Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon

For the past few months, I've been anxiously awaiting the time when a ton of great, exclusive Xbox games will be released.  It's not that the console hasn't had stellar games lately, but other than Morrowind, every good Xbox game I've played within the last eight weeks was ported over from the PlayStation 2.

Now that July is here, the drought of good games is finally over!  Or is it?  One of the most anticipated Xbox releases (well, it was highly anticipated 12 months ago) this month turned out to be a technological failure.  Technology may not seem that important when you're having the time of your life with a game like Halo or Dead or Alive 3.  But the technology behind those games is quite advanced, allowing the developers to give us a great game-playing experience.  Without good technology, games will perform with less-than-stellar results.

Before you delve into Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon's glitchy world, you need to know exactly what kind of a game this is: a beat-'em-up fighting game.  There is very little item collecting, absolutely no puzzle solving, and virtually nothing else to do except beat up a few hundred enemies.  Don't think of it as a 3D version of Streets of Rage, think of Bruce Lee as the lovechild of Spike Out and the Tekken Force mini-game.  If you enjoyed either of those games, then Bruce Lee might be able satisfy your gaming hunger.

The enemies act like the thugs Bruce used to battle in his movies: they wait for you to come to them before attacking.  There are times when more than one enemy will attack, but it doesn't happen very often.  In fact, the enemies are so dumb that I could hold the controller in my right hand and constantly press the A button until all of my opponents were dead.  You can press the analog stick in any direction to evade an attack, but that isn't necessary when you can more or less button-mash your way to victory.  That's not to say that there aren't any good combos in this game, it's just that 85% of them are not necessary.  The punch--punch--punch-type combos are easy to perform, and they work so well that you don't need to bother performing any of the other moves until a boss arrives.  Once he/she is defeated, it's back to the same old repetitive button-tapping action that makes up most of the game.

Having a wide variety of combos is great, but I would have much rather had 15 great combos and refined gameplay, than 100 combos and repetitive, glitch-filled gameplay.

There is more clipping in Bruce Lee than in any other Xbox game I've played.  For those of you who don't know what clipping is, it's when a line scrolls across the screen (usually from top to bottom), slightly jerking the game.  A little clipping here and there isn't too distressing (though completely unnecessary with today's advanced game consoles), but the amount that's present in Bruce Lee is more than any gamer should have to bear.  You can't walk around an empty area in the game without getting a little dizzy from the constant jerking of the screen.  It's not uncommon to see more than 20 clippings per minute.  The clipping is actually lessened when fighting enemies, but the picture is still somewhat jerky.

To make matters worse, the load times are horrendous.  They're slow, they're long and they occur very often.  Every time you defeat a pack of enemies, the game literally freezes while it loads.  If you try to move, Bruce Lee will stagger until the loading is finished.  Then, when you finally reach the end of the level, the game takes you to a long loading screen!  It's akin to watching a television show that's been cut down for syndication.  In this case, however, you're being interrupted by loading, not commercials.

Much to my dismay, that's not the end of your misery.  In fact, the controls are so weak that I am having a tough time deciding which is more aggravating: controlling Bruce Lee, or non-stop clipping.  Either way, you'll be disgruntled by this game's lack of an intuitive control system.  Usually I find myself saying how surprising it is to play a game with such responsive controls.  So many games have them that I began to forget what it felt like to play a game that didn't have responsive controls.  Now that I remember, I want to forget it again.

Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon fits right in with the other weekend rentals that fill Blockbuster's over-crowded shelves.  For fifty dollars, even the most happy-go-lucky casual gamer will not want to buy this game.  In 12 months, the price should drop quite a bit, but you'll have better games to play by then.  And you know what?  There are better games to play right now.

Gameplay: 4.8
It was disappointing to play Bruce Lee for the first time because I found out that another good concept had been lost to insane technical issues.

Graphics: 6 
There's good and there's bad in Bruce Lee's graphics.  The good stuff stands out from the start: Bruce Lee's character model is awesome.  His face isn't as accurate as I had hoped, but his muscles are very detailed.  The mouth movements are really good.  Unfortunately, those two good points are overshadowed by an excessive amount of clipping and a choppy framerate.

Sound: 5.5

Difficulty: Easy
Kick.  Punch.  Kick.  Punch.  Continually press those two buttons, and you'll become a thug-beatin' martial arts master in no time.

Concept: 6
Ronin was on the right track for making a good game, but apparently that track wasn't finished.  I doubt that Universal will ever green light a sequel, but if they do, I hope they give Ronin the time and/or money they need to develop a truly memorable game.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 4.8
Fighting games can get away with being repetitive, simply because they have a two-player mode that adds an immense amount of replay value.  However, Bruce Lee is a one-player game, so repetition is not acceptable here.