The finer details of the story can be spared since if you’ve seen the commercials, or even the box, then you should have a fine grasp of any well-read merit it may have to offer. As for gameplay, it’s a weft that’s a coarse agglomerate of two decent ideas surrounded by poor execution or poor management or the pendulum pressure of the dreaded deadline. The first of these ideas is to indulge yourself as Quinn, the leader of the Norfolk bivouac, as he drives and shoots down dragons and their cronies (it’s uncommon to see structured vehicular combat that isn’t in arena-based or in a FPS). The second idea is Kuju spinning a curlicue and allowing you to play as the dragon. A good thought since there’s no emotional investment required whatsoever in the humans. Why spend efforts increasing the stakes, accumulating the events into some climax that not anyone would care about or give much regard to, when you can simply split everything down the middle? It’s a risky tactic, but can propel the game to modest heights if it’s being handled with graceful hands. Let me tell you, it has not been handled with graceful hands.

After completing about half of the human missions, you’ll be given the choice to either continue the human campaign or switch to the dragons. (Also a good way to grab at the holy grail that is replay value, but if only the game were more satisfying to play.) There are four types of vehicles you can control for the human levels: the jeep, the tank, the van, and the buggy. All of them vary in speed and size but they deal out the same relative amount of damage, so utilizing the tank is definitely not as exciting as it should’ve been. The level designs and their objectives are prosaic, uncreative, but there are occasional prolonged moments of adrenalin rushes and the stylish frenzy of something from a Hollywood studio.

At the game’s best, you’ll shoot down the dragons and see them drop like whistle-less bombs. The screen shakes, the controller shakes, clumps of dirt arc in the air, and when the dust clears, a contorted mess of "flesh and blood" lies before the vehicle and you might even be up to the task of doing it again. Unfortunately, the rush wears off, and despite any immediate gratification you may get from blowing up dragons, there seem to be a dozen more that take its place and the game quickly becomes a chaotic mess of napalm, fire, motion blur, dying comrades that are really impossible to save, and bullets and missiles that fly off into nowhere so that it feels like any progress the game makes doesn’t even revolve around your actions. True, the absence of the individual is a harsh reality of war, but that still doesn’t serve as an excuse for making an un-gratifying game.

The constant need to shift camera angles helps no matters. On the ground front are the vulpine Jakyls and ground dragons and in the air would be the, um, air dragons. The ground animals are much more fun to attack since it’s possible to set your mind to killing one and actually be able to do it, consorting with evasive maneuvering and assaulting with machine guns and special missiles. To effectively fight the flying dragons, one needs to switch between four camera angles (two of which are useless) to the zoomed out one (the camera-switching button has been illogically assigned to the select button). Unfortunately, while in this camera angle, fighting the ground animals is impossible, since the targeting reticule won’t reach the ground (makes sense since pressing down all the way is reserved for reversing) and even then, fighting the dragons is no easy matter. They’ll fly, swoop down, light fire to everything, and fly away before you can really get a good lock-on.

The predicament is compounded even further since the term “sitting duck” never applied more heavily than in this game. Moving about makes it harder to hit your targets, but being transitory makes you more susceptible to catching on fire, which, unlike every other game out there, does not extinguish itself. You’ll need to find a water pipe or a large water source - but stray too far from the laid-out path and you’ll lose the mission. Even if you do find a water source near the battle site, it’s such a dangerous proposition one can only wonder if it’s even worth putting yourself out (stray out into the water too far and drown, but you’re more likely to get pushed into the water by a ground animal or the blast radius from a fireball) and it’s here that you’ll die very often. And like Sub Rebellion, Reign has the hideously awful problem of having no checkpoints or save system for any of its overly long levels. But unlike Sub Rebellion, I rarely ever felt any strong inclination to wholeheartedly retry.

The dragon campaign should’ve been a highlight of the game, what with the incandescent burning and flying and what have you, but they end up far worse than those puny humans. The controls are unusually stiff (with the vehicles sometimes controlling like they’re on the frozen side of the moon) and the non-existent variety (less than a handful of attacks) causes the game to eventually recede into a tortuous pattern of going through the motions, consisting of picking up people or trucks and spitting fire towards the ground. With the human campaign, it may have been needlessly difficult and hard to handle the vehicles, but it always only teetered on the edge of boredom, while the dragons clear it with ease.

The music and other sound are unmemorable, though the voice acting is rather professional. The graphics are quite a pleasure to look at; even the endless stretches of war-torn battlefields and flayed buildings are obliquely intriguing. Strengthened by the on-screen carnage, this is one of the games I’d much rather watch than play; I’d get the same enjoyment as I would from playing it but without the heat-frustration.

Another wasted opportunity for a semi-obscure developer to prove themselves, Reign of Fire is a textbook case of the "could’ves" and "should’ves." I won’t admit to knowing all the politics and managerial difficulties that may have prevented this from being a better game, but after twenty years of this, if we’re finding that we still can’t turn in a good movie-licensed game on a regular basis, then the dragons may have truly already won.

· · · Sqoon