Back in March, Bow Mobile and Brizo Interactive released their remake of the classic arcade beat 'em up DoubleDragon [$1.99]. As a huge fan of these kinds of games for most of my life, I actually really enjoyed this new DoubleDragon quite a bit in our review. In fact, the biggest negative for me was the poorly thought out virtual control area that was basically an unnecessary gigantic panel that blocked about a third of the screen. My other problem was the fact that the Game Center integration in the game didn't seem to be working at all.
Well, several months later and DoubleDragon has received its first update, and at least one of these problems has been partially corrected. Game Center still seems to be defective, but the developers have tweaked the obnoxious control area to be just slightly less obnoxious. The default setting now has the same control panel but it's translucent, so enemies or deadly pits can still be seen if they're at the bottom of the screen.
The second option does away with the decorative panel altogether, and just shows translucent buttons only. There's still about a third of the screen that is basically dead space, most likely to keep a certain aspect ratio of the gameplay screen, but both of these options are much better than they were originally. You can see the new translucent controls in the left screen below, compared to how it was originally on the right. The "no overlay" option can be seen in the large screen above.
Another nice change is an increased hit box for the whip, which actually makes it a usable weapon now. Before it was nearly impossible to line up with an enemy correctly to hit them with the whip, but now, especially with its reach, the whip is a formidable weapon. There are a couple of other minor fixes to round out this update, but the improved control display is definitely the big one. It would really be nice if Game Center could get fixed too, but at least the game keeps track of your high scores and achievements in-game too so you can still get some enjoyment out of them.
If you are a fan of beat 'em ups and haven't checked out DoubleDragon yet, now would be a good time as it's currently on sale for half off at $1.99. Hardcore purists may scoff at the new graphics, but the brawler gameplay is actually really solid and is worth having a look at if you're a fan of the genre.
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