Good morning brawlers! I played Double Dragon Revive over the weekend and wanted to give a breakdown of the gameplay, what to expect and my overall thoughts, critiques and wishes for the game going forward!
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get direct footage but I was allowed to record offscreen from my phone, which you can check out in the video above!
As a result of this, I’ll be using the direct footage from the TGS showing as a reference since I can now contextualize everything from that footage in the article. With that being said, let’s get into it!
Introduction
Double Dragon Revive was showcased at the Arc World Tour finals in Los Angeles. It was provided in a custom-made cabinet made by Iconic Arcade. From what I was told, there are no plans to reproduce or sell these cabinets as it was just a cross promotion for their upcoming product, which is an arcade cabinet for classic double dragon.
I did play on their Double Dragon classic cabinet and while the art and size of the cabinet was decent compared to their direct competitor (Arcade1up) the cabinet did still feel pretty light, the sticks and buttons were serviceable but nothing too special and the game itself still suffers from slowdown despite being emulated.
It’s not related to the topic at hand, but I figured I should mention my thoughts on it in case you were interested in buying one in the future. I’m not entirely sure when these will be sold but there you have it.
The Double Dragon Revive cabinet was similar to this but had eight buttons, and a fully displayed 16:9 screen. I’m not sure if the cabinet button and sticks are actually functional as it was a promotional cabinet so the game was played with 2 Xbox 360 controllers instead, which if you know Double Dragon’s history, you know why that was an eerie feeling..
Gameplay
Revive has a total of 8 base functions:
– (X) Normal Attack
– (Y) Special Attack
– (A) Jump
– (B) Hyper Blows
– (RB) Dodge
– (LB) Guard
– (RT) Grab/Interact
– (X+A) Finishing Blow
You move and attack in all 8 directions, making this game effectively a 3d brawler with a rail camera. This includes jumping as well, which… I’ll talk about it in a moment.
Basic Attacks
Using your normal attacks, you have your standard combo, which differs between the brothers, Jimmy has a slow but powerful combo that ends with an uppercut and Billy is quicker, ending his combo with a flying knee attack.
Strong attacks are also in this game by holding down the normal attack button and releasing after the character signals the attack is ready. I honestly struggled to find use for them, so you won’t see them in the video. However, after inspecting some gameplay footage, one of the primary usages of these moves are for the special wall combos. As shown below.
Jumping normal attack is just the jump kick and nothing else from what I could tell, and these don’t change between the Lee Brothers. Maybe it’ll be different for Marian and Ranzou.
Special Attacks
Your special attack, by default, knocks enemies into the background. This is mostly useful for interactions with different level hazards, which will KO the enemy immediately.
The jump special for both brothers is an air grab into slam with only a slight variation in the animation. But this isn’t all for the special moves.
Pressing LB and normal attack together will give you an anti-air attack, which also serves as a launcher. I used this the most in the video to try and see if there was any verticality to the combat, but it seems this is mostly used for stage interaction and anti-air.
Pressing LB and special will give you a low attack. For Jimmy, this is a slide, and I believe it’s the same for Billy but just like with the strong attack, I didn’t find much use for this, so I never used it in combat.
Pressing back and normal attack during a combo will give you a strong rear attack, which can also be done with pressing LB, back, and normal attack together.
There’s also a stomping mechanic by using the right trigger. In some cases, I was actually able to stunlock with this as there’s no limit to its usage. This comes in handy at the end of a combo since enemies do take a while to get up.
Grappling
Speaking of the right trigger, normally you use this to grab enemies, but it also has some other uses that we’ll cover in a bit. You can walk around with the enemies using Billy and Jimmy. This could change for the other characters, but for now, it seems to he the default.
When grabbing enemies, you have a few options, you can pummel them by standing neutral and pressing normal attack, throw backward with back and normal attack, and push them into other enemies with forward and normal attack. Special attack defaults to the forward push.
The same applies when throwing them into the foreground and background. Usually, for this, you utilize level hazards as with normal special attack.
Juggling
There isn’t a lot to say for this part of the combat, juggles are serviceable when you’re able to pull them off. The hardest part of juggling is the 8-way movement getting in the way.
There are no air combos in the game, as I alluded to earlier, so the verticality is quite limited. If you want to maximize juggling in this game, you’re going to have to utilize wall bounces and time your attacks accordingly.
Hyper Blows
These are your megacrash moves, which for Billy and Jimmy are both tornado kicks for standing megacrash. This move gives you super armor and breaks most attacks, but it doesn’t have full invulnerability. If you mistime this against an enemies armored attack, you get hit, time it right, and it’ll break their move and put them into a dizzy state.
The classic knee drop attack is the air Hyper Blow move. The normal version of the move can break armored attacks and is pretty good for a safe landing.
This gets powered up if you use it during a high jump. The powered up version has a huge area of effect that knocks away enemies and does a lot of damage.
If you’re near a wall and grabbing an enemy, this button is also used for a special interaction detailed below.
Environmental Attacks
I believe this is where the game shows most of it’s potential, there’s a wide variety of different Interactions that can happen in this game.
To get this out of the way, these interactions do not interrupt the gameplay during co-op mode. The camera zoom only happens during single-player. There are three types of interactions to look forward to.
Hazard interactions happen when throwing, pushing, or launching enemies into things like gates, a fridge, trash can, etc. These are highlighted to let you know what can be used and instantly KO the enemy.
Dynamic interactions between the player and the environment itself in which you can jump off walls, swing off signs, and parkour over bikes and tables. The parkour has an auto attack while the other two interactions lead into the powered up hyper blow.
Then there are the projectiles. Things like basketballs, paint buckets, and even cans are there for you to kick into an enemies face. There’s not too much special about these, but if you want to stun an enemy from far away, it comes in handy.
Weapon Combat
Weapons in this game so far a quite powerful. In the demo, you get bats, knives, and one double baton pick up. All of the weapons have a combo that you can do with normal attacks, and you can throw them by pressing special attack.
You drop the weapons when interacting with the stage, using specials, or just pressing the grab trigger. Weapons do eventually break as well, but you’ll get a lot of use out of them before that happens.
Defense Mechanics
You have the ability to guard which blocks most attacks, then you have forward and back dashes and the ability to roll. The enemies didn’t give me much reason to utilize these mechanics, you can pretty much escape using the special moves and I-frames from throwing and other interactions so I didn’t use these much aside from messing around with the dashes in empty space.
Finishing Blow
Last thing to look at are the Finishing Blows, these are effectively all the characters’ super moves. You have the dragon orb gauge which is built up from attacks but keeping your combo without getting hit, environment interaction, using special techniques and weapon usage builds up the meter fast. Once the meter is full you get to unleash a cinematic super move. You get two of these.
Enemies
Speaking of the enemies there’s not a lot to write home about here so far, you have standard goons like Ralph, Jack and Brad that utilize basic things like standing and jumping attacks.
Each of them have a favorite weapon they like to use between the knives and bats and they have a signature move like Ralph’s double armed swing and Jacks jumping haymaker.
Then you have the mid tier enemies like Al and Burnov. Both of them have unblockable attacks mentioned above and are more likely to have a wake-up attack.
Lastly are the boss types, Abobo, who fights you on the basketball court. He has a shoulder charge, a ground pound that covers the entire ground, a strong armored kick, and a battle cry when getting up from the ground. He eventually runs away, which hints at him appearing later in the game.
Roper ends the stage with a one on one boss fight. He has pretty much the same patterns as Abobo, a charging bat swing, wake up attack and ground pound with less ground coverage. The difference for him is the added projectile and his combo.
He spawns a lot of bats, which I found odd considering how strong the weapons are. After beating him, the demo ends. So, with the rundown of the gameplay, I’ll get into my praises and critiques, which will cover everything else.
Praises
- Visually, the graphics aren’t mind blowing but with seeing the game in action, they did grow on me. The game is budgeted, and it shows here, but as someone who doesn’t care a lot about graphics, I think the game looks fine.
- The camera zoom in during the special moves is pretty cool. I’m happy that this only happens in single-player, and I hope there’s an option to turn them off entirely for players who don’t want interruptions.
- The gameplay is quite responsive, I didn’t deal with any input lag. Movement is pretty smooth, and when the attacks land, the hit detection is solid.
- Sound design is also serviceable, not the best, but not terrible, either. Voice acting is okay, but the sound levels are pretty low compared to the rest of the game sounds
- So far, the music is good. The classic stage 1 theme has a nice remix and In like the boss theme as well as some music previews that I’ll be posting to the channel today (surprise). I am hoping to hear some new tunes and maybe some more iconic themes in the future.
- Environmental interactions are really fun, I actually want to see more of this in the combat.
Critiques
- I’m not a huge fan of exceeding 4 primary buttons, as I often use a fight stick for most beat em ups. I think the Dodge and Block functions, for example, could have been mapped to the same button as well as all the interactions utilizing them.
- The grab as it currently functions doesn’t necessarily need a button, being able to walk up and grab a stunned enemy would work just fine in this game and the other functions such as item pick up could actually overlap the proposed block/dodge button.
- Some functions are a bit confusing in how they are mapped, for example, using the special input as an air grab when there’s a grab input or the special button not having a lot of usage for things like the stomp (grab input is used for this instead)
- There’s decent hit detection, but it needs work, mostly in situations where you’re punching diagonally or towards/away from the camera. The hit detection could be a little more leniency in these instances, especially when juggling. I don’t often suggest the usage of stick to targe, but something like that would help tighten the gameplay a bit
- The jump mechanics and overall vertically of this game is probably its weakest point. There could be a few more air attacks and better synchronization of light jump kick into the air grab, better jump canceling, and better air control has a whole.
- Strong attacks need a better visual cue. You get an indication that the charge attack is ready, but it’s very awkward in how it works. I didn’t find a lot of use for this mechanic, so I would suggest some quicker charge buffering to use during combos (see Streets of Rage 4)
- Currently, the mechanics don’t link together that well. Everything works well in its own separate bubble, which is fine for things like the level interactions, but I hope to see juggles, air combat, and grapples synchronize better in the future.
- The constant visual indication of most enemy attacks give the game a “Simon says” feel to it and I hope on higher difficulties we can remove the indicators.
Hopes and Wishes
- Given Yukes’ history with wrestling games, I’m hoping to see more grounded mechanics added from the classic games. Look no further than Super Double Dragon and Double Dragon Advance for this. The air to ground stomp, mounting grounded enemies and full nelsons, for example.
- Expanded mechanics like timed parries for the guard, more grappling moves (add a grappler, please!), expand the air combat a bit with a few more attacks if nothing else.
- I didn’t play a lot of co-op, but I hope to also see some team attacks in the game as well.
- Classic and alternate skins for the characters, I think this one is a given especially since the game is in 3D now and it would just spread the game across more audiences.
- More playable characters like Sonny, Matin, and the Chin brothers.
- Online Co-op
That’s it for now. Hopefully, I’ll get the play more of the game in the future, I did have fun with this one, and I see a lot of potential in it, so hopefully, there’s no disappointment when it releases. Wishlist it at the links below, I’ll catch you guys next time!
– Mr.Din