First LookDragon's Lair 3D
We get a look at the 3D adventure of video game icon Dirk the Daring.
We were recently able to take a look at Dragonstone's new Dragon's Lair game, featuring such memorable characters as Dirk the Daring, Princess Daphne, and the evil dragon Singe. Members of the original team behind Dragon's Lair, including Don Bluth and Rick Dyer, have been hard at work on this renovation of the original. Once again, Dirk must rescue Daphne and defeat Singe, but if you're expecting the same game featuring full-motion video scenes and minimal interaction, you're in for a surprise. Dirk now runs, jumps, and attacks in real time, controlled by the player in a third-person action adventure game. There have been more than 200 rooms added to the original castle, and the previous game's reliance on devious traps has remained intact, which implies that Dragon's Lair 3D will try to be as tricky and challenging a game as its predecessor.
Dragon's Lair 3D is quite the significant departure from the original laserdisc game--Dirk and the denizens of the castle are animated, cel-shaded characters, each with fluid animations that bring the creators' humorous ideas to the fore. These characters now inhabit, and Dirk now explores, a fully realized 3D re-creation of the original expansive castle, now upgraded so that every nook and cranny can be explored from a more direct perspective. The castle's expanded sections take advantage of modern console technology in ways that the creators of the original game could only dream of back in 1983. Some of the larger rooms are direct testaments to artistic inspiration, like a room inspired by MC Escher's endless stairs. This particular area gives you a view of an empty expanse, bordered by stairs and doors in a way that reaching them seems almost a logical impossibility (until you take a daring leap). Other room types include circular areas bordered by individual cells, creating the battlegrounds of a particular boss fight--where chasing down the bounding foe as he rounds the bends and occasionally ducking into the interconnected chambers make for a constant chase. In true Dragon's Lair fashion, this new game will be replete with collapsible floors, sudden pit traps, and dangerous environments.
What appears to be most significant in Dragon's Lair 3D, aside from the move to a fully interactive experience, is the series of changes that have been made to the character of Dirk the Daring. Our hero can now leap, run, slash, and even tumble as situations demand, giving the character more depth than the previous game could allow. Dirk is also no longer dead after a single mistake, his fortitude now measured by a health bar--accompanied by a new mana meter--that displays his currently available magical reserves. While falling down a bottomless pit will still bring on one of the infamous Dirk "game over" screens, updated with renovated graphics while maintaining the overall look of the original, you have a greater chance of surviving against the rest of the castle's threats, because you are now capable of unpredictable defensive maneuvers and can engage in active combat. While the game is much more free-form in this current rendition, you are aided at nearly every turn by useful advice from the trapped Princess Daphne, who advises Dirk from within the amulet she resides in.
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- Encore Software, Inc.
- Dragonstone
- 3D Platformer
- Release: Dec 22, 2002
- ESRB: Teen
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