Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp

"Nice cartoon, but why bother playing it?"

Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp

Philips, SuperClub, and ICDI for CD-i, requires digital-video card

PROS: Stunning animation, good sense of humor, fast-paced, fun to watch

CONS: Repetitive, too many hints, arguably more fun to watch than to play

''Dragon's Lair II'' starts out on the right foot -- with the opening shot of the castle from the first game... followed a yell and an abrupt pan to a cute house in the woods, in which our hero, Dirk the Daring, is being attacked by his Brunhilde-like mother-in-law for allowing the beautiful Daphne to be kidnapped again. It's funny, a real change from the original ''Dragon's Lair''.

But the rest of the game doesn't entirely live up to the promise.

DL2 is the third in a series of what were originally laser-disc arcade games from the 1980's. They were animated by Don Bluth and his team of Disney expatriates, and have always been renowned for their lush animation, design, and effects.

But DL2 had a more troubled history than its predecessors, ''Dragon's Lair'' and Space Ace. Arcade game manufacturer Cinematronics was caught in the videogame bust of the 1980's, and the animation sat unused for years until another company released the game to arcades in the early 1990's.

All the games use a simlar gambit to make players think they're controlling the animated character -- the game plays back an animated sequence, which poses various threats to your hero. The player responds by pushing a joystick in one of four directions, or pressing the action button to use a weapon. If they've made the right move, the game continues. If the player makes the wrong move, or no move at all, the game cuts to a sequence showing the hero being killed and the scene starts from an earlier point.

Example: in the first scene of Dragon's Lair II, Dirk is sitting at the end of a table, as his mother-in-law crawls across the table towards him with a rolling pin. As she winds up to swat Dirk, you should recognize a nice, wide-open area to the left. So, you press the joystick left to escape. If you fail to do so, Dirk gets the rolling pin in the head.

Fans of the Bluth games have always enjoyed the vivid animation and the fact that anything can happen -- a real change of pace in the early 80's when the alternative was Pac Man doing the same thing in the same mazes again and again. But detractors bemoan the fact that pointing to Dirk's escape routes or hitting a button here and there isn't very interactive, and that the scenes are the same every game, and have to be replayed when you die.

''Dragon's Lair II'' doesn't make any of those complaints any less valid, although it's not for the lack of trying.

The designers have tried to increase the variety by including treasures throughout the game, which flash when Dirk can grab them. Doing so doesn't significally change the course of the game, but increases your score and gives you two valid options here and there, where there would usually only be one. If you want more variety, check out ''Space Ace'', which offers entirely different paths through some sequences.

Perhaps the most radical, and ultimately most unfortunate, design choice is the over-use of flashing ''hints''. In the first ''Dragon's Lair'', you'd occasionally see a flash in a window, a hallway, etc., indicating which way to go. The flashes made the game easier by not putting players in a situation where they would have to try each option (up, down, left, right, button) in a situation to figure out which one was right. ''Space Ace'' made somewhat more frequent use of the flashing hint.

In ''Dragon's Lair II'', they've simply gone too far. Every move in this game is indicated by a tell-tale flash. Does it make the game easier? Maybe -- although I think it gave the designers the opportunity to speed everything up. Does it make the game better? No. You spend all your time watching for flashes instead of watching the animation, getting into the story, etc. It's like playing ''Simon'' (that old push-the-flashing-light game) while watching ''The Black Cauldron''.

It's too bad, because it's totally unnecessary. In the first ''Dragon's Lair'', the designers developed scenes where it was clear what the player needed to do. Quiz: you're on a flying horse, being chased by a headless horseman, there's a wall to your left and one right in front of you. What do you do? Move right, obviously. This scene is in the original game, why couldn't the shots in DL2 be composed as intuitively?

And after taking away the interactivity, there's not that much left in DL2. Dirk doesn't speak -- although he shrieks and grunts nicely -- so he tends to be overshadowed by the other characters. Dexter/Ace from ''Space Ace'' gets to speak, and as a more-developed character is more enjoyable as a totem than Dirk. Dirk also tends to get lost in the scenery -- the shot angles in DL2 are much wider than in its predecessors, meaning you're sometimes watching a very small Dirk move through a lot of background art.

Unlike the original game, which offered scenes in a semi-random order, you play the sequences in DL2 in order, meaning you'll play the first few over and over again.

Despite all the above grousing, I do enjoy this style of animated game, because I'm constantly impressed by the inventive animation, the variety of challenges and situations, and the continuing desire to find out what happens next. Thing is, I think that's achieved better in ''Dragon's Lair'' and (best of all) ''Space Ace''. ''Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp'' should be reserved for those who've played both the other games and want more.
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Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/01, Updated 04/01/01