For such a historically pivotal title,
Dragon's Lair never really had much in the way of gameplay to begin with. Dirk gets into some kind of trouble in every scene, and the player must press one of four directions or the Sword button at key points to keep him alive. Repeat for about an hour, and the game's over.
Things were only made worse on the DVD release, however. Due to hardware restrictions, the game pauses for nearly half a second at each action point, breaking the animation's flow and ruining an original arcade experience. Even though this re-release says 'Xbox Compatible!' plastered on the front box cover, any DVD player can run the game -- and they all have roughly the same lag times, so don't expect smoother play on your PC or PS2.
Controlling Dirk with the Xbox DVD remote isn't too tough once you get the timing down. This version offers a few moments to press the correct button before any consequences take effect, denoted by a tiny window in the lower right-hand corner. When the window pops up, it's time to act; if a button is pressed before the window appears, the Xbox's 'Selection Unavailable' message displays at the top of the screen. Not only is this the most annoying thing in the world, but it's sure to turn up about a trillion times during the course of the game, so get used to seeing it.
As Dirk makes his way deeper into the castle, a few different paths can be taken, each with scattered random rooms. It's damn near impossible to clear any single area without dying at least a couple of times, since it's usually unclear about where to go until you've died. Other times, only one direction will be painfully obvious. Some even flash occasionally, as if to say, 'Over here, idiot! Go this way now, or you'll have to watch the same animations for another five minutes before getting out of here!'
Fortunately, infinite continues come with the territory to make this game beatable in one or two sittings. Everything comes down to memorization; hell, a lot of the rooms are simply mirror-image repeats of previous areas, where the same directions must be followed, only flipped horizontally so what may have been Left 20 minutes ago is now Right. Ooh, the challenge.
