Drakkhen

At a Glance: Role-playing games seldom appear in the Rom Pit. It has little to do with actually being a wizard and preferring not to play one recreationally, it's just the amount of time it takes to get anywhere remotely funny from one. I try pretty hard to get all of you the funniest pictures I can from these ROMs and sometimes this requires some finger acrobatics (fingerbatics), mental endurance trials, and too much time playing a game about stock broking. Thankfully it only took me about three seconds into the game before I found the funny. Get a fork, pull up a chair, and dig into Drakkhen for the SNES.

Platform: SNES (Download Emulator here)

Download: Download ROM here

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I think I misplaced a frame but you would honestly not notice if I did.Story: A brief explanation is given to you in the beginning of the game but I think I could have disarmed a bomb hooked up to a Rubix cube faster than I could decipher exactly why you are talking to dragonmen. Simply separating those who hate you and those that just want to berate you is a task I was not up for. From what I could gather I assumed that you are on some sort of epic quest of some nature to get [noun] and save [noun], with possible option to [verb] the [noun] and become a hero that [noun] will [verb] forever. [Verb] you, game. [Verb] you all to hell.

Gameplay: If you consider terrible games to be accidents then Drakkhen is a car crash where four vans collide at ninety degree angles, a cruise ship comes in and drops anchor on the car, and then everyone gets crushed by a meteor. Traveling in the game uses a strange sort of first person view where you can slam into trees at your leisure or visit some interesting people's houses, but whenever you are called to battle or try to enter a castle you watch little people file out from the bottom of the screen. When they first shuffled onto the screen I thought they were going to sing me a song telling me about the wonders of plastics, but all they did was hit a puddle of water with some sticks until it exploded.

Controls in the lower right corner of your screen allow you to set the behavior of each of your characters, so you can set them to cast spells, hit things, defend, but sadly not remind you to brush your teeth or convince your parents to buy you a better video game. You have to draw those onto the screen yourself.

Once you get bored of customizing what your characters wear, how they act, and why they choose not to vote you soon come to the conclusion that wearing five shirts is not considered proper body armor despite what anyone tells you. You are capable of buying things in Drakkhen but only in a complex system I would need a useful degree to chart out. Instead I rely on what works for me in real life: walking around and wandering into people's houses.

Traveling in Drakkhen only results in frustration. Every two seconds you are being assaulted by a half dragon man, shadow giants, huge black dog heads that shoot fire, or feelings of intense regret for not supersizing your meal. As it often happens with role-playing games, you are given complete weakling characters that can barely enter other areas without being jazzercised by a dragon prince. Expect a lot of frustration to overcome you when you start running errands for dragon people and your party almost bites it because a shadow comes off the ground.

Graphics: Since I couldn't find any shops to buy some torches until I looked it up online, most of the graphics were concealed by darkness like most of my feelings that aren't expressed through Morrissey lyrics. The rest of it resembles a psychoanalytic study for someone who both simultaneously hates humans beings and loves fantasy books.

This was my exact reaction when my mom caught me being a half-dragon, too.

Enemies: Dragons, puddles, space monsters. I swear to god (take that, theists!) all of these creatures are in this game and you sometimes fight them in that order. Your foes appear randomly and meander with no remorse on the screen while your characters hit them with clubs.

Fun: Although reading the completely bizarre things that come out of this game can be entertaining, your happy juices will stop secreting around the end of the first hour when you realize that no matter how much text this game comes up with, you have no clue where anything is or what to do. Then you get killed by a constellation that comes alive and eats your entire party.

Defining Moment: This. The only shred of cohesive plot in this entire game is thrown at you in disgust. If I have learnt nothing else from this game I can at least know half dragons totally love to make out with zombie chicks.

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Kevin "The Goblin" Wilson