DRAGON & DRACULA

Back in December my cellphone basically exploded. This is clearly an exaggeration; I don't exist in a universe similar to that of 2004's box office disaster Van Helsing, where horse-drawn carriages explode, so my cellphone did not explode. It broke though. Out with the old and in with the new I suppose, my new phone - a turbocharged AT&T Nokia 6267, exists outside of the cruel limitations of Verizon Wireless. This means, bluetooth connectivity, which in turn means effortless downloads of cellphone games. My first foray into this brave new realm of gaming was a rather Van Helsing-ish game entitled Dragon & Dracula. 

In Dragon & Dracula you control a rather unremarkable baby dragon avatar. After consuming enough food and treasure, he grows and gains power. The power your little dragon guy gains, enables him to better combat the three different enemies which he can come across: the mummy, the bat and the knight. Thats it, kill enemies, grow dragon, ascend in levels. Russian based production company HeroCraft apparently does not care to push the limits of gameplay far beyond those of the Atari 2600. I was amazed while reading their website that they took some kind of perverse pride in the limitations of Dragon & Dracula. In a boastful advertisement on the bottom of the page they showcase the three separate dragon upgrades, and the three different enemies. Am I missing something, or are these so called features instead - glaring flaws in the gameplay?

HeroCraft's reasoning reminds me of that of so many ill informed punk bands wasting away outside of the 7-11s of contemporary American folklore. A handful of lazy kids get together and decide that they can join the legends of Rock and Roll mythology by learning three chords and playing them in a brash fashion a-la actual 1977 punk heros the Ramones. Danzig, aged 25 when he established The Misfits, was one of these idiot kids. What he quickly discovered was that it takes more than three chords to ascend to the ranks of greatness. HeroCraft would do well to glean some insight from Danzig's toils. Instead of programming scores of trite games such as Dragon & Dracula, they need to program a game more similar to Danzig's 1988 hit Mother. 

Mother excels in terrible lyrics, testosterone laden guitar solos, and adult themes involving the incubation of the world's children. There are not many more than three chords in the song, but they are performed with such an unyieldingly ignorant boisterousness that they unerringly kindle the spirit. Dragon & Dracula cannot soar to these heights as it is mired in an unfocused style which films such as Van Helsing experience as singularly detrimental. Not only is it confusing why a baby dragon would decide to take down Dracula, it is also entirely incongruent with any larger themes of HeroCraft's works on a whole.

HeroCraft which devotes a large portion of its production to erotic cell phone games such as the tetris parody Lovetris, the trashy Erotic Galaxy 2, and the quesitonable Sex Xonix, should maintain this stream of trash production as it provides them with a sense of consistancy. Danzig is consistantly crazy in his genre of horror punk, and this only enhances his endearingness. Not only is Van Helsing logically inconsistant, it is also inconsistent in genre. The viewer is left not knowing how seriously to take the boy from Oz, Hugh Jackman: Is the film a horror movie or a comedy? I am still unsure, and even hesitant to label the movie a B-movie, as that would be awarding it too much cred. Dragon & Dracula shares this theme with Van Helsing, both works are totally inconsistant and therefore lacking.

I cannot forsee why I would be interested in ever playing another HeroCraft game. The very nature of Dragon & Dracula makes me question the worthwhileness of cell-phone games in general. Genius in a work with a few elements lies more in it dragging every color possible out of these elements...rattling every bit of passion out of that old pong cube dancing back and forth. Overacting...Once William Shatner told an interviewer that while playing Kirk he was acting, "As hard as possible," Danzig also acts crazy as hard as possible. HeroCraft however does nothing besides produce cell erotica as hard as possible, and titles like Dragon & Dracula, really demonstrate that the company is not even trying to solely do that. Instead, like so many punk bands still playing in the garage in suburbia, HeroCraft is composing a repertoire of three-chord games which have little in common with one another beside their lacking minimalistic formats. 

Of course one could argue that the Ramones produced great albums with only three chords. They are wrong however - Even Blitzkrieg Bop, their lauded anthem of punk simplicity contained four.