Review: Reign Of Fire (GBA)
And it burns, burns, burns- reign of fire! Like last year's sparkling shooter Ecks vs Sever, Reign of Fire is a game based on a Hollywood movie that has been coded by Crawfish, a team of talented British Gameboy developers who have sadly just announced the closure of the studio.
The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Britain twenty-two years into the future where fire-breathing dragons walk the earth and rule the skies. Some say that the firemen shouldn't have been on strike, other say that the Welsh just got too p*ssed off that there isn't a dragon on the Union Jack. Into this land of stone, barbed wire and army vehicles are a faction of humans, holding onto survival by the skin of their blackened teeth. In the film and on the console game this scenario translates as a smoke-filled wasteland with huge dragons is reduced to a rather unspectacular and murky adventure. Viewed from an overhead perspective you control a band of stragglers- all at the same time, or that's the idea. In practice you control the one guy in front and the rest follow behind him, getting stuck by rocks/ bridges on the way.
Their AI is non-existent and they are essentially drones who do everything you do. If you walk into a fire you get burnt (gaming lesson number 1, yes) though the drones you follow you do not, yet this leniency is a relief. The group idea works in combat by everyone firing together- like a squad version of Smash TV- but this would have been so much better with AI's if you could set orders to fire at will, leaving you to concentrate on the tasks. The tasks involve navigating the terrain without being killed by dragons or bandits before either killing something or getting an object for further task-completion like a fire engine (more like a green goddess except for the colour). Putting out fires is OK, although some are incredibly immune to water and don't go out. Others involve harvesting crops- always an interesting gameplay concept- although your harvester cannot defend itself from the enemies shooting at it.
Again you think, how nice if your men could shoot the dragons or harvest while you do the other, or what a two-player link would have added to the game (like a lot of substance, longevity and enjoyment). As it is, level objectives repeat themselves too often, the radar you are supposed to use can't tell you about the rocks in your way and the stab of longevity are scattered barrels that you can collect, or not. That said, there are no shortage of enemies, and the novelty of using an entire squad to shoot instead of one is initially fun, though it wears thin after a time.
After ten or so human levels you face a huge boss dragon, and if you beat that underwhelming experience then you can start much more fun campaign controlling the dragons with the object of wiping out the last specs of humanity. Reign of Fire is a disappointing release from Crawfish. They get bonus points for having a contrast option (as every GBA game should) and the theme music is very good, but the actual enjoyment level is very low.
It isn't a terrible game, it's just repetitive, flat, murky and rushed out for Christmas. I mean, where's the set-up to the story? Some explanation of the setting? Low-budget FMV? You'd be better off with the b-movie spectacle of the film (out on DVD now) or the graphical enjoyment of a console version, as this Reign of Fire is very short.
Rating: 4 / 10
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