Once upon a time in the dark and distant (1983) past there was a brave knight, who appeared on the arcade scene in all his cartoon glory, and single handedly rescued the arcade industry. He also ate all your time and quarters. His name was Dirk the Daring, and for you youngsters out there, he was a household name for the longest time.... He appeared on every major platform back in the day.... and now he's back in glorious 3D, from the same team that brought us the original game, 20 years ago. I'm quite happy to see Dirk again, and I love the fact that this time around I get to control him in all aspects of the game, unlike the arcade original which was just.... Hmmm. It's hard to explain, but you basically just had to hit the stick and buttons in the proper combination to make him run, dodge and jump through the puzzles. The new game is totally 3D, and plays a lot like Tomb Raider, with your character in front of you (3rd person), camera following around behind him.

Premise

The princess Daphne, Dirk's cartoon hottie sweetheart (who always seems to be.. Umm... cold...) has been kidnapped by Singe the dragon, who happens to be the minion of an seriously evil magician named Mordroc. Dirk of course wants the babe back, and thus the adventure into the Dragon's Lair begins. (Ah, you just knew there'd be a cursed castle somewhere, didn't you?) Mordroc will deploy all of his wits against Dirk to destroy him, including numerous minions, some old and some new. He'll also use all of his jumping puzzle creation skills against you. (I suspect that all console game villains go to the same school when it came to designing their lairs to keep out heroes. They need a new class there.... Locking the door 101.)

Gameplay

If you've ever played the Tomb Raider series of games, you get the idea. It's a third person platformer/adventure game. Run, jump, hack and slash your way to glory. The puzzles you'll be facing along the way aren't really hard per say, but they'll usually make you think (And load your save games) for a while before you get past the tough ones. You're going to be seeing a lot of "You need the gold key to open this door!" No surprise there, it's a console and indeed a video game industry standard.

As you journey along your way you'll be facing the aforementioned enemies. The giddy goons, floating skeletons and grabbing hands from the original, as well as a host of new monsters. Dirk can quickly dispatch most of his enemies with a few slashes from his sword, or a few handy crossbow bolts. Each enemy has it's own attack style and weakness, and figuring them out will be vital to Dirk's success. There's a number of boss monsters (surprise!) that are tougher to beat, and generally require quite a number of save games (You can't save when you face the boss, so save just before if you can.) to defeat. I'd like to be able to save anytime I like, but I suppose it adds to the challenge somewhat. When you die you see the same death animation (which you'll quickly wish you could shut off, couldn't find an option for this, just hit ESC when you die to skip it.) and it reloads your last quick save. Annoyingly, there's no way to load your quick save from the main load menu, so you have to load a main game then do a quick load.

Graphics/Environments

Wow. The dev team did an excellent job on the graphics, and have kept quite true to the feel of the original Dragon's Lair. They've managed to use quite a number of textures from the original game. It's a little weird seeing the 2D looking cell shaded characters in the game combined with a completely 3D environment, but they've managed to pull it off quite well. You'll notice in the screenshots that the maps are quite detailed and look very cool. The lighting especially is well done. You'll experience a wide variety of environments, from the outside of Singe's lair to lava filled chambers, dark spider (and hole) filled corridors and the mechanical hell of the smithy.

Sound and Music

Very nice job on the audio portion of the game. The music is just plain amazing and very ambient and fits right in, brining a great deal of "mood" to the game's various areas. The one thing I don't like is Dirk's noises. Dirk never says anything, since he's just supposed to be kind of a bemused, confused little fellow. (They explain it in one of the "Making of" movies that's included on the CD.) Hearing Dirk make the same little noise for the thousandth time can get rather annoying. It's nothing that stopped me from playing the game for good, but after a bit I just had to stop playing and come back to it later. (Well that and dying for the fiftieth time on the same jumping puzzle.)

Weapons and Gear

As was mentioned above, along with Dirk's trusty sword from the first game, this time around he also gets a crossbow and a variety of other gear to use on his quest. The crossbow can fire a number of different bolts, from the very common steel bolt, to the rarer (and very effective against certain enemies) fire bolt, to the one shot, one kill very very rare magical bolt. You can also (once you learn how) power up your sword and do a vicious whirlwind attack that pretty much kills everything around you. Due to the amount of time required for this one, I think I only used it once or twice during the entire game.

While wandering about the castle Dirk will also find a variety of items to help him out, health and mana potions being the most vital. You'll also start to gain what amounts to magical powers from finding items called "essences" throughout your journey. These will allow you to use various powers such as floating in the air, resistance to fire and seeing hidden entrances. Along with learning to use your weapons, the essences are critical to Dirk's success and continued breathing. (And breathing of course is a good thing.)

Controls and Camera

I tend to have a rather strong hate-on for the controls on console type games, and DL3D is no different. It's basically standard third person shooter controls, but just feels very sloppy and took me a bit to get used to. Even after playing the game for a few days I still tend to miscalculate when to hit my jump key and fall into dark holes and such. The controls are easily remappable in the menu system. Did I mention that the controls switch during certain parts of the game? Oh yes. Yes they do. I'm not a console guy. I like to be able to save everywhere, and my controls to NOT switch around in the middle of a game. I'm funny that way. Normally you use WASD and your mouse to look around.... But in Dragon's Lair, certain puzzles (many, many puzzles) suddenly disable your mouse, and you end up using JUST your WASD keys. Press up and you move towards the top of the map, A moves you left etc. Very, very VERY disconcerting to say the least, and probably reason enough to knock one whole frag offa the game's rating.

Nice work on the camera, never really had a problem seeing around me with the camera left on auto when in normal WASD mode. (There's a free look feature, which I never had to use, YAY!) When Dirk's skinny little body gets in front of the camera, he goes semi transparent so you can still see whatever it is that's trying to kill you at the time. The only time you ever have any difficulties is when the game's controls go all fun house weird and switch to the "no mouse WTF" mode. It's then a fixed cam that bites.

Bugs

Had a really weird one going when I was playing the game at home. I would suddenly be looking at the ground, and my mouse was unable to raise my view. No such thing occurred to me when playing with the game at work, so I suspect it's related to one of my USB devices, perhaps the joystick?

Conclusion

Dragon's Lair 3D is a fun little time waster with excellent graphics and sound, good puzzles and.. Hey, it's Dragon's Lair, with it's own unique style and look. For the $45 CDN, it's money well spent for the entertainment value you get from it. It does lose points for the controls and view switching during some puzzles. That's exceptionally annoying. Otherwise, good game, if a little short. (Please note, if you really don't like jumping puzzles, don't buy this game!.)