Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon

"I believe this game does not certify for the bargin bin, I think that the bargin basment is where it should be"

Introduction
I am a die hard Bruce lee fan, I love his movies, and his training videos, I also love video games. When I walked into Game on the fateful Saturday morning and strolled over to the XBOX shelf I thought, Halo-Got, Morrowind-GOT, then my eyes fell onto the Bruce lee quest of the dragon case, excellent I thought and only £20, I looked at the back of the case and saw nothing that said that the game might not be worth the full £20 which I could have gone out with my girlfriend with!! So I took the game home and I found myself almost bathing in the anticipation as I turned on my XBOX and up came the familiar XBOX loading screen. What I saw after that shocked and annoyed me, damaging my already dwindled faith in mankind.

Gameplay 1 (though the game deserves it not)

When the game designers sat down I wonder if the words tutorial and level popped into their brains both inside the same sentence because I loaded up the 1st level and to my horror was plunged straight into mortal combat, except without the very cool special moves. I might be bluff, old and traditionalist but when I play a game I do like to know the controls and the basics of the game before I get thrown in at the deep end as it were. Not so in this title I had to resort to the last resort of all last resorts ....
THE MANUAL!!!! to even have a chance of memorizing every move of those 3 pages most of which are just variations on the same thing but I still had faith in the good folks at RONIN games untill I played the game for 2 hours and got bored stiff after doing the same three hit haymaker every time with the occasional low kick, the reason for this is that these simple things are all that the game requires and as for the nuchuks, I really think some more effort should have gone in to give Bruce some classy OTT finishing moves, the name RONIN in essance means dishonor, and after creating a game like this I find it rather apt.

Graphics 3 a slight improvement by the dishounored RONIN

When I looked at the back of the game case the graphics looked fairly good, not amazing, but OK, I was fooled however, and that doesn't happen often, I fell into one of the oldest traps there are, on the back was stationary graphics which looked okay but when the player atually moves (God forbid) the graphics morphs into some random shambolic mess, and incidentely, the controls also seize to function and assume the physics of some kind of random auto pilot. Having said all that and basicaly gunned the game so badly, the graphics could have been a lot worse so it shows, even if only a 3 RONIN have improved, is there hope? we shall soon see.

Sound 2 oh dear! back on the decent to the bargin basement for the dishonored RONIN

Sound, if there is music you can't hear it above the shrill bird calls of bruce which, while acurate are used to stimulate breathing and strike fear into the heart of the enemy, and unless the player is the enemy or RONIN which, if we are, then this game is most likely some sort of biological weapon designed to wipe players minds and make them forget half the buttons on the controller and make the new age gamer think that a 2 second delay between command and responce is normal, but that is getting a bit off topic, what I am basicaly saying is, RONIN good intension for realism just in the wrong area, maybe take away the some of the shrill cries and add in different sounds when you hit different body parts and make the nunchaku a bit more deadly, just advice from a concerned gamer.

Re-playability 0 I think the less said to gun the already dishonored RONIN the better

No, just no, I like to think I am a simple open minded guy, but this game has damaged my already dwindled hope in humanity I mean how could Game stock such a game in anywhere save the bargin basement along with titles such a model clay-fighter.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/04