Double Dragon Revive feels oddly named to me, not least because 2023’s Double Dragon: Rise of the Dragons felt like a much more comprehensive revival of one of gaming’s oldest side-scrolling brawlers than anything this YUKE’S developed effort can offer up. Now while that opener sounds pretty far from any kind of praise, it’s also true that Double Dragon Revive does some really rather neat things that future Double Dragon games should absolutely incorporate into their arsenal going forward.
Double Dragon Revive PS5 Review
Let’s not sugarcoat Double Dragon Revive‘s biggest flaw however, it should never have had 3D characters and full eight way movement for a multitude of reasons. The first of these reasons is felt right away as soon as you start directing the fisticuff flavoured agency of your character in that firing off the various punches, kicks, grapples and special moves simply just doesn’t feel snappy enough, and certainly compares unfavourably to both the excellent Double Dragon: Rise of the Dragons and genre kingpin Streets of Rage 4 which came before it (or indeed the much more recent and equally great Absolum).
Another issue with embracing these sorts of 3D characters and eight way movement methodology in a side-scrolling brawler like this is that enemy hit boxes can feel inconsistent in ways that they never should do. I should be able to rely on the fact that when I punch an enemy directly in front of me that the punch will land and not have the punch ‘slipped’ by the fact that my foe has ‘tilted’ onto a different axis. It just makes the whole affair feel much less precise and much less satisfying as a result.
One other problem with having 3D characters in lieu of detailed 2D sprites is that outside of the stylistic choice (and it is one that doesn’t especially appeal to me due to the soulless looking character models and generic designs), the animations just lack any of the fluidity that you would expect. Strikes don’t really land with any real gusto and just the whole affair feels somewhat neutered, and again I suppose, more soulless as a result. Visually too, this Unreal Engine powered offering just looks bland for the most part with dull looking environments and reused character models contrasting poorly with the otherwise decent looking particle effects which reliably erupt during combat.
Elsewhere, the series’ odious obsession with platforming returns unfortunately like a bad smell that I just wish would waft off entirely. Pointedly, there’s one whole section which is just your player character trying to leap across chasms in a room filled with conveyor belts, falling hand grenades and erupting furnaces. Platforming in a side-scrolling brawler should never be a thing anyway (just focus on the brawling, for the love of all that is holy), but when the platforming itself feels as clunky and imprecise as it does here, thanks again to the impreciseness that is inherent to the 3D character models and game world, the misery is somewhat magnified and sometimes, just sometimes, your controller *might* take an unplanned trip across the room.
And then there’s the story. Look, having a narrative has hardly been a pressing priority in any of the Double Dragon games and for good reason – I mean, how much narrative dressing do you really need for a game where its raison d’etre is just smacking dudes in the face over and over until they stop moving while you rescue a kidnapped friend? But alas, Double Dragon Revive actually has a story of sorts that connects up each of the various stages via cutscenes with still images and some voice acting overlaid on top and it is, as you might well guess, pretty risible stuff that is neither especially interesting or well-written. Pour one out however for the voice cast because though the material is poor, they do their best with it regardless.
Somewhere else where Double Dragon Revive comes unstuck is in its difficulty, which often feels frustratingly uneven. Though the moment to moment vanquishing of regular foes with your array of punches, kicks, special moves, weapons and environmental kills are all quite doable, dandy and all that, the bosses represent a massive spike in difficulty that feels extremely jarring and not at all built up to well enough.
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From a value perspective I think it’s also reasonable to posit that Double Dragon Revive is also somewhat lacking. Though there are cooperative multiplayer modes, a bounty mode that has you taking on various bosses at elevated levels of difficulty and even separate Double Dragon Dodgeball DLC, there isn’t a whole lot to bring you back to Double Dragon Revive, outside of the trophy hunting of course, once the credits of the story campaign have completed their roll.
Despite going in on Double Dragon Revive with eight paragraphs of criticism, I’ll also readily admit that this YUKE’S developed effort also gets a few things right, too. For a start, there are a surprising amount of overlapping systems in Double Dragon Revive, taking in all manner of attack cancels, counters, finishing blows (which consume one dragon orb which can be built up by landing strikes on enemies) and more besides which when taken in tandem, help to provide the combat with the sort of depth that was quite unexpected.
And that touches on the other thing which I quite like about Double Dragon Revive, which is to say that this latest entry in the series makes great use of its various environments to provide the player with additional methods with which to deal out pain to their adversaries. From environmental finishers that let you can be activated by either dragging enemies near or knocking them toward highlighted areas in the level, to being able to kick off of walls to deliver a devastating attack from above and even using aspects of the environment such as hanging bars to swing off and drop on top of enemies, Double Dragon Revive certainly has no shortage of ways for you to lay your enemies low and this is the sort of stuff I’d love to see carried forward into future instalments in the Double Dragon series.
Though Streets of Rage 4 remains the bar to pass, Double Dragon Revive even feels markedly less satisfying than the excellent Double Dragon: Rise of the Dragons which was released a little over two years ago. That said, while Double Dragon Revive does implement some neat mechanics which would serve future games well, the lackluster 3D character models and dull worlds act to its ultimate detriment, resulting in plodding combat that rarely satisfies or compels. If this was intended to be a true revival of Double Dragon, then someone forgot to bring along the soul because what we’ve ended up with is a hollow facsimile of what Double Dragon should be, rather than an evolved celebration of everything we loved about it in the first place.
Double Dragon Revive is out now on PS4 and PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.