Drakan: Order of the Flame

                  Reviewed by Nick Edmunds

Drakan continues the longstanding traditions of Tolkien with some
real slash 'n' burn action. You play the beautiful Rynn who, in
the opening scene, is attacked by orc-like creatures, her brother
kidnapped and village put to the sword. With the armies of
darkness massing and the fate of her species hanging in the
balance Rynn's main concern is the whereabouts of her brother.
Thus Drakan begins as a fairly bog standard, 3rd person
perspective slash 'em up and initially that's all it is: some nice
scenery and basic combat, but the sort of thing we've all seen
before. (For some reason a scantily clad lady with a ponytail,
solving puzzles in an underground maze, reminds me of something,
but I can't quite put my finger on it.)

However, once Rynn teams up with the dragon Arokh we enter a whole
new dimension of fantasy gaming. And therein lies the real

strength of Drakan: the blending of two genres (the medieval
flight sim and slash 'em up/crypt robber).

Arokh is beautifully animated and sweeps majestically over the 3D
landscape blasting the nasties with a variety of breath weapons
(yes, you can even upgrade your dragon's halitosis as you
progress.) He might be a little holier than thou with his attitude
and whinge, "I can't fly here", when you know damn well he can,
but with a voice reminiscent of a surly Worf and the catchphrase,
"let's go roast some evil scum" a 20ft dragon really is a girl's
best friend.

Overall the graphics are very good, giving a real sense of texture
and perspective especially at altitude, however the 3D is often
seamy resulting in clipping problems.  These problems manifest
themselves primarily when something you have killed juts half way
through a wall, making the collecting of items difficult, while
some cliff top jumps require pixel perfect accuracy if you're not
to fall through the edge.

Features of note are the wear and tear on weapons and armour,
which then need replacing and the inventory system, which has a
very limited capacity.  Thus you spend a deal of time sorting
through your acquisitions every time you loot a corpse.

The Quake style control system works well particularly in flight,
although combat is limited not only by Rynn's limited attack moves
(she obviously went to a different warrior training school to
Xena), but especially at close range where the camera angles can
make distance difficult to judge.  This is offset by the
artificial intelligence of the enemy creatures, which is either
crappy or designed for monsters that are stupid as well as ugly.
While the included death-match suffers badly in the hands of the
combat system this style of adventure could well be the future of
mud. All eyes to Microsoft's latest offering "Asheron's Call."

While Drakan is good looking and enjoyable I found it a little
disappointing.  Rynn may be much better looking than anyone in
Deathtrap Dungeon and wield a bow better than Turok but she lacks
the moves of Xena and ultimately lacks depth of game play.
Ideally it would have been less linear, involved more interaction
with NPCs and had more substance to the questing (… la Fallout) in
order to give it a more D & D feel.
















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