Duel: The Art of Combat is a fast paced realtime combat game almost what you’d expect worms to be if it wasn’t turn based.
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When you first load up the game you are presented with a shabby looking snake wielding a gun, once the initial loading screen is gone you are presented with a demo of the gameplay as the title screen. When you press start you are given the main menu with the options of Story Mode, Duel Mode, Survival Mode, How to Play, Options and Quit.
Story Mode is a collection of 5 stages with around 4 waves on each, each wave increases the amount of enemies, the final wave of the final stage you have a boss character that’s twice as big and with more hit points. The story mode can be finished in under 10 minutes on the default difficulty.
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After each level you “level up” and get to choose form a list of perks such as greater endurance and higher jumping. You also get more weapons added to your arsenal such as lasers, katanas and mini-guns.
Duel mode is for 2 Player battling, Survival Mode takes place on a stage of your choice and you get to choose two perks and select from all the weapons, you face off against endless waves, of pretty strong enemies.
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The gameplay can be a little simplistic, you can move left and right as well as jump. You have a ninja rope which you can use to move long distances, along with a selection of 6 weapons; 3 primary, 2 secondary and 1 melee which you can choose yourself before the start of the level.
The controls can be confusing at times and is the biggest downside to those game. The graphics are decent enough, all the menu and 2d graphics are nice and clean, the 3d graphics are somewhat simplistic but they overall look fine. The loading screen closeups of the snake and the textures in the first and last levels look good.
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The gameplay can get rather repetitive, I found it sometimes annoying that weapons you don’t currently have active do not automatically reload their ammo. When you switch back to them they continue form the last point they were, and it would have been nice to have selected the difficulty level for Survival Mode as I personally think Beginner difficulty on survival would make for a more balanced and longer game.
The weapons also don’t seem to have any difference in the amount of damage they deal as two hits from a katana or four or six depending on the difficulty seemed to be the same as two from the rocket launcher. This may be one of those games that are better on multi-player but I personally got bored rather quickly and most likely would not bother paying the 240 points since there is not much to do after story mode is complete, try out the trial and see for yourself.
Review by CyberAxe.
You can find more information on Duel: The Art of Combat as well as download the trial and full versions of the game on the Marketplace.
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