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I feel bad for the kids of today. With the exception of a few, a bad video game adaptation of a TV series or movie in my childhood wasn't the complete assault on the senses that it is now. At the worst, you got stuck with an awful platformer that was fun to laugh at; something cartoony and tolerable enough to show your friends how hilarious the depths of bad gaming can be. Unfortunately, times have changed. We've gone from hopping around throwing daggers at Jason to clumsily stumbling through retina-popping, lazy 3-D monsters that shouldn't have seen the light of day. Dragon Booster is 2005's coal in your stocking.
I'm not saying this to be funny, and I'm not saying it to establish some grand, insulting tag-line. Children genuinely should not have to play this game. It's very easy for some poor fan of the titular cartoon to end up with this as a gift, and that's a shame. Dragon Booster perfectly illustrates how a game can go horribly wrong on a system so catered to innovation and creativity. The developers obviously thought that forcing pure touch-screen control, a feature that many third parties have been guilty of not taking advantage of, would make the game unique or interesting. But if you're going to do it, do it right.
As the name vaguely implies, you'll find yourself in the future racing dragons along winding cityscapes. This is a concept I can get behind, no problem. You can further strengthen your beast by purchasing gear to use during races, some of which helps in combat, while other attachments can boost your speed, and so on. "Fine, sounds like fun. I'd like to play your game, sir."
Just then, the dark side of the touch-screen novelty rears its ugly head. The dragons are controlled with your left thumb on the d-pad while your right hand holds the stylus and starts the struggle of your life. Tap the dragon and it jumps, tap a competing rider and you'll rubber-band off of your dragon momentarily to attack him, tap hanging power-ups to obtain them, and tap obstacles in your way so you don't die. You even adjust your speed by tapping the stylus across a small arrow icon. Tap. Tap. Tap. Sounds easy, until you realize that someone forgot to make the touch-screen controls even remotely responsive. Have fun searching for the obscurely positioned hit box on your opponents, or figuring out the right spot on your dragon's butt that will make it hop. Don't forget to check out the top screen and see what gear you have assigned to which button and how… aw, forget it.
Frankly, the whole game is just maddening… and it's ugly too. The drab, lifeless tracks are only upstaged by dragons that look like 3-D finger-painted horrors. It doesn't stop there either. The music is obnoxious and the "extra modes" are a joke. The Mini Challenge involves facing off against another rider in a "Skill(z) Competition" that has you scrambling to hit more targets than the other. But it's completely broken too, because you're both hitting different colored targets and the computer randomly doles out a certain amount of each one. You'll be looking like an extra from Nightmare City if you play this for more than a few minutes, and good luck finding anyone to join in wirelessly with you.
This isn't anger though, this is concern. Let's think of little Jimmy and his "big gift," or Susan's birthday blues spent hammering her DS with a stylus in hopes that, one day, her racing dragon might make it to the finish line. Regardless of the cartoon's quality, there's no excuse for something so terribly rushed and uncared for like this on the shelves. If you or, more likely, a kid you know is a fan of Dragon Booster, buy them the DVDs and leave this to its bargain bin destiny.
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