Double Dragon will also remind the gamer that life before 3D cards was not all that wonderful for gamers. Billy and Jimmy Lee move awkwardly through their world. Attacks and jumps have to be lined up perfectly, although the gamer gets no real sense of depth perception. Even picking up an object can take a few tries until the character is in just the right spot.
The button layout is simple with punch, kick and jump buttons that can be combined to perform jump kicks and elbow smashes (the most powerful attack). The fights tend to become simple button mashing, with elbow smash after elbow smash. The punch button is also utilized to pick up and use weapons such as whips, knives, dynamite and boulders. There are no sound effects associated with the weapons; not even so much as a “thump” when connecting with the baseball bat.
Co-op mode can be local or on Xbox Live. Because the movement is awkward, and attacks have to be lined up almost perfectly, gamers will consistently find themselves apologizing for hitting their teammate, and vise versa. I don’t remember too much of this back in the day, so this likely has a lot to do with how games are designed and played these days, versus yesteryear.
It’s been about 20 years since we first met Billy and Jimmy Lee. They have not aged gracefully. Double Dragon is a game that should have received a massive retooling to bring it into the modern era, or been left to those gamers that like to pull out their old NES system once in a while. Though the game is only 400 points, that is a steep price for about 20 minutes of game play.
