Gameplay
Revenge of the Wounded Dragons (ROTWD) is a tale of two brothers who intend to avenge the death of their grandfather and rescue their sister from the clutches of a local mafia boss. It’s a game best played with a friend in cooperative mode.
Outside of their red and blue shirts, the brothers are exactly the same character. Both brothers have a basic punch and kick, as well as a variety of finishing moves. Punches and kicks can be spiced up a bit by crouching down for a low punch or sweep, or jumping for a flying kick. Finishing moves are cool and there are a variety of them, depending on what buttons you press while an enemy is stunned. You’ll know that an enemy is stunned by the stars floating above their head. Each finishing move has a name that is said whenever executed. These include Bamboo Breaker, Fiery Elbow, Exploding Fist, Iron Head, Dragonfly Kick, and a handful of others. It’s nice that players can choose which of these finishing moves they want to do depending on what face button and direction they press on the controller.
Cooperative mode features a few additional abilities, too. By holding Square, a player can grab an enemy by the arms and restrain him, allowing the other player to pummel him. While playing through the game with Nathan, another editor for the site, we didn’t find this very useful. Normally, there are enough enemies on screen to keep both players busy. By doing the restraining move, you’re really just taking one player out of the action and forcing the other one to come over and finish the enemy off. Another co-op move you can do is a Super Flying Kick. This action has one player crouching down while another player comes up from behind and presses X. This makes the standing player hop over the crouched player with a powerful horizontal kick. The third cooperative ability is Soul Transfer. With Soul Transfer, one player can transfer health to another player by pressing and holding L2. This is a great way to help conserve lives, and it was something Nathan and I used often during the course of each chapter.
Speaking of chapters, there are four in ROTWD with six areas each. The chapters are set in a Village, Forest, Red District, and Monastery, with the Monastery being the toughest and coolest. Each chapter gives players five lives, and each area acts as a checkpoint that you can restart at should all of your lives be depleted. Additional lives can be earned by finding heart icons that are hidden throughout some areas. Players can also get some health back by finding the rice bowl power ups or by using Soul Transfer.
The HUD displays the available number of lives in the top center of the screen as well as player health on either side. You’ll notice another meter next to the health meter, too. This is the Dragon Rage meter, which builds up as you successfully dispatch enemies. You can also pickup Yin Yang power ups that fill up a good chunk of this meter. When the meter is full, players can press R2 to fire up the Dragon Rage. During this time, the player has an orange glow around him and attacks do more damage. It doesn’t take very long to fill up the meter and far less time to deplete it.
In addition to health and bonus life powerups, there are a variety of weapons players can utilize. These include bats, bags, barrels, nunchuks, throwing knives, bo staffs, and even firearms like a pistol, shotgun, and an uzi. Since you cannot hurt your partner, it’s not a problem to shoot right through them and into the enemy. Enemies are able to carry most of these weapons too, and you’ll run into most gun toting foes in the Red District. The ability to use weapons is a staple of the genre and I’m glad to see it included here.
Platforming, Other Modes, Presentation
ROTWD does have all of the characteristics of a 2D brawler, but it also has more platforming than any 2D brawler I’ve ever played. Platforming in ROTWD has players jumping into areas above and below them, as well as plenty of gap-jumps and timing jumps. In most areas, you won’t die from a failed jump, but there are several areas that will kill you if you miss the jump. In addition to jumping, players will also flip switches to open doors and roll under barriers and moving environmental dangers. The camera does a great job of zooming out when players get far apart from one another.
Each area of all four chapters features platforming and brawling in spades. As with just about every game in the genre, things do get repetetive and the areas start to blend into one another. The background theme and the appearance of the enemies are the most distinguishable differences. Each chapter is completed by taking down a boss character, which thankfully don’t reappear a dozen times later, a problem that so many games in the genre have. At the end of each chapter, player stats are shown as well as how many collectibles you’ve found. Collectibles include sets of teeth and statues, some of which are hidden in secret areas. This does add some depth and replay value to the campaign, and finding all of these collectibles will be a goal for Trophy hunters in their attempt to collect all twelve Trophies ROTWD has to offer.
The story mode takes anywhere from three to five hours to complete, depending largely on how much time you spend checking every nook for collectibles. As you play through the story, you unlock four minigames: Lanterns, Labyrinth, Chicken Hunt, and PvP. These split-screen competetive modes are somewhat interesting, but they may not be enough to keep you coming back once the story is done. Lanterns, Labyrinth, and Chicken Hunt are similiar in that players must use their platforming skills to quickly navigate an area to either collect objects or get to the exit. PvP, obviously, pits player against player.
No matter what mode you play, expect a nice presentation that has lots of smooth animation, a great frame rate, and some vibrant colors. Basic animated cutscenes play in between chapters and these are cool and pretty well done. The graphics aren’t outstanding, but they are very good and get the job done. You can say the same thing about the audio. I thought the echoed voice effect that plays whenever you do a finishing move was cool, but it too can get repetetive if you and your friend are doing a lot of the same finishing move. That’s a minor gripe though; the rest of the audio is solid, and you also have the ability to use your own custom soundtrack from the PS3.
To the summary…