Developer: Kuju Entertainment Publisher: BAM Entertainment Release: 11/26/02 Genre: Action
Reign of Fire. For some god forsaken reason I really wanted to see this movie. I guess human rebels fighting dragons made me think it was the Dungeons & Dragons movie I always wanted. Minus the modern military equipment of course. But I did not see it in the theater; despite my interest something rubbed me the wrong way. That extended to the tie-in game as well. We hadn’t turned the corner on bad movie licensed games yet and Reign of Fire was sadly another one to add to the pile.
The story of the game loosely follows the film but deviates heavily. The general plot remains the same: decades after humans unwittingly awaken dragons and are nearly driven extinct the remnants of mankind mount an offensive to fight back. There are two campaigns in the game with the second placing you in the wings of a young dragon who fights to eliminate the humans once and for all.
Rather than a third person action game like Devil May Cry Reign of Fire is a third person vehicular shooter. In the human campaign you are the kid, a new recruit to the cause who aids in the defense of one of the last human outposts. You are sent on various missions initially detail the plight of humanity before eventually launching an offensive to end the dragons once and for all. The dragon story is an alternate take on the film’s story that casts the humans as the enemy. Two campaigns yet neither is compelling.
There are two control schemes; a simple method that uses the face buttons or advanced dual analog controls. There is a steep learning curve regardless of which setup you use and even the game’s tutorial mission does not do a great job of acclimation. The advance control tries to mimic the warthog controls of Halo but fails miserably. With the simple setup you aim with the left analog stick while movement follows the targeting cursor. It is unwieldy and takes some adjustment and unfortunately the game’s physics are not up to par. Unfortunately that is not the only aspect of the controls that are lacking.
I will give Reign of Fire credit, it at least tries to give you varied mission objectives. Each level has a particular goal that sometimes will evolve as it progresses. The second level starts as an escort mission before changing in to bringing down the spitfire dragons attacking the base. Finally you must escort the engineers so they can repair a power relay. Later stages place you in a fire truck as you put out blazing infernos and bring farmers to safety or collect three samples from nesting dragons. You will take the controls of four vehicles in the campaign, each with different mechanics and handling. On this front the game has its heart in the right place and you can see the devs made an effort.
What ultimately ruins Reign of Fire is the repetition and sluggish control. The missions are varied but you will face the same two enemy types every single outing. Jakyls and dragons are the only enemies and it grows old fast. They introduce new dragon types later but it amounts to nothing as they look and behave the same. Because of the lackluster controls once dragons show up in each mission it descends in to chaos. The targeting reticule is not fast enough and homing missiles are sparse. Every mission devolves in to constant bombardment with little ability to fight back. There is a disconnect from the action and it ends up being faster to let your squad mates deal with them. Outside of maybe two stages this served me well enough to continue as I did not care to try and earn better medals.
The dragon campaign is just as bad. You would think being in control of a winged terror of the sky would be fun. But the controls are just awful. The camera does not know what it wants to do and frequently gives the worst angle of the action. This ruins one of the most important mechanics of the dragon, picking up people and vehicles and dropping them like bombs. A few of these missions call on this heavily and the camera makes them a chore. Outside of that causing chaos and blowing up stuff up as a dragon is fun for a bit. But not over the course of a nine mission campaign.
In Closing
There are aspects of Reign of Fire that I like. But they are drowned out by all of the game’s various flaws. I am sure if you put the time in to learn the game’s quirks you can have fun. But the question is do you want to? There are better games to play instead of another bad licensed game.
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