- #DRAKE OF THE 99 DRAGONS RATING PC#
- #DRAKE OF THE 99 DRAGONS RATING PROFESSIONAL#
- #DRAKE OF THE 99 DRAGONS RATING PS2#
"Not so much at the time, because when you're reviewing McFarlane's Evil Prophecy and Robocop and Drake of the 99 Dragons, all you want is for developers to immediately stop making games like that. A lot of that old stuff was major trash, but there was also something sort of comforting in the knowledge that those middle and budget (bad) tiers could even exist within a publisher's catalog," says Navarro. I'm generalizing of course, but it does feel like the whole midsection of gaming got sucked out sometime in the not-too-distant past, and the bottom rung largely became the domain of random garbage hucksters on Steam. "I don't know if it's better or worse that non-indie games mostly only exist as either incredibly high-budget triple-A experiences or mobile slot machines, with no middle ground in-between for mediocre genre trash. I suppose there's something gratifying about the fact that Drake was once allowed to self-immolate in public.
#DRAKE OF THE 99 DRAGONS RATING PC#
In 2018, the idea of a publisher pressing a disc with a voodoo doll mascot platformer seems close to impossible (although Vince did get a PC remaster just last year). Those games were all equally unremarkable in 2003. No, instead you could go make Voodoo Vince, or Blinx: The Time Sweeper, or Blood Wake. A huge part of this industry was once defined by budget games put together by small teams with limited resources a time when not everything had to come with a bolted-on multiplayer mode, an always-online mandate, and a five-year plan for post-launch monetization.
#DRAKE OF THE 99 DRAGONS RATING PROFESSIONAL#
As a professional I can't recommend anyone purchase it, but as a child who grew up with an Xbox, and played a ton of mediocre trash served up in Blockbuster rental sections, I found that it made me strangely wistful. Honestly, bad as it is, I kinda enjoyed my brief time with Drake of the 99 Dragons. Not something good, but something that felt like it should be there regardless." Alex Navarro "In retrospect, it does feel like maybe we've lost something. This is still a bad game on PC, but it's not as aggressively misconceived.
#DRAKE OF THE 99 DRAGONS RATING PS2#
I suspect the reasons for this are twofold: Majesco probably trusted the precision of a mouse and keyboard more than the analog sticks of the PS2 era, but given that Drake was released on computers a year after its debut on consoles, I imagine the company decided to cut their losses by excising the auto-aim altogether, in a faint hope that they might be able to save face. "But the auto-targeting would frequently go searching for enemies that weren't visible, which meant his arms were constantly flailing and half the bad guys in front of you wouldn't be properly targeted."ĭrake wasn't exactly a looker in 2004, either. "The gimmick was Drake could dual-wield guns, and as part of that aim in basically any direction," says Alex Navarro from Giant Bomb, who reviewed the game back in his Gamespot years.
If you page through those old console reviews, every critic bemoans an auto-aim functionality that was either finecky or straight-up broken, depending on who you talk to. What's funny is that apparently this PC port is somehow the best version of Drake of the 99 Dragons. So yes, I suppose it is kind of like Max Payne, if Max Payne was addicted to cough syrup. Ideally you're supposed to combine all those acrobatics into awesome, John Woo-style kills, but the aiming is so imprecise and alien that the only effective strategy I found was to slow down time and methodically dispatch the enemies in my way one by one. They have such an unpleasant sensation that you literally feel like you're breaking the game. It has all the trappings of a cast-off PC port: the tutorial asks me to press the "fire" button, I guess because they couldn't be bothered to write in the keystroke replacement. From what I understand, the version on Steam is a mirror image of the PC copy that was originally released back in 2004. I spent $4.95 for the privilege of playing Drake of the 99 Dragons in 2018. Instead, it was left to rot in the forbidden corners of Majesco's coffers. Drake was plenty turgid and stupid, sure, but it didn't fail in spectacular enough fashion to canonize its legend. You know what I'm talking about: Big Rigs, E.T., even the relatively recent Ride To Hell: Retribution, with its once-in-a-lifetime fully clothed sex scenes. Those abysmal scores earned Drake of the 99 Dragons an ignoble reputation, but as a whole, I don't know if it quite stacks up to the comical reverence pressed upon the really bad games. Drake intends to be a stylish, soapy corridor shooter starring a trenchcoat-draped assassin branded with a Slipknot-tier magical skull tattoo on his pallid chest.