No, it's not, it's all very believable - a simple tale of one man and his dragon - as well as his beloved who's been nicked by someone else, prompting said man to jump on said dragon and attempt to get said beloved back. Hey! It happens all the time.
The game's split into eight sections, alternating between two completely different game styles. The first stage has you sat astride your dragon whizzing through the air, avoiding trees, dinosaurs, bridges, trees, rocks and more trees. Luckily, you can fire at everything and anything. It's lucky because this section goes so fast you don't get a chance to avoid anything - just plough a path straight through it all.
Once this tedious and pointless section is over, you're moved into a horizontally-scrolling beat-'em-up. Actually, it doesn't scroll but shifts screen by screen. This means you get loads of chance to fall off the edge of the ledges artfully placed just off-screen. There are an awful lot of snowballs rolling about which need to be jumped over, as well as scaly prehistoric things which constantly attack you - as if the magicians bunging spells at you weren't bad enough. It's all very distressing, but nothing you can't handle with your sword. Then it's back to the 3D flying section with the awful graphics and the hopeless gameplay.
Verdict
You can discount the flying sections straight away - there's no skill involved there, the graphics are ridiculously blocky and the whole thing's a mess. The thing is, the beat-'em-up section isn't much better. The screen flicks make the action too jerky for you to really get involved in the gameplay and anyway you don't particularly want to - the chances are you'll have seen it, done it and don't want to talk about it.
Unreal's a bit of a mishmash, with no real redeeming features to speak of. Appealing title, though it's a pity the game turns out to be all too real, and all too familiar.
1st June 1992
