Double Dragon IV (PC) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
687A playthrough of Arc System Works' 2017 retro-styled beat 'em up for PCs running Windows 7 and above, Double Dragon IV (ダブルドラゴン Ⅳ).
This video shows a full playthrough of the story mode with Billy Lee.
I love the Double Dragon series. I always have. They've always been hard, demanding games that are fun whether your play alone or with a buddy. I really like this new title, but I can't say that it quite reaches the heights of the greatness that the originals did.
Double Dragon IV is a direct sequel to Double Dragon II: The Revenge (Arcade, 1988; NES, 1990; TurboGrafx CD, 1993; amongst others), following right after the second game's ending with the fall of the Shadow Warriors. Of all of the original releases, IV far most closely resembles the NES version of II, with the great majority of the characters looking identical to their 8-bit versions. The moves are all exactly the same, too, though thankfully, jumping now gets its own button.
I guess Super Double Dragon wasn't the fourth Double Dragon game. How strange.
The backgrounds are quite noticeably different, though, looking more like 16-bit renderings than anything you'd ever see on the NES (much like how a lot of lame "retro" titles say NES-style, but all that means is that they posterized the life out of the color of a high-quality image, given it some visible jagged edges, and called it authentic), but that and the native widescreen support are about the only things that really break the feeling of true 80s graphics. Well, that and the amount of enemies on-screen is once is of much higher than the NES could ever push.
Many of the levels are a bit meh, to be honest, and weirdly enough, the lamest levels are all packed into the beginning of the game. They get much cooler later on, with a bar, a city street, a harbor, a mansion - the usual stuff - but why do the first three stages all share that ugly, boring brown desert theme? Ugh. The rest of them look much better, but remember those heinous platformer bits in DD2, complete with rapid-fire insta-deaths? Well, if you're jonesing for that authentic feeling of utter frustration and disgust, it's well recreated here! Hahaha, really, it does feel pretty authentic. It's not as good as Double Dragon II for sure, but it's not bad. I had fun with it. Beyond the frustrations of the mechanics, though, it's an extremely easy game. I beat it the first time I played it - that was NOT a feat most people pulled off, myself included, back in 1990 with the original game.
It's a fun nostalgic romp, but I can't help but shake the feeling that this was merely a recreation of 2. The number of recycled elements are appreciated throwbacks, but they seem to merely be present. They really don't add much to the level design, and the levels themselves often feel like generic templates with swapped graphics tiles. There were a couple of cool stand-outs, though, like the recreation of the harbor scene from Renegade (sans motorcycle gangs and pompadours), and the final boss stage on a beach that looks suspiciously close to a stage from Streets of Rage.
One last thing - I have this on both the PS4 and the PC, and I would warn you to stay away from the console version. So many people have been giving it praise for it's "attention to detail", gushing about how there are things like screen-tearing for that nostalgic look. Wow! ...Yeah. No, I don't think so.
I've recorded the PC version here because it runs better than it does on the PS4. Those nostalgic features don't seem to be features at all, but rather flaws in the PS4 port. I don't know what happened, but the shearing of the image on that version is super distracting - and here's the real kicker: the NES never had issues with screen shearing! Sure, things would flicker like crazy, but V-sync issues never were really a problem. So, I'm guessing that the PS4 version is playing up the ugly flaw as a "feature" since it otherwise doesn't make sense to include it. It's not a throwback feature at all. Like I said, play it on PC. There is no screen-shearing whatsoever, you can pair the PS4 controller with the computer, and the game costs the same on Steam as it does on PSN. You're welcome. :)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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