The Hall of Shame 03.05.08: Drake of the 99 Dragons

Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 03.05.2008

Does the game suck so badly as to have 99 problems?

Drake of the 99 Dragons sucks. Everything about it just sucks. The camera is dreadful. The control is awful. The sounds and music are terrible. The storyline goes from generic to bad. The graphics, surprisingly, are somewhat okay. X-play called it the worst game to hit the Xbox. The game was so awful that a European release was canceled. GameSpot named it the second to worst "frightfully bad" game in their Halloween 2004. Because Drake fails in just about every way, it's gets inducted into the Hall of Shame.



So yeah, the game obviously sucks, but I didn't write out some generic article talking about how bad it really is. Instead, inspired by the name of this game and a song by Jay-Z, I decided to attempt to point out 99 problems, big and small, with this game. Drake is bad, but is it so bad that I can actually point out 99 things wrong with it? Let's find out!

List of problems with Drake of the 99 Dragons:

1.Drake's chin looks fugly.

2.Drake has no pupils. To all the wannabes out there: Not having pupils does not automatically make you a badass!

3.And neither does wearing those long black coats! It's time like this that make me hate the Matrix for this fashion trend.

4.Speaking of hating the Matrix...Freeze Motion! You'd think it would just freeze the enemies around you, but guess what? You're frozen as well.

5.Drake does not have a badass voice either

6.I don't know if there's a certain haircut you're supposed to have when you're a badass, but I'm pretty sure Drake's hair is anything but.

7.The page says there are "awesome supernatural villains, sexy female assassins and of course Drake". So apparently, he isn't awesome, or sexy, or a badass. Poor guy.

8.Drake looks like Frankenstein's Monster on the RP-rated boxart.

9.He talks about his master is better then him, yet the master is dead by the beginning of the game. Not exactly someone I would call a "master".

10.Notice how Drake drinks from that bowl and becomes paralyzed, but the master doesn't drink from that bowl at all? I smell date rape!

11.What the hell can possibly taste bitter and sweet at the same time?

12.Of all the things to make a person strong, I don't think soup is one of them.

13.The master gives Drake the undying dragon by banging two sticks together.

14.When entire clans are killed, it's usually because of a super powerful evil. This clan was killed off by cyborgs.

15.The 99 Dragons/Undying Dragon logo sucks.

16.The cyborgs in the commercial look like they tried to build Captain America out of legos

17.Drake's voice actor sucks at voice acting

18.Drake is a horrible story teller

19.Is Drake supposed to be narrating about what's going on? Because if not, then the lip movements are fucking awful

20.Did Drake suddenly forget that was dead in the beginning?

21.The camera decides to position itself in a way that makes you not see enemies you're supposed to shoot.

22.Or it'll just get stuck in a wall.

23.The aiming reticle for the guns is used with the same stick used for controlling the camera.

24.Drake would rather shoot at people far away then the people right next to him.

25.His jumping ability sucks.

26.His double jumping ability double sucks.

27.Running up the steps takes real effort thanks to that awful camera.

28.The auto target sucks at automatically targeting who you want it to target.

29.It was made Xbox 360 compatible. WTF?!?!

30. Sometimes you have to follow a courier in the game to complete a level, only he gets his ass stuck and you can't follow him anymore, thus forcing you to start over.

31.And sometimes you can just go to the end of the stage without him and still complete it.

32.Some enemies will get stuck in corners and walls. You'd think this would be an easy kill but...

33.Somehow they never wind up dying even after unloading like a hundred bullets on them.

34.Drake apparently has unlimited ammo.

35.Drake waves his arms too damn much.

36.Drake's has abrupt moving animations.

37.Drake sucks at walking on walls. The Prince of Persia he is not.

38."Drake of the 99 Dragons is the type of game whose appeal reaches a broad range of consumers," said Ken Gold, Vice President of Marketing for Majesco. LIAR!

39.Drake looks like he's made out of plastic in the cutscenes.

40.What skin color is that supposed to be?

41.The "Story driven plotline of furious and brutal revenge with an unexpected twist at the end" is apparently so awesome Majesco had to mention it twice on the game's official webpage.

42.Drake's page also plugs "Advent Rising", another Majesco failure.

43.Training sessions don't actually train you on how to play.

44.A lot, if not all the missions are done by going from Point A to Point B.

45.The game came with a small comic book to explain it's backstory. You know what other shitty game did that? Action 52. Coincidence?

46.They made the demo seem a lot more cooler then the game actually is.

47.The bullet-time effect is triggered accidently too often because it's done by pressing the left joystick.

48.What kind of a villain name is TANG?

49.The cutscenes later on in the game make no damn sense.

50.There are no mid-level save points.

51.Each level has a time limit to complete it in, and given that the camera points at every direction but the right one, it's likely you're not going to complete a level the first time around.

52.Sometimes you'll run out of time due to enemy or door glitches.

53.When he gets hit hard, his body just flies through the air with no actual animation.

54.The moment he gets the power of the undying dragon, he jumps out of a 100-story window and dies. Yep.

55.The trailer says the 99 Dragons are a triad, so they're a crime group. So really, who are the real bad guys here?

56.The sound of Drake's footsteps are completely off sync.

57.The door opening sound effect is the same sound effect used on AIM when a buddy signs on.

58.I hate how Drake doesn't wear a shirt.

59.You can't reload your gun until you run out of bullets in a clip.

60.The sound effects for the guns don't sound like real guns at all.

61.The music is dull.

62.The aiming reticle is a transparent, hard to see color.

63.Drake barely shows any emotions.

64.New characters are introduced with barely any mention of who they are.

65.The graphics aren't all bad, but most of it looks blocky.

66.Loads of enemies will suddenly show up out of nowhere way too many times.

67.The game says you can use martial arts, but you actually can't (or at least I've never actually see him do it).

68.Those 25 missions are not intense at all.


Unfortunately, that's it. I really can't think of anything else to nitpick about Drake, and even if I could, I'm pretty sure you get the point by now. The only way I know I can list more is if I actually play the game. But oh HELL no I am not doing that! Action 52 was one thing, but I know what awaits me if I play this, and I don't like it one bit.

Drake was created by a Swedish group called Idol FX AB, who made a couple other PC games. One was an FBI game that sucked, one was a game nobody reviewed, and the other was called Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi, which actually has some good reviews. So apparently the company can actually make passable games, which makes Drake an even worse of a failure.

In conclusion, Drake of the 99 Dragons has a lot of problems with itself. But hey, at least a bitch ain't one.