Dragon’s Lair 3D (XBX)
By Susie Vee

PLATFORM: Xbox

PUBLISHER: Ubi Soft

DEVELOPER: Dragonstone

GENRE: Adventure

ESRB: Teen

SCORE:

Did you know that there’s a Dragon’s Lair arcade machine in the Smithsonian? We mention this only to impart the profound impact this game has had on a generation of kids. Despite the original game’s shallowness and staggering level of difficulty, it became a holy grail for graphics that we’re still chasing after.

The reason everyone loved Dragon’s Lair was it’s cartoon-inspired art, created by animator Don Bluth. In reality, the game really didn’t have any graphics in the traditional sense. It played off of a laser disc, and moving the joystick or pressing the sword button made the disc jump to the next cut scene – either success or death (usually death).

It was game based purely on timing and memorizing the patterns of the scenes. But for some reason, it was an inescapable lure at the arcade, for guys and girls alike.

For the past year or so, we’ve been hearing about an updated version of the game, which would bring the animated look of Dragon’s Lair into a fully 3D world. Some things sound too good to be true, and this definitely had us feeling cautiously hopeful.

Now that it’s here, Dragon’s Lair 3D is neither a gift from the gaming gods, nor the unmitigated disaster it could have been. While it retains many of the annoying characteristics of the original and adds several of its own, it also channels some kind of retro magic that remakes rarley have.

Dirk the Daring, your animated alter ego, is once again trying to save the not-very-modestly-dressed Princess Daphne from Mordoc, and he has to get through a trap-laden castle to do it. Dirk looks great, and has a very cell-animated look, as do most of the other characters. But sadly, the castle and most of the objects in it just look like standard 3D models. We would have liked to see the cartoon vibe carried through the entire game.

There’s some combat, and a lot of simple puzzle solving, as you progress through the castle, room by room. A confusing saving system doesn’t help matters, as you could be at a checkpoint within a game, but the next time you turn the game on, you’ll be several rooms back at the start of the “level.”

Movement and control are standard 3rd-person style, but Dirk is a little sluggish and lacks the precision needed for some of the jumping puzzles. Combat is generally easy against the underpowered foes, but drawing your sword requires inconvenient use of the Xbox controller’s little black button. It’s major part of the game, so you’ll be reaching over to this tiny button an awful lot.

One major complaint we have is the every-annoying presence of Daphne, the clichéd damsel in distress. It’s bad enough she seems to have been drawn in the Jessica Rabbit style school of hoochie-mamma cartoon characters, but her most annoying flaw is her voice. She sounds like Betty Boop’s crackhead cousin. We suppose it was an attempt at a 1940’s stylization, but it really doesn’t work, and makes the game’s main female character a sore spot.

Dragon’s Lair 3D doesn’t offer much in the way of variety or depth, but it does serve up delicious slices of nostalgia, and that may very well be enough to keep you occupied for several sittings at least.