DOUBLE DRAGON
II: THE REVENGE
This game is just awesome.
I
remember many a days playing this after coming home from school, right
after
watching some ninja turtles cartoons. My brother and I would sit
down and
proceed to wooping up on some street criminals.
The plot goes something like
this. Billy Lee's girlfriend is killed by the leader of the
Shadow Warriors, and Billy and Jimmy set off to get revenge for
her. The game play takes you
through 8 stages of side scrolling beat-em-up action before taking you
to the final boss with the shadow master.
The gameplay can be confusing at
first
because your punch/kick buttons change depending on the direction you
are facing. For example, if you are facing right , your punch
button will be A and your kick ( which is directed behind your player)
will be B and if you turn around to fight
an enemy behind you it reverses. After this little oddness
in controlls is overcome, though, there are many
many moves at your disposal. In addition to Billy and Jimmy's
basic punches and back kicks, you have uppercuts,
jump kicks, holding axe kicks, holding throws over your shoulder,
holding elbow drops, as well as a
devestating jumping spin kick and flying knee kick. Aside from
your unarmed attacks you also have at your disposal several
weapons that you can steal from a defeated foe, including chain whips,
throwing knives, lead pipes, fire
bombs, and hand grenades.
The game has 3 difficulty modes
to
choose from as well as 3 modes of game play, including one single
player and two 2 player games. The first of the 2 player games is
a coop type game in which you are only allowed to hurt the enemies, as
coop should be, but the 2nd is an
all out free for all battle, and whats worse, if you kill your friend,
his lost life will be added to
your total remaining lives. It sure makes for some interesting
gameplay, at least, until one of you quits; then the other
one has an easy double lives chance to beat the game singlehandedly. :)
As far as difficulty goes(
considering
you play the hardest one-otherwise you cannot access all the levels)
this game
is fairly easy.The first and second levels are pretty straight forward,
but in the third stage you have to be careful not to fall out of the
helicopter
whenthe door opens periodically. The 4th and 5th stages are
fairly
simple also, aside from a
few carefully placed jumps. The sixth stage, the mansion, and the
seventh one are the real doosies of
the game. The mansion
has several precise jumps you have to make where one platform will
appear and you jump to it, wait a second,
jump blindly to
another platform that appears right as you get to it,and so on. Fall
and you hit the spikes and die. The seventh stage
is nothing but a series of trap rooms which can be
really frustrating. The most aggrivating part of this, in my
opinion, are the sections
where there is a bridge that is quickly dissapearring
with a bed of deadly spikes beneath and you have to kill the badies
with haste while avoiding
falling or being knocked into the ever growing
chasm below. Only after all the enemies are dead, including a boss
character, will the door open
allowing you to proceed. Level 8 will have you fighting every
boss character again, some of which multiple times, but actually it is
a very short stage. The real test is the battle with your mirror
image, which is pretty tough. He is able to perform all the same moves
as you but is
also able to disappear and reappear inside you , beating you helplessly
for a time, as well as being able to throw fireballs. Whats
crazier, with two players you have two dopplegangers to face at the
same time.
The last boss comes after the
shadow match with
yourself, and this boss is aggrivating and pretty hard until you get to
know his pattern. Pretty much the easiest and most reliable way
to kill
him is to ( with a little luck )continuously pull off a constant
barrage of flying knee kicks and flying spin kicks without letting him
get a lick in. Once he starts , your health drops real quick. He has a
powerful knockdown jump spin , powerful kicks and quick
punches that are hard to avoid, and whats worse he backflips away
nearly every time you throw a move at him, only to follow it up
with an instant spin attack which nearly always hits you.
I will have to
say the ending is pretty cool, in
comparison to the vast majority of NES games. The artwork is
pretty good and the story isnt super cheesy.
All in all, I'd have
to say that this is my favorite
hand-to-hand beat-em-up game on the NES, with only River City Ransom
taggin at its heels. The nice gameplay, sweet soudntrack,cool
story and
grapics, variety of enemies and weapons , and the fun factor
while playing cooperatively with a friend as well as solo make this one
of the
best NES games I've ever had the pleasure of owning.
DIFFICULTY AVERAGE
GRAPHICS
8
SOUND
8
GAMEPLAY 8
FUN
9
OVERALL
8
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