Review: Duel: The Art of Combat
Duel: The Art of Combat – Shooter – 240 Points – Download
On the Xbox Live Indie Game section, there is no shortage of dual stick shooters. Most of them are Geometry Wars clones, some add extra barriers you have to avoid and some are setup like a 2D platformer. If you’ve ever played ZP2K9, you’ll know what the Duel: The Art of Combat is like. It is quite similar in terms of how ZP2K9 plays, except one major difference, it’s much harder to play.
Duel: The Art of Combat, is essentially a side scrolling multiplayer shooter where you use both sticks to move and aim. You can also use only the left stick to move and aim, but that’s where the problems start. If you are facing left, and want to move left, but aim behind, you can’t. In most dual stick shooters, you would auto rotate based on the aim, but not in Duel. I guess it isn’t a huge problem as you can stop, rotate, and shoot, but it’s something to get used to. It’s something that should have at least been an option. You move around the levels by jumping and swinging from a rope that attaches on to anything above you. Actually, this game really reminds me of a spider man game, but with worms and weapons.
Included in the game are 3 modes – Story mode, Duel Mode, and Survival mode. The story can be completed pretty quickly and is done within waves of enemies. At the end of each level, you unlock new weapons and perks. Duel mode consists of you and a friend battling it out in splitscreen. I guess the best way to play this game is with a friend in survival mode; even though it is hard to control, jumping around the level and seeing how many enemies you can kill is quite a time waster in itself.
Duel offers a decent selection of weapons, perks, and powerups as you play through the game. Before each level, you have the option of picking what weapons and perks you want to use. I don’t recommend using melee weapons though as they are slow and weak. Perks give you extra speed, faster reload, higher jumps, and faster use of the rope.
There are two types of music in this game – Rock and Electronic. The Rock setting isn’t too bad and adds to the frustrating but fast paced action. I didn’t get around to trying out the Electronic setting, but I’d imagine it works just as well. Either way, I’m sure it’d work much better with your own selection of a metal album.
In the end, Duel: The Art of Combat has plenty of potential to be good, but the controls need plenty of work. The art style, weapons, upgrades and game modes are all fine, but in order to play those game modes again, you really need to to get used to the controls. If you like worms, ZP2K9, or any of these 2D multiplayer arena type games, this game is for you.
It's hard to master the art of combat, but when you do, a fun multiplayer game awaits.
Themocracy
Perks gives me extra speed, faster reload, higher jumps, and faster use of the rope. Its really good. Thank you for sharing this.