Final Fight – Welcome Back, Friend
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Final Fight, the premise is simple, yet timeless. In Metro City, the Mad Gear Gang has struck again. This time, they’ve captured the mayor’s daughter. Haggar, the mayor, is a former wrestler and he’s none too pleased. Cody, the boyfriend of his daughter, and Guy, Cody’s good friend, are eager to take the fight to the Gang and turn the tide of evil that is growing in Metro City. Over the course of six levels, one or two players can take control of these characters as they fight from the Slums to Uptown to square off against the leader of the Gang.
Controls and gameplay mechanics are about as basic as they come. Players move with the analog stick, jump with Circle, and attack with either X or Square, and execute a 360 degree special attack by pressing Jump and Attack at the same time. If it connects with an opponent, it does damage, but you also lose a little bit of health. This is of course to keep players from abusing this attack. Other gameplay aspects include throwing enemies, which is great fun when you someone into a crowd of other bad guys, knocking them all down. Throwing enemies is easy enough, but getting them in throwing position isn’t a matter of pressing buttons, it’s about approaching them correctly. You need to move down or up the screen, parallel to the front of their bodies; done right, and your player will put the enemy in a standing submission, ready for you to pound them with knees to the gut or throw them over your should (with Cody that is).
Keep an eye out (and believe me they’re not hard to spot) for destructible objects, too. These include trash cans, telephone booths, barrels, and signs. Breaking these will reveal weapons including knives, pipes, and samurai swords, as well as health pickups like hamburgers, chicken, soda, or even jewelry to boost your points. There are also two bonus stages, including busting up a car Street Fighter II style and breaking a bunch of glass windows. These bonus stages are tough, but will net you a lot of points if completed. Finally, all six levels ends with a boss fight including the likes of Eddie the bad cop and Rolento the commando.
Each of the three playable characters are well rendered and have some unique attributes of their own like Haggar’s brute strength and Guy’s speed. Cody, my favorite, might be considered the compromise between the two. I personally find Haggar a bit slow, and Guy’s range a little short, so Cody fits the bill just right. You know I used to wonder why this game didn’t support three simultaneous players. Including that would have been cool to see with this re-make, although they would have had to ramp up the amount of enemies or increase their toughness too to make that feasible. Still, playing with just a single friend is great, or even by yourself if a local or online partner isn’t an option. Similar to Street Fighter IV, players have the option to enable random online player drop-in/drop-out. In other words, you can allow anyone to join your game and come and go as they please or you can keep your games private for just your friends to play. Furthermore, you can disable online functionality completely by selecting that option from the Main Menu. As of last night, which was my first night with Final Fight: Double Impact, I wasn’t able to find any online games to participate in, but admittedly I didn’t search for long.
Instead, I worked my way through the game by myself in under an hour. Keep in mind this is an arcade game originally, so it couldn’t be that long. That and, much longer and it would have felt really repetitive instead of just ‘pretty darn repetitive.” Repetition is one of the staples of the 2D brawler genre though, so you can’t fault it for that. Despite being so short and linear, there’s plenty of reason to come back. Playing with different friends, using different characters, trying to beat a high score and move up the Leaderboards if that’s your thing — are all options to you. More interesting than that, for me at least, are the Challenges that the game offers to you for each level. Most of these Challenges include tasks like completing the level under a certain amount of time, dying so few times, using only so many Continues, defeating the Boss, beating the level with a certain character, and so forth. These Challenges are organized into Tiers so that say you beat a level in five minutes, that might be good enough for the Tier 1 and Tier 2 Challenge, but not enough for the Tier 3 Challenge. All told, there are 51 unlockable items, mostly artwork. I was able to get 30 of these in one play through.
In terms of presentation, Proper Games and Capcom did some cool things with Final Fight: Double Impact. The original music score is intact, but a fresher version of each track is presented by default. The soundtrack won’t blow you away, but some tracks, especially the first level, are classic. Display options are more interesting and give the player the ability to use ‘Cabinet Mode,” which attempts to replicate the look of the arcade. This includes visual details right down to the original artwork on the sides of the screen, which looks great. They’ve even put in scanlines to replicate the old arcade look and it’s darn nice — best rendition I’ve seen since the Sega CD version. That’s the coolest display mode I think, but you can also enable Zoom or Widescreen to stretch the image, as well as enable Upscaling options to smooth out edges.
Magic Sword
If you get tired of Final Fight, what do you do? Well, like in the old days, you’d walk away from the cabinet and hunt down the next game you wanted to play. In Double Impact, from the Main Menu, just press Square and you’ll be taken from the Final Fight screen to the Magic Sword one in a seamless and slick visual transition. Magic Sword is a two player beat’em up that takes on a much faster pace than Final Fight. There are some fifty floors of a tower you must ascend, all the while battling off goblins, sorcerers, skeleton warriors, mummies, and bosses. At this point I’m only on the thirty-second floor and I’ve not yet tried online co-op play, but it’s pretty fun. The control scheme is a lot like that of Final Fight, and while the presentation and the fun factor aren’t quite as good as Final Fight, it’s still enjoyable to run through. One cool feature with Magic Sword is that you can retrieve keys and unlock prison doors along your path to gain a temporary ally who will send ranged attacks in the direction you’re currently attacking. Players also earn a new weapon (you can only wield one) at the end of boss fights which take place every few levels.
I don’t see myself playing this one too many times over, but I’m happy it’s included. There aren’t as many Challenges or unlockables for Magic Sword comparatively, but it’s a fine second option if you need a break from bashing heads in Metro City.
I’ll have a complete review around April 15th, but until then, keep Final Fight: Double Impact on your short list this month. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it and I’m pleased to say Proper Games and Capcom have managed to keep its old school charm intact to present to a whole new generation of gamers.
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