Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon

"Beating dead horses sure is fun."

Well, it's official. Bruce Lee is one of the worst games I have ever played. It just sucks. There isn't anything good about it. The graphics aren't terrible, to be fair, but everything else sure is.

Graphics: 5/10

The graphics here aren't as bad as people would have you believe. Textures are boring, for sure, but the models aren't half bad and Bruce's motion-capture is done fairly well. However, the graphics aren't anything more than average. As I said, the textures are bland and repetitive, and as I haven't said, the framerate is terrible. Often dipping below 30 frames per second, it makes the game feel like a hi-res N64 game. And that isn't good considering that the game doesn't have a lot of content to load to cause the game to slow down so much.

Sound: 2/10

This is unbelievably demonic. Each punch you throw and each Jeet Kune Do kick you perform and each nunchaku you swing is accompanied by a turkeyesque warble. The developers were obviously trying to imitate Bruce Lee's trademark yelp that was used to distract enemies, but it distracts the player with its wretchedness more than anything. The voice acting is equally shameful, with as much feeling as your legs after being kicked by Bruce Lee for an hour after standing in a freezing stream. Music brings this score up slightly for its mediocrity: it isn't annoying but it definitely isn't anything to remember.

Gameplay: 0/10

Ugh. Indescribably terrible. The controls are very, very weak. Bruce Lee, arguably one of the fastest and most agile fighters in the history of the world, moves like the same turkey that he sounds like when he warbles. Button presses are as responsive as Stephen Hawking in a coma (I like similes) and the collision detection is complete crap. I also have a bone to pick with the auto-lock system. This system automatically locks on to the least convenient enemy to attack, as I've found, or perhaps the developers just wanted to up the pitiful difficulty by throwing a maddening glitch in there somewhere. Also, you can't deselect any enemies or change the target selection, so you're forced to let enemies get in the way of each other when you try to attack, and you're forced to run backwards when you try to run away. Overall, the gameplay is like the worst clone of Final Fight, put into 3D where eight hundred times as many things can and do go wrong.

Plot: 10/10

The plot is the best part of this game. ''It's so funny,'' in the words likely said by the late Bruce Lee. It seems to be about strange mafiosos who release ninjas on Bruce Lee for no other apparent reason other than to release ninjas on Bruce Lee as an excuse to make a poor, poor, poor man's Final Fight as a quick cash-in. The bad guys' evil comes into play when you realize that their true scheme is to victimize hundreds of thousands of poor, unassuming Xbox owners. Overall, the plot is so bad that it's laughable, but it doesn't help the overall score because it wasn't supposed to be funny.

Frustration Factor: 10/10 (Extremely Frustrating)

Replay Value: 0/10

Why would you want to replay a game that is too unplayable to finish in the first place?

Rent or Buy: Uhhh....no.

Final Score: 1/10

The game is akin to spreading dead flowers and sacrificing a small, cute lamb over Bruce Lee's grave.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 03/08/03, Updated 03/08/03