Nov 27, 2003 Drake of the 99 Dragons Review To simply call Drake bad would be a major understatement. By Alex Navarro on November 26, 2003 at 4:43PM PST.
.: November 3, 2003. WW: March 7, 2018 (Steam)Mode(s)Drake of the 99 Dragons is a developed by Swedish studio Idol FX and published. The game stars Drake, an who is on a quest to avenge his murdered clan, the 99 Dragons, by recovering their ancient 'Soul Portal Artifact' from Tang. Tang intends on using the artifact to harvest the souls of dead beings and power his undead army.Idol FX intended for Drake of the 99 Dragons to be the launchpad for a franchise, which would include and a potential animated television series. However, these plans were scrapped due to the game's.
Contents.Gameplay Drake has a number of special moves, such as the abilities to double jump and to run up walls. He also has the ability to for better accuracy, though this feature could be triggered by accident fairly easily during normal gameplay, which can quickly throw off a player's focus. Drake's health depends primarily on absorbing the souls of his fallen opponents, although there are also red 'lost souls' which deplete Drake's health.As a means of defense, Drake uses a wide arrangement of guns and firearms. The player is able to control two guns by using the left and right triggers. In the Xbox version, an aiming reticle (a common staple of third-person shooters) is excluded; instead, an auto targeting feature is implemented to help Drake aim and fire at the player's enemies.
In the PC version, however, an aiming reticle is used.Plot Drake is the premier assassin of a -based clan known as the 99 Dragons. While training in the Kwoon, he hears a break in. He enters the chamber containing the Soul Portal Artifact, given to the clan over 3000 years ago, battling enemies before a mysterious Ghost Assassin swoops out of the room with the artifact. The assassin is in cahoots with Tang, a businessman and the clan's mortal enemy. Drake then pursues the assassin, but is unable to stop the villain when he phases out of a window of the penthouse. He returns to the Master's chamber, only to find the corpses of himself, the Master, and the other members of his clan.Shocked, Drake collapses, and the tattoo on his chest glows.
In a flashback, Drake is given the tattoo of the Undying Dragon by The Master, which provides him with supernatural powers as well as immortality. The tattoo glows, and Drake unleashes the abilities to run up walls, slow down time, and freeze time. He explores the penthouse and collects thirty souls of his fallen comrades and enemies. When the powers go to Drake's head, he leaps out a window and falls to his death. He then awakens in the Spirit Realm, and is scolded by the four Spirit Gods.
They inform him that he must collect more souls for the Undying Dragon and recover the Soul Portal Artifact in order to avenge his Master's death. They give him a new body and return him to the mortal realm. He pursues a courier and follows his blood trail to a fireworks factory. Drake shoots at him, but is killed in a sudden explosion.The gods, annoyed once more at Drake's lack of competence, bring him back to life and send him to the House of the Dreaming Cloud casino.
There, Drake attempts to find the courier, but is attacked by the casino's owner Pok and his demon dogs. After defeating Pok, Drake tails the courier to the Hung Fook Casino Palace, where it turns out he lost the Soul Portal Artifact in a gambling match. A thug beats Chun to near-death for his mishap, but Drake saves his life in time and learns the location of the Soul Portal Artifact. Drake quickly sets off through the city, fending off biker gangs along the way, and returns to the House of the Dreaming Cloud.While fighting Pok, now in his 'true' demonic form, Drake once again gets caught up in an explosion. Serpent-Eye Sung, a business partner and accomplice of Tang, steals the Soul Portal Artifact from a dying Drake and heads off to his canned seafood factory, which they are harvesting the soul from an albino orca. Drake goes to stop Serpent-Eye and take the Artifact back, but is attacked by Tang's henchwoman Banshee and killed once more. The Spirit Gods decide to cut their losses and send Drake back to the penthouse, where the Tang Undertakers are stealing the corpses of the 99 Dragons.
Drake chases after a truck holding his master's body, and finds himself taken to a cyborg creation facility. There, he finds that Master has been turned into a cyborg, but manages to defeat the robot and retrieve his Master's body from the remains.Outraged, Drake decides to go after Tang. Upon infiltrating Tang Towers, he discovers Tang's true scheme: to use the artifact to reap the souls from the Spirit Realm and use those souls to power his cyborg army. Drake then breaks into Tang's secret morgue facility and recaptures his clan members' souls. He then travels to the basements of the facility, where Tang is using the artifact to open the portal to the spirit realm. Drake fights and defeats a demon-like creature, but the Ghost Assassin steals the Soul Portal Artifact and escapes into the spirit realm.
Drake enters the realm and pursues the assassin, ultimately defeating him. He then retrieves the Soul Portal Artifact and collects the Master's soul.Drake then falls down to a nest of a three-headed beast called the Spirit Lord Supreme, and confronts and defeats it. Drake then goes back to the Serene Garden, and revives the Master with the artifact.
Master thanks Drake for his efforts, stating that he achieved a level of proficiency even he was unable to reach, and he has proven himself to the Gods.Reception ReceptionReview scoresPublicationScoreN/AFN/A1.67/10N/A1.25/10N/A1.6/102.9/102.9/10N/A3/10N/A2/10N/AAggregate score35/10022/100Drake of the 99 Dragons received 'generally unfavorable reviews' on both platforms according to the website. It was ranked as the second-worst game for the original Xbox. In July 2006, called Drake the single worst game ever released for the Xbox, even going so far as to state that it had eclipsed the game as 'the standard by which they rate all bad games'. of named it the second worst 'frightfully bad' game of 2003 in Halloween 2004, right behind.The game was criticized for its controls, along with frustrating gameplay. The game's dual-wielding system, in which players could control two guns independently by using the trigger buttons to shoot and an analog stick to aim, was notably criticized for having a poorly-implemented targeting system that made it difficult to aim.
Skatehere. Frequent criticism centered around its unwieldy camera that often got stuck or prevented the player from seeing the on-screen action, and was mapped to the same as the aiming reticle.The game was also panned for its poor voice acting, low quality graphics, character animations, and sound design; in particular, GameSpot 's Navarro felt that the game was a 'cacophony of terrible effects and voice acting'—noticing the re-use of stock sounds notably used in, and comparing the title character's voice to a cross between a and 'the '. He also felt that, due to the game's 'disjointed' cutscenes and narration, the storyline of the game was nearly incomprehensible.While Aaron Boulding of praised the game's unique visual appearance and presentation, along with the ' audio effects whilst slowing down time, he concluded that Drake of the 99 Dragons was 'a good idea that went horribly astray and ended up disastrous' and that 'there's no need to rent, purchase or entertain the thought of playing this one'.
GameSpot 's Navarro considered the Xbox version 'an out-and-out failure in every single discernable category'. ^ (November 3, 2003).
Drake of the 99 Dragons. Level/area: Introducing a Killer. Idol FX (November 3, 2003). Drake of the 99 Dragons.
Majesco Entertainment. Level/area: Honing Your Skills. Idol FX (November 3, 2003). Drake of the 99 Dragons. Majesco Entertainment.
Level/area: Chasing Ghosts. Idol FX (November 3, 2003). Drake of the 99 Dragons.
Majesco Entertainment. Level/area: Death in Person.
'Drake of the 99 Dragons (Xbox)'. P. 7. EGM staff (January 2004). P. 148. Reiner, Andrew (January 2004). Archived from on January 12, 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
^ Navarro, Alex (November 26, 2003). Retrieved September 10, 2014. ^ Boulding, Aaron (March 8, 2004).
Retrieved October 28, 2019. ^ Boulding, Aaron (February 3, 2004). Retrieved October 28, 2019. 'Drake of the 99 Dragons'. January 2004.
P. 70. Semsey, Rob (December 8, 2003). IGN Entertainment. Archived from on January 13, 2011. Retrieved October 28, 2019. Jackson, Jonah (March 2, 2004). Archived from on March 13, 2004.
Retrieved October 28, 2019. ^. CBS Interactive.
Retrieved October 27, 2019. ^. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 17, 2013. Navarro, Alex (November 1, 2004). CBS Interactive.
Retrieved October 28, 2019.External links. at.
Genre: ActionPublisher: MajescoDeveloper: Idol FXRelease Date: November 4, 2003Following the lead of the recent hit XIII, Drake of the 99 Dragons attempts to add to the ever growing world of cell-shading. The idea was to create an interactive comic book, told through the eyes of an assassin named Drake. While at first look this game appears adequate, a minute of play will tell you otherwise.
Faulty controls, a terrible storyline, low quality graphics, the list goes on. The developers at Idol FX started with a dream. Little did they know that they would bring a world of shame to the concept of cell-shading, and create an utter nightmare. Welcome to the nightmare that is Drake of the 99 Dragons.In Drake of the 99 Dragons, you play as Drake, an assassin working for a Hong Kong gang known as the 99 Dragons. One day however, your gang is attacked by a mysterious rival group and your entire gang is slaughtered.
Seeking justice, you are brought back to life by the Gods to avenge your fallen comrades. While this all appears to be a fairly interesting storyline, it doesn't take much time to realize this is not the case.
The first few missions of the game set up the background of the story, and from there progresses in an extremely confusing manner. The first problem with the storyline is that the story is told through cut scenes which are narrated by Drake. You may wonder what the problem with this is. Well for one, Drake sure isn't a storyteller. His dialogue is choppy and hard to understand, which adds to the already confusing storyline. As a matter of fact, at times the storyline is just about as confusing as it can get.
And just when you think you're starting to understand one of the 20 or so confusing elements, a few more characters or situations will be thrown at you and will knock you to your feet once again. In the end, understanding the storyline is next to impossible, and just isn't worth it.A confusing storyline would be bad enough, but mix horrible game play in with that and you have a recipe for disaster. Which is just what this game is. One of the potentially interesting features of this game is that you are able to fire two guns at once, using the R and L buttons. This sounds like a fairly neat idea, but of course the game completely kills the idea with awkward aiming and a horrible targeting system. The aiming in this game is controlled with the right thumb stick and is at its best, anything but easy.
Not only is the aiming terrible, but the targeting system sucks. There is an extremely loose system in place, but it just doesn't work. And in a game based all around shooting people, you really need an effective targeting system. This game just fails to deliver that however, and comes up way short. I can't tell you how many times I was completely frustrated with the combat in this game. Another big problem with the combat is that at random times, Drake's guns will suddenly point sideways and you will be forced to manually swing them around to the front again.
This can happen at any point and can drive you to the point of insanity, especially if you have just run into a group of baddies. Combining with this problem is the fact that the stick which controls the aiming system also controls the camera angle. Which means you are definitely in for some hair tugging frustration. Just as it seems you have your guns aligned, the camera screws up. Just as you think you fix the camera, your guns become unaligned. It is a constant battle between these two elements, and will eventually cause you to either throw this game away, or go crazy. That's not really a quality you want in a game.Trying to make this game exciting, the developers added a few 'special powers' that Drake can collect throughout the game.
Sticking to the nature of the game however, these powers are not exciting at all. Quite the opposite actually, they seem to bring even more frustration to this game. Drake's 'powers' include double jumping, running along walls, bullet time, and freezing time. These all sound fine and dandy, but in the world of Drake of the 99 Dragons, good has no meaning. First off, jumping is definitely a chore, as you have to try and deal with the difficult camera angles. And all of the rest of Drake's powers really don't help him much. As a matter of fact, they just make things even MORE frustrating.
(if that's possible) For instance, the bullet time not only slows your enemies down, but it slows Drake down as well. I guess this is just supposed to give you some more time to concentrate on who you want to shoot, but chances are your camera and aiming will be so screwed up that it won't really matter who you decide on.Another element which leads to this game's destruction is the repetitiveness. Every one of your missions basically is just following a certain path from start to finish. While this definitely takes away your chances of getting lost, it also takes your chances of being entertained right with it.
I had a huge problem with the constant 'barrage' of enemies. With the already faulty camera angles and aiming system, this definitely does not help. As a matter of fact, it makes the game unbelievably difficult. In the end, this game isn't about thought or skill, it's about trial and error. The only way to beat this game will be to play each of the levels over and over again until you can get it right.
And with a terrible game like this, who wants to do that?Adding to the already terrible controls and terrible storyline, is the fact that the game contains its share of bugs. There are countless different examples, including many bugs which will force you to automatically fail and restart the level. In a game of already frustrating concepts and poor plot development, bugs definitely aren't a welcome sight.With every element in the game already doomed to fail, you'd think the developers would have at least spent some time on a graphical scheme. Well I'm not sure exactly how much time was spent on the graphics, but one thing is for sure. They're not good.
The developers decided to go with 'rim-light shading' which is similar to cell shading. I really wish cell shading had been used instead however, since this game does not look like a comic book at all. This game was supposed to be modeled after the comic book series, but with these terribly looking graphics, no one will ever know that was the intention. Not only are the graphics bad, but the animations are not so hot either. As a matter of fact, they suck.
Enemies get stuck in repeated patterns, while Drake looks very funny as he stiffly hops around. All in all, the terrible graphics just add to an already terrible game.The sound was another story. While many of the voice recordings for the characters are halfway decent, the sound effects are just terrible. Gun sounds, crashes, they all sound extremely cheap and rushed. Many times I recognized a sound as a cheap generic recording I could have download off the internet.
The sound is terrible, but with a game like Drake, what did you expect?Drake of the 99 Dragons is a failure among failures. It really is that bad. This game seems to fail in every single area you can think of.
Literally, the story, gameplay, graphics, sound, and ever other element that could ever be in a game, are terrible. The only reason you should even touch this game is if someone is paying you. And even then, I'd think twice.Score: 3.0/10.
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