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Arcade Archives Double Dragon II
  PS4Beat_em_upUC  
  opened by paleface at 22:30:06 05/10/19  
  last modified by paleface at 12:27:18 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=PS4; cat=Beat_em_up; reg=NA]
           

 
^ Playing through Arcade Archives Double Dragon II on maximum ("Hard") difficulty on PS4.
 
I think this'll be the last time I play the arcade version of DDII for a while; it's a less subtle, less inspired remake of the first Double Dragon--that goes for the sound, graphics, gameplay, plot, everything; for instance, the story in the first is that your (one of the brothers'? : o) girlfriend is kidnapped by some terrorist guy, so you fight his gang, track him down and rescue her; the story of the second (subtitled "The Revenge") is that your girlfriend is KILLED by the same terrorist guy (0:09), so you fight his gang, track him down, and then, after beating up him and his lieutenants, for some reason you fight a mystical doppelganger of yourself who just freezes time and hits you whenever it wants (34:13). Real fun ending. : P Is this a Freudian thing?
 
And the gameplay feels unbalanced. A lot of the characters just walk right into your flurries of punches (21:33)--except for the ones who seem to have an instant counter for 90% of your attacks (29:48). But for the most part the biggest strategic challenge, rather than juking for the best surprise attack position like you do in the first game, is simply to remember which directional attack button you have to hit (the attack buttons here are left attack and right attack, rather than the first game's dedicated punch and kick buttons).
 
On the plus side, there's a lot less slowdown than in the first game.
 
  paleface 21:37:53 02/16/23
           

 
Well, that'll probably do me for another three years. : P What a weird Frankenstein's monster of a game (Wikipedia says it was gonna be an upgrade kit for Double Dragon but ended up needing more memory so they made it its own game, using pieces of both; Technos did tend to be kinda rough on the technical side of things). That long fight against your mirror ghost who pops out of the floor behind you to paralyze you repeatedly is a bad way to end the thing. ; P Not to mention the actual ending. : PPP
 
And I still can't get used to the directional attack buttons. :PPP
    
 
references:
· Kunio-kun: The World Classics Collection (PS4)

 
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