Game #1132: Double Dragon Neon

  Totally tubular.

 It was but a few years ago that Double Dragon Neon first released. I played the demo and decided that it was OK, but as with most games digital... I wasn't too interested in it unless it got a physical release. From what I can tell, Neon is pretty divisive, some people hate it, some people love it. And then, there's me...

 The game is a pseudo remake of the first game, Marianne gets kidnapped and Billy and Jimmy team up to save her. But after the first stage all bets are off, as the brothers get whisked to space, and sans Abobo and the whip ladies, nothing is the same. The machine-gun tooting final boss of the original is nowhere to be seen either, as the new villain is a Skeletor-ninja wannabe called Skullmageddon. The Neon in the title comes from the fact that the game is styled after the 80s, the brothers have dumb 80s references waiting to be heard, but also, the soundtrack features glorious 80s inspired tracks, Mango Tango being a particular standout.

 While both brothers are identical, you can't pick who to play is, which sucks. Characters get a basic weak, infinite two punch-combo, a strong attack, a jump and a dodge that can turn into a roll or a crouching attack. If you dodge just before getting hit you'll get a brief but juicy damage buff. My beef with the system is that a few enemies can just decide to break out of your punches with their own attacks, while armed enemies get super armor on their attacks, a perk you don't get. And while you can cancel your weak attacks into a crouch/dodge... if the enemy decides to break out of your strong attack you are boned, which felt really unfair. The timing for the dodge seems to be pretty tight too. This is what makes the game so challenging.

 Fallen enemies may reward you with mix tapes, of which there are two kinds: Stances and Sotetsu. You can equip one of both, Stances provide stat buffs and passive perks, for instance, Rage gives you better buffs as you lose health, while Successive Attacks makes you stronger as your combos get lengthier. You can also go for more basic mixtapes, such as Power Gambit that gives you major buffs to your strength or Balanced which gives you smaller buffs but to every stat. As for Sotetsu, these are energy-consuming attacks that are performed with the R button, and by Energy I mean their own energy bar and not your health bar. You can swap mix tapes at any time. The thing is... as you go through the game, these are the only things making you stronger, and you'll need to grind for mixtapes if you want to make it anywhere on the harder difficulty settings. There's a maximum amount of tapes you can collect per type too, if you want to enhance them further you need to collect crystals, which are dropped from bosses, and find a tapesmith which only appears in some stages. The Stance tapes are alright, I think, but only being able to equip one skill at a time is... limiting. The basic moveset is pretty barebones as is, I would've liked being able to buy new moves that I could use a any time instead of this.

 Double Dragon Neon is alright, but it's nothing worth writing home about. It's fine, but it's nowhere near as close to how great Double Dragon Advance was.

 6.0