Dragon Blade - hands-on

Aug 17, 2007

It's borderline tragic that Dragon Blade sports such a generic title, because this looks like a game that actually has something refreshing to offer Wii owners sick of clumsy ports with haphazard motion controls. Ignoring for a moment the game's "newness" - so is the atrocious but original Escape From Bug Island, after all - what we've seen so far reveals a game that makes great use of the Wii remote's potential. Imagine a family-friendly God of War where you use simple gestures to unleash elaborate attacks on swarms of helpless enemies and you've got a good starting point.

The key to these over-the-top attacks is your character's trusty fire sword, which can be upgraded throughout the course of the game into four different brutal weapons. Our personal favorite is the giant pair of blazing fists that bear a striking resemblance to those greenHulk Handsthat came out with the movie a few years back. With these massive, fiery fists, you can swing the remote and nunchuck in together to squish your enemies, or do a top-down swing to pancake them. Another upgrade is the blazing dragon head that you carry around like a hideously dangerous parade float. A simple forward thrust has this dragon head lunging after your enemies like a rabid dog.

This prospect of simple but varied and intuitive motion gestures combined with these brutally overkill attacks is a very promising one, with our only concern being the fact that there might not be enough upgrades (four, as it stands) to keep the game interesting throughout the course of the story. Yelling "Hulk smash!" as you crush foes with your fists is awfully good fun in the beginning, but how long can that last?