Double Dragon is a pillar in the great history of walking to the right and beating up bad dudes. The beat ’em up genre’s roots entwine with the Dragons. It’s fitting that, amid a relative upswing in beat ’em up development, Double Dragon Revive is aiming to bring in new players.
I had the opportunity to play a demo of Double Dragon Revive while out in Los Angeles for The Game Awards, as well as speak with Arc System Works Project Leader Hiroshi Nagaki. My first takeaway is that Revive still feels like Double Dragon; and my second is that it also seems to be aiming towards new players.
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“The reason why we made it Double Dragon Revive was that we wanted to, first, respect the older fans, [the] long-time fans,” said Nagaki. “But we also wanted to cultivate newer fans as well.”
After picking a character–I went with Jimmy–I set out on my journey to walk right and beat up bad dudes. Right off the bat, Double Dragon Revive feels familiar to anyone who’s played the series. Punch bad guys, hit them with a special move, pick up weapons, and toss them around.
Beat ’em ups have a particular scrappiness to them. Enemies flood onto the screen, attacks send bodies flying, and weapons and environmental attacks cause chaos all around the battlefield. When done right, it works. And it works in Double Dragon Revive.
Double Dragon Revive knows how to brawl.
But alongside my health bar, I had a meter charging up as I did different moves. Variety is the spice of life, both outside and inside Double Dragon Revive. The more I varied up my attacks, changed how I fought, and used my full arsenal of tools, the faster I could charge my special meter up for a move that could wipe out a ton of bad guys in one blast.
What this means, in practice, is Double Dragon Revive has a lot of different ways to brawl. You can move in and out of the foreground, leaping off signs to slam your fist into the ground, or pick up a melee weapon and toss it at someone for a combo starter.
There are area gimmicks, like a dumpster, that let the player instant-KO an enemy. It always felt great. Beating up enemies with your fists and special attacks is something you can get in a lot of games, but Double Dragon Revive nails the impact when it comes to area gimmicks. Slamming dudes into dumpsters, tossing them against walls for a rebound attack, or using signs and other items as launching pads for attacks makes the arena feel interactive. Rather than a pretty boundary, gimmicks become more tools for you to build up meter and smash baddies.
A particular favorite of mine was the counter system. Certain enemies would charge up line-attack moves. If I timed my response correctly, I could counter and send them flying back, earning a big chunk of meter in the process. Double Dragon Revive feels dynamic in a way that’s surprising and exciting.
Nagaki tells me the team identified that some moves could essentially be leaned upon to clear the entire game. So, alongside variety in the arsenal, enemies may not take damage from certain moves like the jab. It both forces players to vary things up, and to experiment with the play space around them.
Double Dragon Revive aims to bring in new players.
It has, after all, been years since the last Double Dragon entry. And while there’s certainly a drive to honor the tradition, Arc System Works also hopes to bring in new players with its newest entry. The classics have their draw, but they weren’t always drawing in new players.
“Those long time fans really loved that sort of art style and format, but it was not enough to draw the attention of newcomers. So, throughout the seven years, we really thought about new audiences,” said Nagaki. And is kind of the way we modernized and revamped Double Dragon as a game, and how it can look like, and so we made this stylish graphic style and also expanding the gameplay, including all these different gimmicks and special moves and what-not, to try and bring that new experiences, to modernize Double Dragon to the current generation.”
It’s nice to say that, after running through the demo’s stages and boss fight, it feels like Arc System Works is on the right path. I could talk about how the boss used some big attacks to really force me to vary up my fighting style, or how the variety inherent in the combo system encouraged me to play thoughtfully with the tools in my kit.
The newcomer appeal arrives in both style and substance. Nothing feels too watered-down compared to other brawlers. Instead, there are just tons of options and ways to encourage the player to vary things up, experiment with the space around them, and engage with all of the tools at their disposal.
But the best compliment I could give is that, after running the demo once, I immediately wanted to run it again. I wanted to try a new character, improve my combos, and punch my way through even more enemies with the knowledge I’d gleaned from my first run. Repetition is at the heart of the belt-scrolling games. The best of them are incredibly replayable because they just feel good to run back through, no matter how well you know them.
I can’t say for certain whether the full game has that locked down yet, but the slice I played already feels like it’s getting there. We’re already spoiled for good brawlers in this day and age, but seeing a legendary pillar like Double Dragon make a grand re-entrance would certainly be welcome.
