is much better. Not to say this game sucks or anything. I liked it a lot. Sure, some of the jumping segments are ridiculously difficult, in part due to the abnormal control scheme, but you’ll quickly master them through trial and error. To me, however, this game just doesn’t have the charm of the first Double Dragon. Again, this could just be nostalgia talking. Maybe if I was able to look at these games objectively I would come to a different conclusion. It happened with Castlevania III, which I had never played as a kid – so it is possible. But not here. Not with Double Dragon II.
That said, I like a lot of the things they do in this game. They attempt to give you a story. There’s some fun set pieces like the helicopter and that big bulldozer/tank thing. And who can forget the S&M looking boss character (he’s the only thing I remember from playing this as a kid)?
I had a fun time playing this, even though my constant comparing it to the original Double Dragon may make it seem like I didn’t. This is a good game. If I was able to look at it more objectively, maybe a great game. Instead I’m just going to file it under the category of a game that I played, liked, and will probably never pick up again – unless it’s to play two player co-op with my son when he’s old enough to do so. That’s really the only reason I’d come back to this game.
If I want to play Double Dragon, I’ll play the first one.
No comments:
Post a Comment