Rise of the Dragon

The Good
The year is 2053 and the setting is dirty Los Angeles. Former private investigator, William “Blade” Hunter, is asked by Mayor Vincenzi to find out who or what killed his daughter, Chandra. It happens to be an election year, so Vincenzi doesn't want the investigation to be leaked to the press. He gives Blade several leads to get started: Chandra was last seen in the Pleasure Dome, hanging out with some guy known as “The Jake”. Blade should talk to The Jake and show him a “vid-transmission hardcopy” of Chandra.

There are at least three versions of Rise of the Dragon, and each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages. The Sega CD version has full speech, which is what the other two versions lack. The different characters are voiced by professional actors, including Cam Clarke, who plays the part of Blade. Like in other versions, you are likely to choose some responses when you are talking to someone. Whether you choose the right responses will determine if they are kind afterwards, or are angry at you. I enjoyed getting an angry reaction from them. Having completed the Sega CD version, I have to say that the speech very much adds to the game's atmosphere. The voices that I like include those belonging to all the Chinese characters, especially Jonny Qwong and Deng Hwang.

Another advantage over the DOS/Amiga versions is the use of great sound effects. These can be heard in scenes when lightning strikes, when someone fires a gun, or when a bomb is exploded. And you can hear machines doing their shit when you spy into the enemy's warehouse. I mostly heard them from playing the arcade sequences, dealing with the different hazards that block your way.

The Bad
There is one scene where Karyn and Blade go out for dinner, but that scene is censored. This is despite the game given a MA-17 rating by the VRC. Anyone who has played the DOS or Amiga version will surely know that both characters don't just go out for dinner, they sleep together as well.

Due to the Sega CD's limited color palette, the graphics have a green tint to them. Although that is bad, I like to think that the game deserves it due to its “MTZ” drug theme. Before Dynamix went ahead of the game, they should have waited one more year when the Saturn came out. By then, they would have incorporated graphics that have more colors than the other versions, making it look more like a futuristic thriller. As well this, they would have made further enhancements to the game.

The Bottom Line
Despite the censorship and the green graphics, the Sega CD version of Rise of the Dragon has one notable advantage over other versions before it: full speech. This adds to the atmosphere of the game. Other advantages include great sound effects, that can be best enjoyed during the arcade sequences. So if you have already played either of the other versions, I would recommend getting hold of the Sega CD version and see how good it is.

The Good
Kudos to Dynamix with Rise of the Dragon, they tried to create a game which plays like a real investigation, it's just a shame that the case is a bit silly. This is Dynamix's first adventure and it attempts a lot, promising a flexible story set in real world time limits. Gimmicks such as these have been claimed on other games and they are normally carried out in predictable ways nowhere near as organic as they promise, after all everything needs to have a system coded. Rise of the Dragon manages it fairly well and feels pretty sturdy.

It tries to pack a realistic punch as you play detective William 'Blade' Hunter, a retired cop called out on a case to investigate the death of the Mayor's daughter. I'll focus on the plagiarism later, but it sets a scene pretty well, also told in the accompanying comic, of a detective in a noir-esque near future etching a living from his tiny flat. You're thrown in at the beginning of the case having been rudely awakened and literally begin in your underwear. I really liked this touch as you have to get dressed to begin, gradually picking away at your leads. At the start the game is fairly unforgiving as you learn how to interact with the game world, so remember to save often. In fact regular saving before and after any action or conversation is a good idea. Just like in real life if you say the wrong thing to a character they can block you out, meaning you'll never get a vital lead. This may seem harsh when compared to most adventures but I quickly got used to spotting dead end conversations and learnt to be more careful about what I said, rather than just trying every option as in many other games.

The interface for the game is very static, but with pretty scenes depicting the nightmare future of Hollywood. I liked the art style, and the small background animations that bring the game alive, though the static nature can make the game boring after a few hours play. The game is mainly mouse driven aside from two arcade sequences which can both be skipped. It looks outdated now, especially as the images don;t occupy the full screen but it works well enough. The game uses a real time mechanic and makes bold claims about it, though I found it hardly played any role in the narrative, only serving to open and close the City Hall, in fact the time feature created a strange event for me (see later). Still the innovation is nifty even if it's not really integral to the game.

Despite my reservations about the plot, the way the narrative unfolds in the game is well managed. It feels natural as new locations are revealed as characters tell you about them, so you nearly always have a clue of what to do next. In fact the game required no leaps of logic to complete and the branching narrative forks smoothly so I wasn't aware of missing anything and despite not getting the optimum ending, felt I had a better dramatic journey. Definitely how the branching is managed is well done and a tribute to the storytelling.

The Bad
Whilst the narrative unfolds well, the over-arching plot is clichéd and borrows heavily from Blade Runner. In fact maybe the developers should have just paid for the license and released it in the Blade Runner world. Even the protagonist's name is 'Blade' Hunter! The neo-noir landscape is nice to see but it's a blatant copy which led me to another interesting point which I'll go into later.

Unfortunately despite copying the visual style of Blade Runner, the story avoids any moral questioning in favour of a straight beat-the-bad-guy story. What begins as a potential mysterious case never really develops with any twists and even ends with a shoot-out. It falls back on a dose of mysticism, though luckily it never develops into a super-natural threat. As a character Blade never progresses nor shows any sign of weakness to make him more rounded, wasting the game system really.

This may or may not be considered a bug, but the time system does produce some quirks. For example I completed most of my investigations on day 1, only to have to literally pass time for events to catch up. For example I triggered a meeting to happen 'immediately' but then had to wait 12 hours for it! In a more general sense the time system is inconsistently applied, whilst the City Hall opens and closes on a daily schedule, the same people play the same game of cards for four days non-stop. I put this down to the dangers of modelling time a game, when most adventure games rely on one event triggering another.

My final gripe was the terrible music. In places it tries to sound like Blade Runner, whilst in others it just settles for annoying. If only they had spent longer on it and also tried to create smooth sound-scapes to augment the pretty pictures, ones that faded between scenes. I know it would have been hard with the software of the time, but consider that standing outside the night-club has the same music at the same volume as standing inside!

I forgot another small gripe – the box art seems to be designed to repel, it's mainly a picture of a brick wall!

The Bottom Line
I like what Rise of the Dragon was trying to be. With it's focus on realistic life and detective work, characters who can block you out and the aspect of time, it really tries to be a complete experience. However it does this with a hammy plot – if you want to kill people why turn them into dragons first? The plot is straight-forward, though it probably needs to be to allow the plot to branch and weave back in again and work effectively. Despite the static nature of the interface, the branching and above aspects make it a good game to play.

This game feels like a project in creating a story with branching plots, with it's consequential rough edges. Dynamix's next game Heart of China tries to learn from this, but I think Rise of the Dragon is better for taking the serious engaging tone. Heart of China pointed out the plot branches, destroying the illusion of choice, whereas Rise of the Dragon opts for immersion.

One strange thing I felt whilst playing is that whilst the game steals it's setting from Blade Runner, Westwood's licensed Blade Runner game borrows a lot of mechanics from Rise of the Dragon. Despite being a 3rd person game, Blade Runner shares a similar time mechanic requiring sleep and waiting. It also has a very similar method of navigating around the city (though so does Discworld Noir). Furthermore it's method of uncovering facts through normal investigative techniques is similar, plus there's the odd arcade sequence. In fact in some ways Rise of the Dragon is like a tech demo for Westwood's Blade Runner!

The Good
Rise of the Dragon is a pretty atypical game, it's one of those weird adventure games that Dynamix tried to popularize with titles like Heart of China, Willy Beamish and that old secret agent game.

In case you have no idea what of what I'm talking about you should know that come the early 90's, Dynamix tried to put their own twist into the adventure game genre, and released this weird collection of titles that stayed pretty much within the boundaries of the adventure genre, but used a first person perspective, included action sequences and ran against an internal clock among other details.

The changes in the typical adventure game design that simplify item interaction and the inclusion of day cycles and time limits place the focus mostly on scripting and storytelling rather than on mindless puzzle solving. The "adventuring" in these games deals mostly with knowing how to deal with each character and following the storytelling logic of the game while the game world around you does it's own thing, and thus these games work mostly as early ancestors of interactive movies with the point being mostly to enjoy the game world around you. The games also feature a universally simple and streamlined interface with little to no glitches that allow you to access the game's configuration, equip items and interact with the game world with little more than a mouse click, so with those issues solved you can bet there's plenty of room to develop the creative side of things.

Now, Rise of the Dragon is probably the most evolved of these games, and exploits most of this design's true potential for storytelling. Instead of the Kid-simulating quest of Willy Beamish, "Dragon" is a gritty detective story were you have to follow around leads, evidence, clues and need to be in certain places at the right time for things to develop.

The setting of Dragon is a true child of the 80's sci-fi. An edgy, post-modern blend of narrative styles (in this case, the police dramas and its Noir counterparts) mixed into a decidedly pessimistic retro-futuristic world where everything just plain sucks. If you are even slightly familiar with the cyberpunk genre then you know the basics, and they are all here: overpopulated urban sprawls, extreme cultural blends due to the extreme globalisation, corrupt states, rampant crime and lots of assorted garbage on the streets.

Basically the same blend that gave life to Blade Runner, the movie that to this day most closely represents the spirit spawned from this type of sci-fi and which most obviously influences Rise of the Dragon. Just like the movie, "Dragon" also takes several cues from the underground comics of the 80's, specially the European sci-fi that was so popularised in magazines like "Metal Hurlant", and in an excellent stylistic choice, the game's graphics are composed of lovely hand-drawn comic book illustrations that come to life in VGA with loads of colorful details and moody hues. The backgrounds are pretty much ripped from the pages of a comic book, being static screens that nevertheless exploit their perspective and include (being a game and all) looping animations and day/night variations of themselves. The characters themselves are equally rendered, with excellent (albeit completely still) drawings both on the cutscenes and the background overlays. The music is equally well crafted, being composed of a collection of catchy synth tunes that follow the tracks of Vangelis classic soundtrack for Blade Runner. It fits the game like a glove and manages to stay with you even after the game is long finished (I still remember the subway station music as if it was yesterday).

But so much about the game world, what about the game? As I mentioned the tight scripting-oriented design works perfectly with the game's concept. Yes, you have an inventory and get to use your items around, but mostly you have to keep an eye out for your surroundings, gathering clues around crime scenes and chatting with the right people and being smart about what you say or not with the use of the good'ol dialogue tree.

The most dedicated scripting feature is of course the game's internal clock, which goes up with every action you make and the travels you take around the city. Not only does it condition several events, ignoring it will cause dire consequences to your investigations, as for example arriving late to a meeting with a contact might result in his death, or not showing up at the correct timeframe might cause you to just waste your time (hint: the club's only alive at night) and wasting time is something you do not want to do, as the bad guys are always on the move and develop their schemes continually. Additionally the game imposes a realistic logic to your character's behaviour and those around him, ie: undercover means you do not wave your gun around asking were the bad guys are hiding (whether you have a weapon equipped or even in your inventory affects what places you can enter and who you can talk), you can't walk around the streets naked and be taken seriously or leave your house and then try to enter without your keys (duh!), and your girlfriend requires a minimum amount of TLC if you want her to stick by you and help you out. Some of these features work as ways of branching your investigation, but mostly they serve as a way to increase the sense of realism in the game and deepen the gameplay with simple details.

The Bad
The graphics in the game are excellent but, due to the low resolution, appear extremely pixellated and a lot of their charm is lost, pity. The story, while including lots of adult themed details and interesting events falls to several shortcomings from a scripting point of view. Basically this is a detective story were you already know who did the crime. Yes, as I understand it, the mystery of solving who did what is not the first priority here, as it wasn't in Blade Runner. But it's fair to note that Dragon is pretty much devoid of the existential and stylistic elements that make BR such an interesting movie, thus leaving you with a pretty bland experience story-wise with extremely clichéd characters. From the wise-cracking and horribly named detective ("Blade Hunter".... PFFFFF!!) to the evil, evil BWAHAHAAHAHAA "evil" bad guy that hides somewhere in the city waiting for you to find him. There are good moments, mostly exploiting the adult nature of the story, and even some interesting developments, like the bad guys hunting YOU down for a second or so. But mostly it's an extremely oversimplified storyline that doesn't do much with all the potential it's got, developing fast into a "save the babe and the world" scenario before you know it.

The action sequences are another point to gripe about. They are pretty much the best proof there is as to why Dynamix never did an action game. They are horrible, poorly-controlled abominations whose only good element is to be able to skip them without penalization after you've failed them enough times (for the record, save for the last hellish one I finished all of them properly, ahum).

I would also have preferred to see more in the way of branching events, as there are some, but not nearly enough for the game to qualify as a non-linear experience. For instance, there's a moment where you meet up with a nice babe in a club, and if you keep laying on the charm, you'll walk home with her to further uhm... "investigate" her leads, however just as luck would have it, you cross paths with your girlfriend and after a scene she dumps you on the spot. Pretty cool, huh? Of course, as soon as this happens a nice sign pops up saying that your ex was critical to the game thus you won't be able to finish your adventure and you'd better reload... Niiice. This game would have been much more of a critically acclaimed classic if little moments like these were fully developed, I mean what if you could have continued the game with the babe from the club instead of your trusty girlfriend, huh? Now there's an option I would have loved to explore, not to mention that without these alternate paths the game falls to the poor replay value problems that would plague interactive movies in the future.

The Bottom Line
Basically the playable version of an issue of Heavy Metal magazine minus the gratuitous sex and gore. Has enough interesting details and game play depth as to be considered a true jewel of the adventure gaming genre (an extremely odd and atypical jewel, but a jewel nonetheless), yet lacks that extra oomph that would have propelled it to videogame stardom. Still, an extremely recommended experience for anyone, and one of the seminal cyberpunk games (Non-Gibson influenced though) from the early 90's.