Reign of Fire is of course based on the lackluster movie of the same title. For those who are not all that familiar with the plot of the movie. Reign of Fire takes place in the not so distant future, in the year of 2024; humans are verge of being wiped-out by the awesome strength of the Dragons. Twenty years prior, the human race unwittingly brought this foul turn of events onto themselves, when they unintentionally awoke a gigantic fire-breathing Dragon. Now with scattered settlements around the globe, they must fight back against the Dragons for their very existence.

Reign of Fire is a mission based third-person/Dragon action game, you complete one set of tasks and are briefed on your next set of objectives. In Reign of Fire you will get the chance to play as both the Humans and the Dragons, however, the catch is you must suffer through the human missions, before you can move on to the much more interesting Dragon missions. The main objective of the humans is to stay alive, and to figure out how to defeat the Dragons, so that the once proud human civilization can rebuild itself to its former glory. And of course, the Dragons want to put a stop, once and for all, to the human resistance movements.

As you play the humans, everything you do will revolve around vehicular combat. The humans have a vast array of vehicles at their disposal such as, the military jeep, which is the first vehicle that you get to pilot in Reign of Fire. Also you can pilot a tank, which is the most heavily armed and armored of the human’s vehicles. The humans also use a fire truck in their vehicle arsenal, which has the ability to comfortably seat six, and it can also used to put out furious fires that have been started by the Dragons. Lastly, the humans can use a high-speed buggy, which they deploy during missions where stealth and/or speed is necessary. Not only do the humans have a large quantity of vehicles to select from, but, they also quite a few weapons that they can use in their battle for survival; weapons ranging from the highly useful and effective heat seeking missiles to the more specialized water grenades. Each vehicle has its own default weaponry, also, each vehicle can equip mission specific weapons, as needed per each assignment.

Now the Dragons in Reign of Fire, as you should expect, have a completely different set of capabilities. The Dragons relay entirely on their natural abilities to overpower their adversaries, fireballs, napalm attacks, and turning the human’s vehicles and structures against them by dropping them, are the main components of the massive fire breathing Dragons’ arsenal.

Now graphically, Reign of Fire is far from impressive. The landscapes and backgrounds are poorly done and poorly rendered as well, making it rather nauseating to move around these truly hideous looking landscapes while playing. Furthermore, the controls in Reign of Fire are very non-responsive, causing you to lose sight of your targets and making it hard to maneuver your vehicle/Dragon while in the heat of combat. With that being said, Reign of Fire offers two different types of controls for you to choose from, for the humans it is simple and advanced. The simple controls allow you to aim your weapon and move you vehicle with the control stick, simply put; you drive where your weapon is aimed. The advanced controls allow you to aim your weapons with the C stick, while moving your vehicle with the control stick, giving you the ability to move one way and shoot in the other. The Dragons, also, have two different control schemes, but the only difference between the two schemes is the placement of the buttons. The one thing that Reign of Fire does somewhat well is mission variety. Now there are still your standard kill everything missions, but, they mix it up with escort missions, rescue missions, and even stealth missions, giving the game a smidgen of depth and respectability.

If there were fans of the movie, this game will be right up their alley. But the bottom line is there are a lot of better titles out there to spend your hard earned money on. Poor graphics, poor controls, and a theme based on a bad movie makes Reign of Fire a game to avoid. Even with that being said BAM! Entertainment has managed to make a licensed game better than then the movie it was based on.