Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story by Virgin and Atari
Overview: A friend of mine told me some good things about Dragon. I had seen the game in the mags and they seemed to think it sucked bad. I ordered it anyway ;) The game is not your average Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat clone. Some people may see that as being bad, but in this case, I thinks it’s a good thing. Why? One gets sick of clone after clone. This game offers some new and different things. There are no special fireball-type moves to be pulled off here. It’s more of a sport type fighter. There are throws, reversals, chest stomps, somersault kicks and more. There is also a Chi bar that you build up as you earn victories. There are two levels of Chi. One gives you the option of Fighter mode. In this mode you’re hyper-quick and have a nice array of moves, but you can’t block. The second level gives you nunchakus. These are very powerful, but you can’t do any jumping attacks while in this mode. I like the real martial arts moves. It’s a good switch from the special moves on the other games. The game is carried out a lot like your average batch of fighters with a few exceptions. There is only one round. This round tends to last longer than most fighting game rounds because you have a larger life bar. After every few levels, you’ll be able to practice up on your stick dummy. This is mainly for gaining Chi. You have three mirrors. When you lose, one breaks. If all three break, you have to take on the Phantom. This isn’t the slightest bit easy. I’ve only beat him once. One gripe about the game. The story mode hardly tells a story. Of course you fight in the same order as the movie, but there should be some cinematics. Some still screens would’ve been excellent. The graphics are hardly innovative. The characters aren’t digitized, but drawn with some nice detail. The animation is good, and the color is pretty good as well. The scrolling is nice and smooth as you move back and forth across the playfield. One of the best aspects of the graphics would have to be the backgrounds. Nicely detailed artwork and multi-layer parallax scrolling is very attractive. Too bad the backgrounds don’t animate. Ahh well. The sound is quite cool. The music is notably good. It captures a movie-like mood. It is of very good quality even when compared to some of the more popular Jag game soundtracks. Lots of tracks. The sound effects are a tad weak. The snip and snap FX aren’t anything special, but they get the job done. A good example is the sound of a breaking mirror. The mirror breaks and your hear an "oomph" sound! Hehe...yeah right. The control is a bit on the tougher side. The basic controls could be hard if you don’t have a procontroller. You’ve got strong kick, quick punch and quick kick buttons A, B, C. Then you have to hit 6 for your strong punch. It can be hard to get to in a fierce battle, so you’ll probably learn to live without it. When you achieve the right amount of Chi to use a special fighting mode, switching over can be a pain. You have to push 2 or 3 to switch to the desired mode. The problem is that you have to be on the ground. This can really mess you up. Not to mention the problems it causes you in the final battle against the Phantom. There is 2 player mode. You can fight against a friend or even play the story mode with him/her. This is a nice addition indeed. The only bad part is that you have to be Bruce! You can’t play any other character. This is a big bummer. I like the idea of fighting 2 players at once (even in one player mode). It adds some excitement. The game could’ve been better, no doubt, but what’s on the table is quite satisfying anyway.
|
