Reign of Fire

"I really like dragons, but..."

I watched this movie on DVD and saw the commercial for the game as a special feature. The game boasted that you could "Play as man AND beast!" It showed a few short video clips of in-game action and didn't look all that bad. The movie wasn't really bad, either. Or maybe it was, since I really can't remember anything from it. Something about dragons attacking farmers.

The graphics are actually pretty good. Your truck is well modeled. The fields you drive over aren't bad, either. Except for maybe the crops, which I guess the designers figured it would be alright if they neglected to make them solid objects. Or look like crops. But the game did feature video clips straight from the movie to help the story along. That was a nice touch.

The sound effects in the game are good. They're not too loud and they seem to fit in place. I don't remember there being any music. I played for only a few levels, though, so maybe the amazing score kicked in during the levels after I gave up. I think I can imagine the music, though.

I sometimes ran into trouble while trying to drive my truck around the areas. And up hills. At one point I had to follow the trainer up a hill. He managed to drive up it in a matter of seconds with his magic truck while I had to sit there and wait two minutes for my regular truck to get up the incline. Didn't matter much, though, since I just ran everything over whether I was playing good or not. The only reason I sat in front of this game was because I wanted to play as a dragon. But apparently that wasn't a selectable option right at the beginning. I think I had to play through the game as the humans first, which wasn't at all entertaining. It got really boring after the first few levels, so I turned it off and never found out if the dragon levels were cool or not. I see now that there is a level skip code. Too bad I didn't know about that when I played the game.

It had some good elements, but they were all wrapped up in a not-so-good package. I just didn't have the patience to play through to the dragon levels, which I'm sure is the only reason other people played it, anyway. If you really liked the movie (and I haven't met too many people who have) then I would say you should pick this game up. If you didn't like the movie, rent it or steal it from a friend. Or you know what? Just don't even bother with this. You're not missing anything.

Sound: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Replay Value: 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/23/03, Updated 06/30/06