There's so much detail in them and they look even more impressive due to the visual design chosen for the game – the same goes for Abobo looking ENORMOUS. The graphical design I was so negative towards at first really grew on me as the game wore on because I could see that there was a slight black outline to things – giving it some kind of a comic look, and going with the style they went with doesn't really work for the Lee brothers' designs, but it does allow things like the aforementioned homages look outstanding. Somehow, things get crazier than going into a restaurant that transforms INTO A ROCKET SHIP that sends you into an airlock, takes you to a place where you fight something that bears a striking resemblance to Skellator and then builds up to a giant worm invading the space station before you face a delightful homage to the blue bomber. Part of that also had to do with me wanting to see what kind of crazy enemy I'd wind up facing next or what wacky thing would happen. Thankfully, that issue doesn't provide too much frustration, and never kept me from wanting to soldier on.
I don't mind trial and error in games to some degree, but not when it comes to something like this where you SHOULD be given an explanation on it and then wind up having to grind through more stages to get back the money you effectively wasted on lives. There's also the issue of purchasing extra lives and only having them apply to the stage they're purchased in and the player not being told about that. There's very little explanation offered for the branching level-up system for moves and overall character strength. This stuff is nice, but not quite as well executed as the River City Ransom games, or the other PS+ freebie for the week, Scott Pilgrim vs.
There are some RPG elements thrown in with item buying, tape collecting granting you new moves and powers, and the ability to upgrade them. There's also some weirdness where you can start the running animation into an invisible wall even though you're still able to move around the area. You go from thing to thing to thing briskly, and if that doesn't work for you, there's a run button, although it does take a bit longer than I'd like to actually run because of the overly-long animation used to start it.
Hazards are more prevalent and again, full of humor – like the first time you see a pit and a goon squad member stands over it looking dumbstruck and not moving an inch while you knock him into the abyss. There's a pretty fast clip to the action overall between the waves of enemies and things like stores and unlockable cash boxes to mix things up slightly.
Nearly everything about it just feels right for a beat-em-up (outside of its lack of online multi-player) and unlike a lot of the ones I've tried over the past year or so, whether they're more modern PS2 games or retro remakes in some form, the action never drags.
The button layout is nice and logical, and you're even given some in-game tutorials (which you can thankfully turn off if you so desire) to teach you how to duck properly to do double damage afterwards and other things. The LOLs provided by the game are many, and as a game, it's mostly pretty solid. Then you beat them, destroy Abobo and move onto level 2, which has a glorious Bananarama-esque song in it that perfectly fits the wacky leg warmer-clag dominatrixes.
Then you beat up baddies and.wait-a-minute, THE DOMINATRIXES HAVE LEG WARMERS ON. It really started with the game's opening and just like before, there's the Road Avenger car in the garage – okay, they got that part right. The core game is vintage Double Dragon greatness with a megaton blast of humor and homage to other games and '80s culture that had me laughing my ass off. Well, after playing it, I realize that I was too harsh on the graphic style chosen and there's far more to it than I could've realized then (but more on that later). It reminded me of TMNT ReShelled, but with slightly more vibrant colors and that instantly gave me a 'meh' view on it. Everything on Neon showed that it had a Dreamcast-level of polygonal detail that disappointed me.
I enjoyed the original DD arcade games, but the NES entries didn't do much for me, and the usage of the name in a crappy movie and show many moons ago didn't exactly give me a rose-tinted look at its past before this. When I first saw Double Dragon: Neon in previews, I really wasn't too excited about it.