Bout to take a dive into Double Dragon Gaiden in the next week or so, wish me luck.
Regarding Double Dragon Gaiden: I unlocked all the stuff and got both the endings with no continues/revives. It didn't take nearly as long as I expected. It's a really good game. Permit me to sperg at length.
I like the way the Story Mode is structured. You select the order you play stages in, but you see only the see all four areas of the last one you pick. After each area, you pick one of a random set of perks. Apparently this is what we're calling a "roguelike" now, although nothing about the stages is randomized. So it can be played either for a skillz-only clear like an arcade game, or you can grind away and buy stuff if you prefer, and the alternate paths thankfully keep playthroughs down to... like an hour I guess? Still kinda long imo, but I prefer branching paths to having to go through everything.
There is also more of an actual roguelite mode ("Survival Mode") with random enemies, like the ones in SoR4 and Shredder's Revenge. I kinda like DDG's version of this best: no permanent upgrades like SR, perks not as game-changingly overpowered as SoR4's. But I still feel like this concept hasn't really been done right.
The basic enemies are awfully docile even with the difficulty sliders maxed out. Despite there being a mechanic literally called "Crowd Control", you don't have to do a lot of actual crowd control, since you can run right by mobs without getting tagged. Challenge takes ages to ramp up and is mainly supplied by stage hazards and bosses. Cranking up the difficulty to make the mobs a little more interesting just makes the bosses into total dicks. They get a ton of hyperarmor (i.e. they do not react to getting hit), which is a usually not-fun mechanic that devs have somehow become fascinated with. Could be skill issues but there's no practice mode to work out the thorny bits.
I don't love the enemy designs in general. They telegraph every attack and do annoying stuff like dodge punches and make you catch them while recovering. They're fun to smack around with super moves, often annoying to mix it up with.
Controls feel really good. You can do funny stuff like: do a super, tag your partner in, then do another super. Stuff cancels into other stuff, combos are fun.
They didn't even try with the character balance, in a couple of senses. Marian's stupid OP, probably by oversight. The unlockable final boss is even more stupid OP, probably on purpose. In many cases, not sure if the character actually sucks or is just annoying to use. I like a plain ol' Billy and Jimmy team just for not feeling gimmicky.
I'd keep playing but the game seems to be telling me to fuck off already. It doesn't locally track personal-best high scores or which characters you finished the game with. Leaderboards only go up to the top 100. Survival Mode has no goal. The difficulty settings are a mess of sliders instead of Easy-Mid-Hard. So the game is still fun to me but I don't know wtf to do with it, and also I'm tired of breezing through the first 30 minutes of a run then in dying to a couple hits from some boss I've never seen before.
But also, regarding Double Dragon Revive: they've done a few trailers and apparently it is a 3D "belt scroller" like Rushing Beat X, though 90% of the footage is still super move animations. Looks tricked out with fighting game mechanics and 3D action stuff. Doesn't look bad really, but I am a simple man who likes mashing one button and hour-long games, and at a certain point maybe you gotta say yeah, this is really a character action game and nothing like an arcade beatemup at all, even if you can only face in two directions.
Can't find anything about the new Streets of Rage or Golden Axe. I hope they are dead and whoever greenlit them is also dead.
Oh wait, P.S.
From a year ago:
https://www.retronews.com/sega-is-developing-a-new-golden-axe-game/
Sega is developing a new Golden Axe game, but it has been revealed that Secret Base, the studio known for Double Dragon Gaiden, had plans to pitch their own version of the game with a more traditional approach. This version would have featured 2D graphics with pixel-based visuals. However, it seems that Sega’s version of the game is the one currently in production.
Fucking hell, we could have had this instead of that 3D Clash of Clans looking dogshit:
