Drake of the 99 Dragons

I think this is a pretty bad game, BUT the port runs okay and I think this is a really weird unique thing worth preserving in some sense. I haven't run into any real issues completing levels so far outside of cheap shots and getting gunned down which feels more like RNG than active avoidance. the levels are all short and sweet with no checkpoint but I vaguely remember one of the criticisms AVGN levied against it being the final level being awful so I'm excited for that. I think other than the /everything else/ given how easy it is to die to absurd nonsense the literal timer on the death screen where you have to wait to restart is a little cruel. Some of the VA sounds professional level but they have very odd, stilted delivery. The Chinese Aesthetic feels like a superficial gimmick and the walls have hasty scrawling that looks more akin to Nordic cave carving than anything approaching Chinese calligraphy. The aesthetic I think they're going for is a cel shaded Bruce Timm superhero thing but it's juxtaposed with a jumpy gunny john woo thing and a story about ghosts and ancient artifacts. The main character is kind of built like a cartoonish superhero but he has a horrifying ghoul face even before he dies so I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. I also don't think I would like this game anymore even if the graphics were completely faithful, I find the whole thing a little ugly. The level design and controls are really wacky but sometimes they work how you want them to which is better than I've heard it described. I think the intention is to be jumping and shooting all the time but I think the actual play is, when possible, just focus fire on one guy from the back of the room until he dies. It's not too difficult to do on keyboard and you take less damage than the mechanically intended runny jumpy flippy shooty way if you bring him down right away. I'm sure boss fights where this can't happen can be a nightmare though, the first guy you fight is the hardest guy I've fought so far just because his health is absurd. Overall it's a bad game that's a product of its era and I don't think any games really compare to it and all its peers are dead and gone. It feels like a game you'd rent and kind of feel bad about renting it but you can't go back to the video store until Monday so you may as well try to force your way through it. It technically works (including the cutscenes and I haven't even run it through a wrapper!) and you can play it through to the end so I think it's a rare situation of an ancient bad game that's also remained accessible in some capacity and there's something special about that that's difficult to put into words.