Drakan: Order of the Flame

"I'm still working on figuring out why this is such a great game. . ."

You know, it's not often that a game comes along that somehow...SOMEHOW manages to get good reviews despite being a miserable excuse for a game.

Graphics: 8/10
Okay, the aesthetics would be the only area in which this game was remotely impressive. The view when flying on the dragon is pretty, but certainly nothing that hasn't been done (and better, mind you) before. Another problem is the plethora of ventriloquists that seem to come up in these games...what, does no one need to move their lips to talk anymore?

Sound: 9/10
I'll give this game one thing. It took advantage of my SBLive! quite nicely, giving the sounds within the caves quite a surreal feeling.

Gameplay: 3/10
Once I got bored of finding different ways of ''mysteriously'' killing myself, this game got to be QUITE monotonous. There were times when my dragon would get stuck in a part of the cave, and I would try to dismount, only to die due to some glitch in the game, and have to start from where I last saved. Anything from mysteriously dying in the water to simply falling over dead from running into a wall. It got to the point where I was completely paranoid of touching ANYTHING. Hard to be impressed by the interactivity of a game when you're afraid to interact with anything.

Control: 2/10
Now HERE was a travesty. The controls were absolutely miserable! Anything from dying because I got hacked in the back while the game wouldn't respond when I tried to exit the inventory menu right down to refusing to jump onto a box. The controls seem very...volatile. There were times when my character would REFUSE to jump over a gap and fall to her death, and other times when she'd jump over the gap...and jump again, hurling herself to her death. The dragon was extremely hard to control, and I nearly tore my hair out when I'd die because I'd be out in the open, being hacked by a monster that my dragon was too lazy to stoop over to burn, and I'd press the ''jump'' key, only to be greeted with that GOD-AWFUL ''I can't fly here.'' THIS DROVE ME INSANE!

Replay Value: 2/10
The only thing I'll ever replay this game for is just to land my dragon on the edge of a cliff so that when I dismount, I just jump right off the edge. It's rather entertaining to see, which is more than what can be said for much of this sorry, sorry game. Psygnosis, you've disappointed me greatly.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/08/02, Updated 09/08/02