GAMES REVIEW – Dragons: Outcast Attack

I love How to Train Your Dragon, the story and characters were likable, and relatable, the animation was superb, and it’s all around one of my favorite Dreamworks movies, if not one of my favorite movies in general of all time. Then there’s the show Dragons: Riders of Berk which I feel is a great companion piece to the movie, keeping it’s witty dialogue, clever writing and relatable characters with only a slight step down in animation. Now we have the new season Dragons: Defenders of Berk, which I haven’t seen any episodes of yet but I plan to. Not because I’m a fan of the seres but to wash the memory of this god awful game from my brain.

This is Outcast Attack and oh boy is it a doozy. It’s not on the broken level of Gideon’s Revenge but this game is just plain and simple not fun. At all. At least Gideon’s Revenge was interesting in how broken it was. This is just boring torture. Any kid in 5 secs would shut off the game to watch TV, or do something else constructive like jam nails into their fingers. Why is this the case? Here are the mechanics of Outcast Attack and let’s see if we can figure it out. It’s another impossible game where you fly one of eight dragons (the other seven have to be unlocked) through various obstacles, saving baby dragons and collecting green things, and boxes with the goal being to reach the farthest. We get no contextual story for this mess or really much menu text to explain anything.

What are those green glowy things?
Who are the outcasts that the game is referring too?
What are the boxes?
Why do those boxes cause a slot machine mini game to appear on the side of the screen?

Nothing is elaborated and for a game that’s basically an ad for the show, it gives very little incentive to even give the show a peek. In then end we’re left with just the subtext from the developers “It’s a game so don’t complain, just play it.”

To fly up you hold down the mouse button and you release to make it fly down. Simple right? You even have the space bar to use to fire fireballs to destroy the obstacles. So, what’s the biggest issue? The controls are utter shit. This control scheme and the impossible game format just don’t fit. Let me explain through example, Nightmare-athon was a game where you battle hordes and hordes of zombies with Mordecai and Rigsby until you’re overrun. Why did this game work so well? The controls were natural and fluent, which complimented the fast paced gameplay and aesthetics. It didn’t require too large of an action to accomplish winning the game, just basic natural movements. It may sound silly but in this game the action is too small to fit with the fast pace of the obstacles.

Holding and releasing the mouse button leaves a second between action and response in the game, completely ruining your timing and getting you killed all the time. How would I have fixed this? Seeing how the game uses a freaking mouse, have the dragon follow the orientation of the mouse. This movement scheme helps situate the player into focusing on where their mouse is in conjuncture with your dragon, rather than your player worrying if they’re holding the mouse button for too long or not. Plus with the click and hold control scheme there is zero indication on how quickly the dragon will fly or plummet, getting you killed.

However I will be fair and say that playing the game on my MAC laptop was a lot more responsive then when I used a keyboard and mouse for my PC. I think this is because of the fact the controls are now situated closer together unlike the mouse and keyboard where they tend to be on close to opposite sides of your desk. On the other hand while these controls are better on Mac that doesn’t help when the game crashes mid game and your dragon is stuck flying endlessly with zero obstacles. And I tested this, this glitch can happen multiple times and there’s nothing you can do other then refresh the page.

That’s really all there is folks, unless you want me to talk in-depth on the jpeg image animation and background, that’s all this game has to offer. Because of it’s crippling controls the game starts off infuriating, then dull, then boring, and then you turn it off. But why not just keep the game paused with the music on for a bit longer? Because I’m sure you’ll love the 5-second looping soundtrack of the exact same song, that is teeth grindingly annoying. The show, and the movie are FAR superior then this rushed hackjob of a game. Do not play it.