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Platform: Xbox Genre: Fighting Publisher: Universal Interactive Developer: Ronin ESRB: T (Teen) Released: Q3 2002 Support AE! Buy Games Here:
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Bruce Lee: Quest of the
Dragon
Score: 2.4 / 10 |
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Pros: -
Plenty of Jeet Kune Do moves to learn -
The few times you are able to master the controls can unleash some
gratifying martial arts mayhem on enemies - There won’t be a sequel
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Cons: -
Control and fixed camera are the worst ever seen in an Xbox game -
Graphics are weak and unforgivable considering this is an Xbox exclusive
title - You’ll never be able to truly enjoy watching a Bruce Lee movie again knowing how his legacy has been ruined by this game
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Related Links: Review: Dead Or Alive 3 (XBox) Review: X-Men: The Next Dimension (XBox)
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"...is rivaled only by Kabuki Warriors as the worst Xbox title yet."
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Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon (BL: QOTD) for the Xbox had the potential to be a great game: Take who many consider the greatest martial arts expert of all-time, the late Bruce Lee (who’d you think I was going to mention, Steven Seagal?) and throw him in a Max Payne-style action adventure with plenty of martial arts combat instead of gunfights. It sounded potentially so good. Instead, what could’ve been an action game contender turns out to be a wannabe pretender that is rivaled only by Kabuki Warriors as the worst Xbox title yet. This game has more problems bringing it down than you can shake a chopstick at.
Placed
sometime circa the 1970s in the shoes of the recently retired British
Secret Service agent Bruce Lee, you are called back into action to
investigate and chase through Hong Kong, San Francisco, and London the
Black Lotus terrorist organization who has kidnapped your scientist
father to develop some type of super steroid chemical compound and also
has stolen the Golden Relic, which holds many ancient martial arts
secrets. His abduction is also revenge against Lee for killing Chai Wan,
who happened to be the father of the Black Lotus’ new leader, Dragon
Lady. Despite some holes and some cheesy 70s-style dialogue (“You jive
turkey!”) the story is serviceable enough to thrust you through the 30
areas that make up BL: QOTD’s adventure game.
However, the cut-scenes that piece together the various levels are unbelievably awful in both their visual appeal and editing. This is an Xbox game, for crying out loud, there’s no way the ugly character graphics that appear in BL: QOTD’s cut-scenes should be acceptable to a development team. And whoever was in charge of directing the cut-scenes needs a remedial course in editing. Many bafflingly start or end at no logical point, and the voice acting dubbing is absolutely terrible (but maybe this was done on purpose).
Speaking
of the voice acting, much of what is spoken by the characters is
undecipherable without having your television up really loud, and if the
real Bruce Lee, although never a thespian himself, delivered his lines
as badly as the game’s virtual Lee does I doubt he would have starred
in more than one movie. The sounds heard from interaction with the
environment and other characters aren’t handled as badly, being
average at best, but hearing Lee’s continuous battle vocalizations
gets tired very quickly.
Graphically,
the in-game animation, character appearances, and backgrounds aren’t
much better, but could have sufficed with better gameplay. Lee looks
scrawny, nothing like the butt-kicking martial arts machine he was in
real life. And some of the supposedly sexy evil female characters Lee
must defeat are closer physically attractive-wise in appearance to
actress Kathy Bates than the beauties in the Xbox fighting game Dead or
Alive 3.
The
biggest flaws that cripple BL: QOTD worse than a dragon punch to the
face is the unmanageable control scheme of Bruce Lee during battles due
in large part to the horrifically designed fixed camera mechanism. This
game reminds me so much of Double Dragon I and II on the NES in these
respects it’s downright scary. If you remember the Double Dragon
games, smooth control wasn’t always there and you were forced to take
on enemies where the game wanted you to based on the in-game camera in a
lot of instances instead of you finding a nice spot for defensive and
offensive moves against multiple clones of thugs.
BL: QOTD suffers from similar problems. The camera is an atrocity, placing Lee many times in awkward positions (behind items or features that are part of the level’s landscape or structures) at key moments during fights that make the game that much more frustrating. If people who have played Hunter: The Reckoning thought its camera could be maddening have seen nothing until they try out BL: QOTD. Also, the game never clearly plots out the path you should be taking, instead relying on the dreaded (and infamous) invisible wall – an unseen barrier that is just plain ridiculous and at times blocks areas of the game where it looks like you should be able to move.
Supposedly
you are using the Jeet Kune Do martial art that Lee was famous for to
dispatch enemies. There’s a huge array of moves listed in the manual.
But controlling the lead character is so unwieldy and difficult,
you’ll never see more than a few of the specialized moves of Lee. The
terrible camera forces you to take on a specific character once you hit
him or her, even if they are off the screen while other enemies can
attack you, leaving you no recourse until that specific enemy is
defeated. This is sometimes the fact even if you are right next to
another enemy character while the enemy currently engaged may be on the
other side of the screen.
You
should always be able to fight the nearest enemy. But no, you can’t
take on another enemy until the one you are fighting is wiped out or you
use a trigger and button mashing multiple attack, which doesn’t always
work effectively or when you want it to. Although, button-mashing is the
most effective option in many fights. Early in the game, I got rid of
most of my opposition simply by rapidly mashing either the kick or punch
button. You’re better off getting comfortable with a few of the more
effective yet simple-to-pull-off moves.
To
win the game, there are 14 boss characters to beat down. But here is
another area where BL: QOTD fails miserably. I won’t sugarcoat this:
When it comes to the boss characters the game’s artificial
intelligence is absolutely appalling. Using the same exact
fighting technique can defeat every boss. Boss characters are supposed
to be the toughest challenges of any game, but in BL: QOTD, it’s the
exact opposite. All you have to do to defeat EVERY single boss is to get
in a crouching defense position, hold the block button, wait for your
opponent to attempt to hit you, and once he or she futilely attacks,
rapidly hit the kick button to pull off a Twin Kick Combo move. After
three or four minutes, the boss will go down. The minor thugs that you
face throughout BL: QOTD are tougher challenges individually than the
entire roster of bosses COMBINED.
Fights
are broken down as Brawls, Time Attacks, Multiple Fights, Nunchaku
Fights, Combo Fights, Sub-Boss Fights or Arena Boss Fights. But when you
break it down, the only real difference is in the amount of enemies you
may vanquish, from 16 to one, in any particular area of the game.
There’s a health display for both you and the current opponent engaged
in a fight and the total number of dragon and purchasing tokens. Various
power-ups will appear, from health rejuvenation orbs to the too few
extra lives.
When
it comes to saving your game progress, BL: QOTD is a mixed bag. Save
points allow for purchasing life and hit points, and skill ranks that
range from white belt through dragon belt. Each incremental belt allows
for additional moves to be purchased, which becomes a moot point since
most moves are too difficult to pull off in the actual game. While you
can save after each completed level, each level is long, broken down
into usually four or five smaller areas. Instead of allowing for saves
at the halfway of quarter point of the level, you can only save if you
make it through the entire level. So even if you lose your last life on
the very last opponent on the level, you are forced to start from the
beginning, which can get frustrating.
But
there is a little glitch in the save system that actually benefits
players. When you restart, if you had saved with only one or no extra
lives left, you’re better off letting yourself get defeated because
once you run out of lives and restart, you will somehow be rewarded with
three, not one or no lives, even though you are starting at the same
exact save point. It’s the bizarre notion of getting a reward for
losing instead of successfully trekking through a level.
BL:
QOTD was supposed to come out around the Xbox’s launch. Considering
that the developers had 7 additional months or so to work on this game,
it’s an outright embarrassment that this is the best product the
developers could come up with. Every member of the development team
associated with this shameful game should be required to withstand three
frontal kicks to the groin before being allowed near another video game
project. Do not buy this game unless you have started collection of the
all-time worst games ever to disgrace store shelves. I wouldn’t
recommend BL: QOTD to my worst enemy, it’s that bad.
-
Lee Cieniawa
(July 30, 2002)
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