Review: Final Fight: Double Impact

DualShockers

By François Chang

Published Apr 21, 2010

Final Fight: Double Impact

When reviewing a game like Final Fight: Double Impact, it would be unfair to judge the game like any other game released today. With a game like this, it's all about how much it reminds you of your childhood and how well it was pulled off! Having Final Fight and Magic Sword packaged into one download for the price of $10, this is one of the best re-releases in a long time. They're both 2D side-scrolling beat 'em ups that are still great fun to play today.

The presentation of Final Fight: Double Impact is top notch. The game starts up and has you choose from the two beautifully nostalgic arcade cabinets of Final Fight and Magic Sword . It gets you pumped and ready to dive right in. When you start one of the games, it boots up exactly as if an arcade machine turned on with text scrolling such as, "RAM OK." You can choose from multiple screen settings to accommodate to the size and flavor you wish. The option to have the screen bordered to look like an arcade cabinet is by far the best setting, which again plays off the nostalgia of the gamers.

Both Final Fight and Magic Sword can be played with remastered background music or with its original music. However, with the remastered music, it really made me think why they had to stop there? The graphics do look much crisper in this double pack, which is very much welcomed. But maybe one day we can have something like a Final Fight HD Remix where every aspect has been redone.

Pausing is not an option for both titles, not even when pressing the Xbox button. The game continues to run as you're working through the options, or looking through your friends list. It's a cool way to keep the players focused, but maybe they went a bit too far with the arcade thing with this one.

However, even though you're getting beat up while you're eating, do you really care? The games give you infinite continues. Therefore, there is virtually no challenge with both titles. The game does have in-game achievements, such as "complete the game in under x amount of continues" that unlock pieces of artwork instead of gamerpoints or trophies. For players who don't care for stuff like that, you may grow bored of the game quickly.

What's really great with Final Fight: Double Impact are the online features. You can play with friends and post high scores on leaderboards, which can keep you entertained for some time. There is also the option to have random players drop in and out of your single-player playthrough. Random players can join you while you're in the middle of the game, and it is almost seamless.

Final Fight: Double Impact, with its robust options to play with old school settings, does have enough new content to keep things feeling fresh as well. For the price of basically $5 each game, it doesn't get much better than this. There's not much else to say about this one, fans of either game should go and download this now!