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Dragon's Lair 3D Not Worth The Effort
Anonymous Coward writes "While not the best source for gaming information, CNNs Technology section has a review of Ubi Softs Dragon's Lair 3D. Long story short, according to the writer Marc Saltzman, the game isn't worth it. In fact, the opening paragraph says, 'The only thing worse than a lousy video game is when it taints a well-respected, 20-year-old franchise.' One interesting tidbit from the article, the original Dragon's Lair is one of only three video games on display at the Smithsonian. The other two games being Pac-Man and Pong."
Althought I got stuck pretty far in to the game, I think DL3D is an excellent game keeping true to the original Dragon's Lair.
DL 3D gives the full range of motion the original Dragon's Lair always lacked. D3 3D also keeps up the cartoonyness and originality from the original.
It's definately worth checking out in my opinion. But as the CNN review's opinion differs, it only proves that everyone has their own opinion...
On a related note, has anyone tried the DVD version of the Dragon's Lair game? Apparently you throw it on the dvd player and control it with the DVD remote control.
The first game to bring hand animation, laserdisks, and alternative paths together in a single game. The technology was really advanced for the time, and it grossed 34,000,000 in the first year, thats a lot of quarters.
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I thought the game was fun, then again, I remember pumping quarters into the original one as well. If not for that, I may not have played it to the end.
There are big bugs in the game, it can be awkward to control, and the sword fighting was easy, just boring after the first couple times.
But in all, it was a fun game - if not just to see Dirk die all sorts of ways!
Now the real landmark game IMO, was Mach III. With laserdisc backgrounds and computer generated targets, it was slightly more challenging than Battlezone, and much more visually stunning. I was a starving college student when it came out, but I pumped at least $20 a week into that machine just to get my daily adrenaline fix.
That and Centaur. Man, those were the days when pinball machines rocked.
I can see the fnords!
Mainly because my 3 yr old digs it so much. Lets play Dragons Lair. Lets play Dragons Lair. The kid tells his mom, "You're Daphne, I'm Dirk" and he proceeds to rescue here from me.
I think the game surpasses the original, (given proper allowances for what years they were both created.) Dragons Lair 3D allows Dirk freedom of movement, he can go anywhere basically, jumping, rolling, crouching, sneaking, climbing, swinging his sword, running etc. I find the idea much more enjoyable than a "go left, right left left up left right left to survive" type game.
The graphics arent up with the latest "Unreal 2" type lighting, etc. but who cares. They are 3D accelerated and the textures look good and Dirk himself and the cartoony characters look great.
The frustrating aspect of the game is the level bosses, sometimes they are so hard to figure out that you pretty much "throw down the mouse" and say "screw it, I'm not going to try for a 500th time today to beat the smithey" (HOW do you beat the Smithey?)
Dirk gets cool "essences" along the way from various level bosses, dragon wings to help him fly, spirit to keep him alive, eyes to let him see secret doors.
Overall, I give it an "A", with a "B-" for the level bosses and having to determine each of their secret formulas for whippin their butts.
Arcade
Macintosh
PC
straight-DVD
Colecovision
Coleco Adam
Commodore 64
Game Coy Color (!)
3DO
Super Nintendo
Sega CD
various euro-micros
CD-i
I don't know if there's any time since it was released that you haven't been able to purchase some version of Dragon's Lair!
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
- It was released for all major modern gaming platforms at the same time: PlayStaion 2, Xbox, GameCube, and Windows. To my knowledge, this was the first game to do that. There was no sitting in front of my PC, anxiously waiting for GTA3.
- It includes Daphne. [/me bites fist] She's even cuter when rendered in cell-shaded 3D. I didn't know I could be so enchanted by a low-poly model.
Dragon's Lair 3D is sort of like a movie license. Movie license games tend to honk because they rely on the movie to sell the games, rather than gameplay. This game does not suffer from that problem because it ads huge elements to the original. For example, you get to use magic and stuff. Dirk slays the bad-ass dragon about half way through the game, and then there's more-- much more!Great effort was made to keep the original 1983 flavour as much as possible. The textures on the walls are taken directly from the backgrounds of the 1983 version, whenever appropriate. The characters look almost identical, due to the good use of their cell-shading tech.
It includes ALL the scenes from the 1983 classic, albeit in the new 3D form. For example, that scene where the knight stabs the floor to electrify the tiles is there, but you have to maneuver Dirk with more than one joystick movement per "blip", sorta like Max Payne. It's now a real jumping puzzle. Wow.
The voice acting is excellent. Better than most games out there, probably because it's not all that integral to gameplay and used sparsely. Dirk's little "Ghah!" sounds are still hilarious.
The control occasionally honks. (NB: I'm being PC-centric here) Most of the game, you can control Dirk easily with WASD and a mouse. However, there are points where you are expected to steer Dirk with a joystick. But, you don't have one configured, do you? This can seem really weird if you've been playing Quake for years. This would probably not be noticeable on one of the consoles.
I think that Dragon's Lair 3D is a great game for those are nostalgic for 1983, or those who are very young. But, if you're looking for a rival for Mario, look elsewhere (and let me know if you find anything).
I watched people pump quarters in, watched them play, remembered their moves then tried it myself and mastered it without emptying my wallet. It was amazing at the time, but laser discs are inherently limited. It WAS ahead of it's time.
Very annoying when the joystick wore out though. Ahh the black screen of doom as the laser disc accessed the appropriate death sequence. Those were the days.