|
This action-adventure game is an entirely new, three dimensional version of
the original classic game that appeared in 1983 on many platforms. Again, the player
gets to play the goofy hero, but courageous knight, Dirk the Daring who is on a quest
to save the pretty princess Daphne. The princess was kidnapped by the evil dragon
Singe imprisoned in a medieval castle owned by an even more evil wizard called
Mordroc. Now, it's only up to Dirk to use his courage and his quick reflexes to
overcome the traps in the castle, if he wants to save the princess and his skin. In
the Classic mode, you play the game the same way: press the button or push the
joystick at the right moment to avoid a gruesome death. In Adventure mode, however,
you control Dirk. You make him walk, jog, run, jump, roll, crouch, climb, pull
switches, open doors, swing a sword, and just about all the other actions that you’d
expect from a third person perspective action game. There’s also an Unfair mode,
but it’s really, really, well...unfair. Not only are there the typical characters
to fight, but any part of the castle could be fatal: floors crumble away, books and
chairs attack you, poison gas seeps in, and so forth. Don Bluth and his partner
Gary Goldman who animated the original game returned to assist the team, offering an
original 2D opening animation sequence, a dozen new monsters (there are over 30 in
the game), and access to the archive of Dragon’s Lair materials from the original
game. There are 43 enormous areas containing over 250 rooms for players to explore,
and there are plenty of hidden items to discover. In 2005, Dragon's Lair III DVD was released employing footage captured from Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair gameplay. It plays much like Dragon's Lair and subsequent Laserdisc games with simple movement/action options and without the free-roaming 3D environment. |
