Double Dragon Neon

Double Dragon: Neon is a modern instalment of the late 80's beat 'em up. Released in 2012 on the consoles and ported to the PC in 2014, Neon sees you play as Billy (with Jimmy being assigned to Player 2 in multiplayer), fighting your way through enemies in order to rescue the damsel in distress.

The game plays up on the clichés of the game, and takes you through typical locations as well as crazy ones. You will battle your way through streets, laboratories, grave yards and space.

Some of the old beat-'em-up games tended to be a bit mindless and placed little focus on actual skill. Neon's combat gives you enough control to vary your attacks and strike the balance between attack and defence. You can punch, kick, jump, dodge, run and use a special attack. Pressing the dodge button causes you to quickly duck, whilst pressing a direction allows you to roll too. A perfectly timed duck gives you 'gleam' which allows you to deal significantly more damage in your next attack.

After a few hits, the enemies will enter a dazed state. They then can be thrown to finish them off. If you miss this opportunity, enemies will lay on the floor for a few seconds. At this point you can walk over to them and punch them on the ground to deal the killer blow.

Occasionally, defeated enemies drop music tracks which increase one of the many fighting stances or special attacks. These can be switched on a menu screen. The fighting stances change how much health, defence, attack, and magic you have, alongside extra perks such as regenerating health. The special attacks consist of various projectile and physical attacks. The randomness of the drops mean it is beneficial to keep checking which ones are strongest, forcing you to mix up your abilities and play-style which is a cool feature. Every ten ranks in a particular tape requires you to spend Mithril at the Tapesmith to unlock the next tier - up to a maximum of level 50.

The music in the game is really cool. They have gone for 80's inspired music which suits the game's aesthetic and tone.

The game saves after each level, but you only get two lives, although you can find some extra lives in the levels. There's some areas of the game that can be particularly tough, but after a few attempts, or switching to a different fighting style, I made progress. Once you complete the main game, you unlock harder difficulties, but your abilities carry over.

There's the occasional frame-rate drop, and the game runs progressively sluggish over time, forcing you to turn it off and on again. The game does not work on Windows 10 (well, it runs for a while then crashes). Therefore, sadly; it is a poor port since the developers have no interest in fixing the bug. Aside from this, the game is great fun, but I'd have to recommend sticking to the console version.