Flash Gordon: il Rapimento di Dale – Final Rating

If only...

Written by Vetinari

Not to put too fine a point on it, this game sucks. But – how much does it suck? Let's find out with the final rating.

Puzzles and Solvability

This game has been misconstrued as being an adventure game, where there is exactly 0.001% of gameplay in this stinker that could even be assimilated to adventure game-like.

What passes for a puzzle in this game.

While most of the gameplay is punching and shooting random enemies, there is at least one dialogue option that needs to be chosen correctly, and some random lever pulling and button pushing. So, not very much. Still this is enough to not give a complete and utter failure of zero to this category. My score: 1.

Interface and Inventory

The interface is fine... for an action game. As for the inventory, well...

The inventory screen in all its glory.

The inventory is completely useless, since you cannot select an object to interact with other objects either in the inventory itself, the scene or the background. Moreover, the objects themselves are just overrated stimpacks or ammo boxes. I was joking last time when I said that this game was just like DOOM, but in a sense it really is.

Even so, I cannot give it too low a score, as at least both the interface and inventory are there. My score: 2.

Story and Setting

The story itself is the bog-standard “rescue the damsel in distress”, but at least it is faithful to the original comic strip.

This comic panel has absolutely no bearing on whatever the videogame story was about.

The problem is that absolutely nothing of that story comes through in the videogame. There are zero stakes throughout, the game is just walking around until something happens. To say that this game is linear would be an insult to tape measures. And, did I mention that it is really short? My score: 2.

Sound and Graphics

Let's throw this game a bone, shall we? The graphics are fine.

This game has a kink for male characters in underwear.

The character design is good and seemingly pretty similar to the original comic book versions. Sprite animations are fine. The background are not very much detailed and/or dissimilar to each other, but this is something which will be further mentioned in the “E” below.

Sound effects and music are pretty standard, nothing to write home about, but neither too detrimental to the experience. All in all this is the best category for this game. My score: 4.

Environment and Atmosphere

There are at least three different environments covered by this game: alien forest, alien caverns and alien palace of Ming the Emperor of Mongo.

Cider, the classic alien beverage of choice.

Problem is, they don't look or feel too dissimilar to each other. The palette of colours for this game is very muted (in stark contrast to the almost tacky visuals of the 1980 movie) and the screens themselves are very two-dimensional. They are also very loosely connected (in a spatial sense) to each other, since in just two screens we go from the caverns, to the private chambers of Ming, to the catacombs beneath the palace and so on. This is pretty disappointing. My score: 2.

Dialog and Acting

This game's dialogues are just bad.

And after this he just storms off.

The game does not bother putting in full conversations between characters. When Flash explains his mission to Prince Thun (not that he is even properly introduced in-game), the dialog box just says that: “Flash explains his mission to the lion man”. Really.

There is also a distinct lack of NPCs, and even the ones that are there are just throwaways. As for the dialogue itself, well, Prince Thun and Ming the Merciless have just a couple of lines each, and Dale Arden has a grand total of ZERO lines. Zilch. Nada. The character who sets the whole plot in motion has nothing to say in the whole adventure. It cannot get worse than this. My score: 1.

Totaling the scores, we get (1+2+2+4+2+1)/0.6 = 20 points.

This puts “Flash Gordon” smack down into the worst 10% of games covered by this blog. Better than Hugo II or Emmanuelle, but still worse than Curse of Enchantia.

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs to Vetinari

• Faster than a Speeding Bullet Award - 100 CAPs - for playing Flash Gordon: il Rapimento di Dale for our enjoyment (hey, that's 2 CAPs per minute... not a bad pay rate...)

20 CAPs to Leo Vellés

• Speedy Guess Award - 20 CAPs - for having the closest (but still generous) guess for the final rating of Flash Gordon: il Rapimento di Dale

13 CAPs to ShaddamIVth

• Premio per il Reindirizzamento - 10 CAPs - Per averci aiutato a distrarci da un gioco pessimo con un pronostico sul risultato nella lingua madre del recensore

• Truth in Advertising Award - 3 CAPs - for a true and complete accounting of the game's features

10 CAPs to ATMachine

• Eagle Eye Award - 10 CAPs - for helping identify some of the art used in the game

5 CAPs to Laukku

• Tiny Specks of Dust Award - 5 CAPs - for telling us about a game we're looking forward to much more than Flash Gordon 2