Double Dragon IV 2017 - Review

Here we are again, and time for another review.  My first introduction to Double Dragon was on the Sega Master System, which was fantastic.  I remember the game fondly for a few reasons; it was the first beat em' up game I ever played, my Dad and I played this game a lot together which was a great experience, and I tried my first ever cheat that my Dad managed to find, we kept dying near the end, and if you perform about thirty leaping kicks on Mission 4 you get infinite credits.  It was, and still is a classic, naturally, I was excited about playing the new version of Double Dragon IV.


Ever tried cheese strings?  They are basically sticks of cheese like material that you can peel, and create strings from.  When I was a child this sounded so cool, cheese is good for you but tasted bad (I have a very different opinion on this subject now) and you can make strings from it.  After badgering my Mum she got us some, well, the disappoint was instant, they tasted awful, and it wasn't that easy to pull apart and make strings.  Playing Double Dragon IV I found myself asking was this a cool sounding idea that was disappointing, or a cool sounding idea that ended up being equally as cool.

Story

As with Kunio-Kun (River City Melee), Double Dragon turned thirty last year, and Arc System Works decided to remake Double Dragon IV.  While I played the original Double Dragon, I have never played the other games in the series, I really need to remedy that.  Lucky enough the instruction booklet that came with the game covered the back story for the whole series, which was pretty cool.


The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world, violence ravages the lands, there is only one glimmer of hope, two brothers, Billy and Jimmy, know as the Double Dragon.  After overcoming the power of the Gensasuken technique, Billy and Jimmy set up Sosetsuken dojos across the US to preserve peace. On the way to San Fransisco they are attacked by a new enemy called The Renegades, as if that wasn't bad enough Marian (their mutual love interest, not sure how that works) is kidnapped, again, which seems to reoccur throughout the series.


The story is beyond cheese, in fact less than cheese, more like cheese strings.  Once you have beaten the final bosses, who have been trying to kill you the whole game and in the final battle keep shooting at you, you decide to spare them.  One of them asks, why would you spare us after we tried to kill you, side note, these girls are so bad they have taken over Japan, response, 'we don't use the art of Sosetsuken to kill'.  The sisters then decide they want to try and change, and be better people, WTF? No, no, no, it's all so wrong.

Visuals

Arc System Works decided to go old school with the visuals and gave it all an 8-Bit look.  Unlike River City Melee, no risks were taken visually, which was a shame as I would have expected them to do something.  The game is not the most exciting, but there were a few levels that stood out for me.  Mission 5 features some docked ships, and the sun rising behind them look really cool, along with Alcatraz also being visible in the background. The start of Mission 9 (seen in the picture above), went for a bright lights, big city feel, which I liked.  Mission 12 and the final boss fight is set on a beach, which was quite picturesque.  Overall the visuals were bland, and uninspired.


Music 

The score has a classic 80's, early 90's beat em' up sound, which for the most part sounded good enough.  Double Dragon IV 2017 managed to bring in  Kazunaka Yamane, who was the composer for the series.


The score runs at little over forty-five minutes, while there was not really a lot of stand out tracks my favourites were; 'Main Theme', 'Theme of Jake', 'Themes of William and Linda' and 'Themes of Abobo and Chin'. 

Gameplay

Double Dragon IV offers three game modes, Story, Duel, and Tower.  The Tower mode features
one-hundred floors that you can battle through,  I cleared about twenty-five of them before getting bored.


The combat can be pretty brutal, one wrong move and enemies will end up playing pass the parcel with you.  The fighting moves were nothing too exciting with the exception of two; spinning headbutt, which sees you character spinning through the air, and the cyclone kick, which makes you spin up into the air like an open cork screw.


The enemies vary quite a bit, most of which are okay but there are a few annoying ones.  There is Burnov, he is wears a welders mask and enjoy using his fingers as a weapon (that's not a misprint). There is Abobo who apparently used to be a football player, he charges you, and then throws you over his head.  Of course I couldn't forget Roper, he likes to throw things at you boomerang style, annoying as hell.  There were a few occasions where enemies were completely hidden off screen and then suprised you by kicing you in the face, which sucked.  There were also enemies who would wait at the top of a ladder waiting to hit you, this seemed quite an unfair advantage as there was no way to counter it.


Jumping. Jumping. Jumping!!! Jumping was pretty bad and very rigid, but I learnt to live with it, that was until the later stages.  All of a sudden I'm playing Prince of Persia, dodging traps, jumping from one platform to another, and with the jump being so bad I lost quite a few lives.


Overall the gameplay was okay, but the jumping and traps later in the game really soured things for me.



Final Thoughts

How did I feel after little over three hours?  Disappointed.  There was nothing daring or exciting about it, the story was weak, the visuals were only okay, the music...next, and then the gameplay, the real core of any game could have been good, but instead was only okay due to the jumping.  There were two positives for me out of the experience; one I didn't get the special edition, two I got to try River City Melee.  This one gets a low 2 out of 5