Welcome to World Zero - Reviews for the hardcore gamer

From Panzer’s onset, you’re thrust into an unlikely and uncomfortable situation. You mount your dragon and know you must stop evil from reaching the tower. You never even ask why; it’s not a question that needs answering. So much of Panzer Dragoon lies on the unstated. You know what you must do but you don’t know the reasoning. It’s a given. By that same token, when you encounter a flat, roughly textured sand box, you know it’s a sprawling desert stretching farther than the eye can see. Panzer Dragoon is not to be taken literally. If you did, you’d be missing the point.

As a Saturn launch title, Panzer Dragoon has just recently celebrated its tenth birthday. While 2d games were in the waning days of their prime, polygonal gameplay was still in its infancy. At this point limits were not being pushed. They hadn’t been established yet. For the first time you could experience an interactive game world from the inside. No longer were you confined to looking down upon this virtual reality or merely gazing at it from a profile cutout. You were a part of it. These are the principles on which Panzer Dragoon was founded upon.

It’s very likely that Panzer Dragoon first came to be in the margins of some third grader’s history textbook, doodled to liven up the more mundane things in life. Experiencing Panzer is not unlike experiencing someone else’s vivid imagination. You have this world that’s alive and has history, and you have the characters -- whom you know little about -- but whom fill in the archetypes of good and evil to a frighteningly perfect degree. And then you have your homing lasers.

An on-rails shooter happens to be the most convenient vehicle by which to portray this world to you. With the constant forward motion, you’re on a virtual tour of a fantastical future of mankind. Interspersed between moments of scenic attraction are swarms of Imperial drones, constant reminders of the task at hand. Unfortunately, in this and in nearly all other regards, Panzer Dragoon is horribly dated.

Panzer is built upon its atmosphere. It’s a sketchbook come to life. So much emphasis is placed upon immersion because having you placed in this foreign world is the games main objective. Visual presentation is a part of that. When viewed through the lens of an artist, it’s easy to appreciate what SEGA was trying to do with this game. They were trying to use the new medium of 3d gaming to offer you a ticket into someone else’s imagination. This is something the games industry is just starting to comprehend. Panzer was ahead of its time. It was ahead of its hardware. As such, it remains a game of possibilities.

As you glide through the hollowed out caverns of level one it’s not a dimly lit, carefully construed structure of natural rock that lays before you. It’s a mess of polygons and textures that are supposed to illustrate that. The water outside doesn’t shimmer. But you can tell it’s supposed to. The truth is that once all of Panzer’s atmosphere has been stripped away you’re left with a competent, if bland shooter. Though bosses generally do entertain, the intensity level of the first three levels is a few notches too low. By level four or so, which has you racing through an underground labyrinth at breakneck speed, things begin to pick up. Before then too much time is spent gaping at scenery that honestly isn’t that impressive any more. The immersion has been lost.

Panzer remains one of the more ambitious games of the era, but it does not stand the test of time. However its influence is undeniable and Panzer Dragoon remains a landmark title in 32 bit gaming.

Rating	The rating scale in detail
6.0	+ Interesting, beautiful concepts - Poor, jagged execution + Admittedly, holds up better than many games from the era, but dated all the same
8.5	+ Memorable soundtrack, suited perfectly to the games fantasy like atmosphere
6.5	+ Gameplay remains tried and true, if a bit uninspiring at points - Control with the NiGHTS pad is for lack of a better word, “wonky”
9.5	++ Imaginative take on the classic boy and his dog archetype ++ Beautiful character/creature designs + Atmosphere just screams for a proper in game implementation
6.0	+ Rather difficult, as far as on-rail-shooters go ++ The soundtrack and promise of an engrossing world are the primary reasons to return to Panzer Dragoon
7.0	+ Imaginative, though unfortunately primitive first outing for SEGA’s beloved franchise