Ever played Joust? Me neither. I was about a year old when it was released, but I know the legacy of the game. In Joust, a Midway classic, knights flew around on bird-like creatures and they, well, they jousted. “Kills” were racked up by hitting another knight while your lance was at a higher elevation than theirs. For the follow-up, gamers also needed to then stomp on the egg that would drop after the enemy was killed, otherwise after a few moments a new enemy would pop forth from the egg.

Atomic Battle Dragons is a modern update to the classic Joust that improves upon the original in many ways... but also takes a few steps backwards in terms of gameplay. I'm going to kick things off on a positive note, though.

Atomic Battle Dragons looks great. The graphics are shiny and detailed and are a real joy to look at. The character illustrations done for the story mode (really only two characters exist, though, and I would have loved to see more) are awesome as well, with a very polished anime/manga feel. The game also brings things into the 21st century by adding RPG leveling. As kills are made and jewels collected, the gamer can beef up their speed, power, attack and hit points. Gamers can also snag items to boost attack and defense and add other nifty powers in addition to a few weapons that can be grabbed during the course of the adventure.

The style of play in the game was interesting. The gamer doesn't get lives, per se. Instead, when your dragon mount is killed, you drop to the ground as a lonely little knight who must scrabble over to a summon point to call forth another dragon before some foe and crush you. However, controlling the dragon itself was a bit of a rough spot for me. Admittedly, the game recommends a joystick to play with, so that may improve the experience, but for me everything was slippery and imprecise. This is more or less accurate for controlling a flying beast with its own inertia, but when you couple loose controls with an at times wonky system of collision detection (odd in a game based around the concept) there can be some frustrating arrangements. The final boss battle in particular is a frustrating exercise in sketchy collisions. I died countless times after being hit by attacks that didn't look to be close to me at all.

It may be unfair of me to continue a comparison to Joust when, in theory, the two titles are unconnected, but in Atomic Battle Dragons I didn't feel as if I was battling other dragons, so much as I was taking them down like Mario. You don't joust with enemies in the game, though from time to time you'll collide head on and have a clanking of shields. You bounce on their heads to kill them. This can be awkward since horizontal movement in the game is much faster than vertical.

While the graphics in the game are pretty darned good, even the levels, many of the levels are tiny. They're kept as small arenas to prevent the gamer from needing to chase enemies all over the level, but more than a few are small enough that if you hover in one place, enemies will leave from the left side of the screen and immediately enter from the right. Frequently a good strategy is just not to move side to side at all, instead just hovering and dropping on enemies as they flutter by. This narrowness of level is nowhere more clear than on the final boss level of the story mode when attacks from the boss, which flare out to the left and right of it, will meet at the seam of the level's graphics and instead of fading out from view, they just run off the page right in the middle of your screen. It's a disconcerting effect and it takes away a bit from any immersion that might be going.

The story mode was also a welcome inclusion, as I'm always a fan of stories. The finish put on Atomic Battle Dragon's story leaves something to be desired. The storyline itself is fine, but there are odd moments of disconnect that get in the way of the overall experience. There are odd typos (“baron wasteland” vs. “barren wasteland” was a particularly funny one for me) and funky grammatical effects and, should you elect not to continue playing after an untimely demise, your elf companion, who normally sticks to standard roleplaying style speech declares, “Ye sucks and hath died, what's up with that?” What IS up with that? It left me feeling like I was playing something scrounged from the depths of Newgrounds. You could say I'm out of touch with Generation OMGLOLZ but including stuff like that in an otherwise serious and straightforward storyline kind of ruined it for me. Humor throughout would have been one thing, this was something else.

Graphics: +
Everything looks great in Atomic Battle Dragons. The characters are detailed and well-modeled and there's a real vibrancy to all the colors. Backgrounds have the same polish to them. Some of the graphical issues later on in the game (the tiny levels, the poor effects with the last boss) keep it from being a true 10, but it's pretty close.

Sound: +
The sound is of decent quality in Atomic Battle Dragons. There isn't much music to speak of, it's only really one or two sort of rave tracks to groove along to as you play. It's good at first, but it does get old. There are tons of little sound effects to queue the gamer, though. From the trumpet calls that announce a new enemy dragon to the faerie tinkling when a power-up appears to the faint bleating of little sheep that can become your dragon's healthy snack. It would have been easy to skimp on effects for some of the smaller detail sounds in the game, and it's nice to see them all included.

Gameplay: =
I was mixed on the gameplay here. The game is easy to play, no doubt about that. However, the idea of using my dragon to bounce on the heads of other dragons was just sort of ridiculous to me. It felt very artificial. Control was perhaps realistic to the “real-life” physics of flying a dragon around, but it was a little frustrating to deal with how slippery it was from time to time.

Value: +
There are a good number of levels in Atomic Battle Dragons between the story and arcade mode. The level editor and ability to play add-on levels is pretty nice as well. Some of the features listed on the game's site are a bit inflated (4 huge zone bosses is a bit grandiose, as is the claim of a full music score), but the title delivers.

Concept: +
I like that this is a very modern update of a classic title. I would have liked to have seen a little more actual jousting in this Joust remake, but the addition of a nice little story mode, power ups, a leveling up system and cool looking dragons sold me pretty well.

Fun: +
Can you work your arrow keys? Great. You're ready to go. Atomic Battle Dragons is a fun game, there's little denying that. There are frustrating moments and moments that lack polish, but that can be said of a great many titles. The title is engaging enough to warrant playing all the way through it, and light enough as an experience that it can support quick ten minute openings for a game.

Overall: TRY
In the end, I did enjoy Atomic Battle Dragons, I did not finish it begrudgingly, but because I wanted to and had fun with it. However, I was left thinking that it could have been an awesome game instead of merely a pretty good one. The method of “combat” in the game is a bit lacking, some of the levels are tiny and some of the story elements bugged me but it's easy to play, looks awesome and has a few extra play options for gamers to mess with.