Rise of the Dragon

The Good
Rise of the Dragon was Dynamix's first attempt at a purely graphical adventure, and it was largely succesful. While some people dismissed it as too easy, I found it quite immersive. Gameplay is achieved best with the mouse, where you use the pointer to examine elements of your location, manipulate objects, and throw switches. Its easy to learn, but it doesn't cheat--you have to equip your gun before you can fire it, for example, and if you leave your gun eqipped all the time, you run the risk of scaring the people you run into (because they can see your gun brandished).

The music is great, not because it reaches out and grabs you, but because it doesn't try to. The music is always underneath the scenes, and in some places, does a fantastic job of representing what the character is supposed to be feeling. A particular favorite section of mine is the very first scene where you're in your apartment; even with a simple Adlib card, the music you hear while exploring your surroundings not only does an excellent job of describing how you feel, but almost attempts to describe how your environment feels, if such a thing is possible.

The graphics are very good; each screen was illustrated traditionally on canvas and then digitized. While many of the themes are borrowed liberally from Blade Runner, some areas of the game manage to find their own vision.

The Bad
You would think that graphics digitized from original art would look really great, but some screens are not dithered as well as they could be, which is annoying if you're nitpicky about those kinds of things. (To judge for yourself, take a look at the many ROTD screenshots here on MobyGames.)

ROTD runs in realtime, which is normally a good thing; you can't just sit around poking at everything. But this can get frustrating as well--at one point you have to save your girlfriend while a timer is ticking down to zero in the background. This is unnecessarily manipulative.

Worst, though, is the inclusion of a weak action sequence thrown in at the very end of the game, which is completely inappropriate (and also very hard to win!). Thankfully, if you die too much in the endgame arcade sequence, the game offers to let you skip it to see the ending.

The Bottom Line
Rise of the Dragon is one of my all-time favorite games. If you haven't played it, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

The Good
The first thing that struck me where the great looking graphics in Blades small but futuristic apartment. The greatly seductive sound of drops hitting a metal sink together with that distant pixel skyline outside the window drags you right into the screen and universe, a mystical and depressive such. The game is built on hand painted still images and is played in real time, witch means that if you have an appointment at 5 and the time is 3 you just have to wait. The storyline was strongly plotted out for you and there where no such thing as dynamic gameplay, but still they manage to deliver the feeling of accomplishment to the player. Throughout the game you encounter several puzzles that are directly tied to the story. The sequence where you sneak down the sewer to redirect some electrical weiring are a master piece. In short this game with its graphics, sound and music absolutely kidnaps you for a couple of hours and holds you helplessly hostage in they Blade Hunters future universe, you get to live a part of his life.

The Bad
There are a couple of shoot'm up segments in the game that are a total catastrophe. Its blocky steering and inexact shooting gets you extremely frustrated when all you want is to know how the adventure continues. Further more its very short and just as you are about to log on to Ebay to get your self the Blade outfit you´v saved the day and the game is over.

The Bottom Line
An interactive Sci-Fi novel in the Blade runner universe. There are 3 different game types bundled in one. The lined out RPG, the puzzles and the, from the side, shoot 'em up type. Its a typical Hollywood story with a strong atmosphere but a short lifespan. You even play the love life.

The Good
Rise of the Dragon for the Sega CD takes advantage of the CD storage capacity by having most of characters dialogue read by actors. Where as the original DOS version of the game had to rely strictly on-screen text.

The acting is actually quite good -especially the voice actor for Blade - and its probably some of the best example of voice acting in a classic point and click graphic adventure game.

The port over to the Sega CD did mean having fewer on-screens colors to work with in comparison to the PC. To address this hardware limitstions, the designers choose to give the game an green tint to the futuristic city.

It actuallys makes the game's environment seem a bit more mysterious. It is hard to describe, but the look and feel of the game reminds me of the first Matrix film.

The designers of this game did an excellent job in creating a dark sci-fi world that you want to explore and learn eveything about.

This game is an excellent story in the adventure game genre and one of the best games ported over to the Sega CD. It is a shame that this game was not ported over to a newer game system.

The Bad
Rise of the Dragon maintains most of the mature themes from the original DOS game, i.e. profanity, drug use (albeit a fictious one) and the many death sequences and bad alternative endings.

The Sega CD game certainly earned its MA-17 label by Sega's own short lived video game rating council.

It's alll rather tame compared to the content seen in Grand Theft Auto, but in the early 1990s home console systems tended to be much more leery about mature or taboo content in a game.

The censorship seen in the Sega CD port is mostly concerned about sexuality. Mild Some of the DOS violence was toned down, although the biggest censorship issue seems to have been all about s-e-x.

Sexual jokes and innuendos are left in tact, but French kissing and implied sex scenes were cut. Their is also a dancer in a night club who was much more "visible" in the DOS game.

Apparently, some things in the video game were just too mature for a CD game given a MA17 label. It is unclear whether or not Sega ordered the content changes or maybe the designer thought did so "voluntarily".

The censorship does not alter the story line significantly. However, given how the game was already classified as being for older games, it seems silly that the original content was censored.

The Bottom Line
Rise of the Dragon is a DOS classic adventure game that is well designed for the CD format. The futuristic setting is diverse and technologically advanced, but also ripe with corruption, urban decay, vice and a serious drug problem. Its a littke bit film noir, and a little bit Blade Runner.