Reign Of Fire is an action games based upon the film, which had most of us scratching our heads. The reason for this? Well, when we go back to around this time last year, there were posters and advertisements promoting what could have been the film of the summer. I mean you only had to look at the whole of London in flames with dragons the size of my head when I talk about how good looking I am, with some of Britain’s best helicopters – Only I keep on forgetting what they’re called much to the dismay of one of my friends who keeps on having to remind me (perhaps I should give him a call with reference to this review?). Anyway, the point is, before I ramble on anymore is, that six months later I’m asking people “Whatever happened to that Reign of Fire film?” and they reply “It’s been and gone” without a word in sight. The next thing I am aware of is the film is out to rent and there’s a game out for it on the Xbox along with a copy for me to review.

Unfortunately for me, the game arrived inconveniently as I moved into London (perhaps this was even appropriately?), so I never really got round to playing it until recently – this is not an excuse; it’s a reason for the late review, along with the others. So there!

The basic plot to the film / game is in some kind of research dig in the London Docklands area, where they find the relics of dragon eggs. However, this soon goes all arse-over-tit when these relics are awoken and the dragons live once more to reclaim the Earth. After multiplying faster than rabbits in a barrow of porn, the dragons have control of the planet and the few remaining survivors decide it’s time they should defeat the dragons and rebuild the planet. Or something along those lines anyway.

Gameplay:
‘Reign of Fire’ lets you, in true ‘Alien Vs. Predator’ fashion; decide whether or not you wish to be the human slayers or the dragons themselves. The dragons can obviously fly about breathing fire and casing absolute havoc while the humans go in their little APC trucks while attempting to destroy the dragons with their rockets, machine guns and missiles. Well, I know who I’d be.

When you start playing the game as a human, you’re given a training operation by one of the leaders of the human resistance, he shows you around the general area of the base camp while you have a go at driving round and firing missiles. While fundamentally it’s relatively simple to control the vehicles in terms of the controls and their actions, but you soon find that maintaining control of your vehicles do actually do what you want it to do can actually be pretty frustrating and on occasion, cause you to just turn off the console, especially if you die half way thorough a mission and you just know you have to do it all over again. This is also the case when attempting to shoot down dragons, getting your timing and aim just right is almost impossible when you’re trying to look up, getting the timing right to make sure the missiles wont miss whilst trying to control your vehicle and you have lots of baby dragons running up to you trying to tear you apart. Unfortunately that’s as interesting as the game gets in terms of fighting. Only occasionally you get to try out certain different tactics when fighting against a boss.

Likewise when playing on the dragon side, it’s fairly simple to pick it up and actually do something, but then you have pesky humans firing at you all the time (yes, as with all games where you can play the opposition, they are always much better than you can ever hope to be) and you need to be a bit more careful about where you throw your flame obviously because they are much smaller and there’s always the off few that you didn’t notice before hand.

Generally it’s easy enough to pick up and play, but the controls are just that little bit too sensitive; if they gave you the same amount of sense of control as they do with responsibility then it would be balanced out quite nicely.

Graphics:
The problem I have with the presentation is that everything is obscenely ‘in your face’. Even when you start the game, you’re confronted with menu options that look well designed, but insists on exploding once you click on everything and trying to be as flashy in every direction as possible, not to mention it’s actually hard to grasp the interface because it’s trying to show off. I mean who really cares?

The graphics of the game still don’t impress me a great deal. This isn’t because they’re particularly bad, but simply because this is yet another title to add to the already huge pile of games that are designed for all gaming platforms, and therefore don’t look any better than what you’d see on the PS2. The fire effects are pretty cool and some of the larger dragons (especially the bosses) are somewhat of awe, but the landscapes just resemble something from an Off-Road racing title and little else to back it up… Water effects for instance are blatant cop-outs and inexcusable for the technology for translucent alpha effects we have these days. However, they’re just about sufficient enough to play the game without too many complaints, had they made this version of the game with the Xbox in mind it could potentially look a lot better.

Sound:
The sound and music on the game are probably the best aspects ‘Reign of Fire’ has to offer. The musical score is of high standard with its dramatic Hollywood style score (probably just taken off the film) and adrenaline evoking sounds. It can get tiresome pretty quickly as the music simply loops over, but nevertheless it is enjoyable the first few times round.

Although this isn’t the highest budget film, or game for that matter, the actors still couldn’t be arsed to come in and do the voices for the game. When playing as the humans, you are instructed frequently by your comrades on what to do for your mission, or to be notified when you’re going off-track. It can be quite useful at times when you’re not paying attention to the ever-changing radar, as well as giving you a false sense of comfort when you really suck, but speech is also a nice touch to the game.

Longevity:
If you’re in Blockbuster and you see Reign of Fire to rent on DVD or whatever, you may wish to pick up a copy of the game to rent along with it. This is for two reasons, one you’ll need to be put into the mood to play the game in the first place and second, the game is actually surprisingly and disappointingly short. Sadly it is another one of those titles where you simply fire at things all day and night and just trying not to get killed, so if you’re not in the mood for such a game, you’ll probably get bored of it very quick, if you just saw the film you may make it to the end, but either way, your three day rental period is about as sufficient enough to fully enjoy this game.

Round Up:
Sadly this increases the pile of games and films that simply do not work well together. It’s a nice idea for a film licence, but very much like the film itself, it’s perhaps something that could have been so much greater. I’m not saying it’s not worth playing, because I did get some enjoyment from this, but I think the main point to remember is not to get any false hopes about this game – unless this is more your type of game, in which case you may very well like it. But for me, I just need something with a little more depth to entertain me on a Saturday night.