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Another Huike game goes by the name of Dark Street II (and no, I haven't played Dark Street I, but it's also available for Windows Mobile according to the Huike Web site). If you were around back in the 1980s and enjoyed playing those simple beat 'em up games (Street Fighter, Karateka, Double Dragon, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, etc.)  There've already been a few attempts to recreate these games on the Pocket PC, and none of them seemed to really channel the fun of the original games.

DSII might be a little fun for those who liked these games, limited though they were, if you're willing to put up with a game that's sloppily constructed and doesn't show enough attention to detail. The game does have a backstory, which I won't get into here. Suffice it to say that it does a little to capture the imagination, but it's nothing to write home about, either.

DSII actually has pretty good music behind it, lending a tongue-in-cheek feeling to the game. Alas, there are no sound effects. Sound effects are critical in gaming, especially action games, and in this game its absence is inexcusable.

Graphically, DSII is very so-so. It's neither particularly bad nor particularly good looking. The game has an awful lot of pixellation, and a few people on the forums are wondering if maybe the graphics weren't ripped out of an older game (this practice happens every now and then in the Pocket PC gaming business). The graphics are actually the best part of the game, as they do look quite a bit like So your character has two basic attacks: kicking and punching.

You attack by hitting only one button on your device, and distance determines whether the attack is a punch (short) or kick (long). And nope, you can't remap the buttons on your device: you're stuck with using either the action button (doesn't work too well) or using the stylus to tap the screen (work passably well). Why can't we just have punching and kicking as seperate features mappable to different buttons?  That would allow the game to at least feel like some of those old classics.

This control scheme makes it a bit hard to attack with any real strategy. True, those old fighting games were absurdly simple by today's standards, but I remember timing and precision to be pretty important if you wanted to get anywhere, especially in games like Karateka. I should point out that the game does have power-ups, bonus weapons, and special attacks, but the game's poor mechanics don't really make up for the sub-par interface.

If you're really aching for a good fighting game, you're probably do better off with some of the emulators. However, if you don't feel like messing with those, Dark Street II can be an OK diversion if you're expectations aren't too high.
 

Title: Dark Street II	Developer: Huike Technology
Genre: Action	Demo: Y
Platform: Pocket PC 2000+	Price: $7.99
Discuss this game	Rating (of 4): 3.0/4.0