Dragon Hills 2 review
:: TAP AND DRAGONPrice: $2.99
Version: 1.0.0
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Dragon Hills 2 is a one-touch arcade game where you pilot a robot dragon as it tunnels through and under cities that have been taken over by a zombie horde. It's a wild premise, and its gameplay allows you to pull off some equally wild stunts. It's not a particularly complicated game and it does have a few, weird problems, but for the most part Dragon Hills 2 is a pretty good time.
Can you dig it?
In Dragon Hills 2, you play as a woman who has to save the world from the zombie apocalypse using a robot dragon that tunnels underground. If you've every played something like Super Mega Worm, you might know what to expect here. Your dragon propels itself forward on its own, but it can only really build up momentum when you tap the screen to have it burrow underground and relase to have it resurface and launch into the air.
The game plays a lot like a runner, with every level featuring procedurally generated layouts of buildings, zombies, and other things for you to drill right through or otherwise avoid. This does not go on forever though. At a certain point in every run, you end up facing a boss character that you need to defeat so you can venture forth to new levels and environments.
Unlock your inner dragon
Dragon Hills 2's action looks and feels great mostly because your robo-dragon feels unstoppable as it churns through enemies, buildings, and virtually everything else in its path. That said, your zombie foes don't go down without a fight. Zombies are armed with chainsaws, guns, and other tools of destruction that can take you down very quickly if you aren't careful.
Across runs, you'll also be collecting a good amount of coins, which you can spend to upgrade your dragon and purchase powerups to help you churn through enemies even easier. This makes it so that even when a lot of runs go poorly, you're at least making continual progress toward an upgrade that can help you get stronger.
Dragon snags
The arcade action of Dragon Hills 2 provides some simple fun, but there are a few weird things about the game that are puzzling, if not annoying. The majority of these issues revolve around the gameplay itself, but some extend into the game's aesthetics.
There are many times when playing Dragon Hills 2 where your dragon doesn't react to environmental features the way you expect it to, which can completely halt your momentum or even end your entire run. On the visual end of things, the woman you play as is both buxom and toddler-like, which is a pretty unsettling combination. These might seem like pretty small issues to pick at, but they do nag at you the more you play the game.
The bottom line
Dragon Hills 2 is mostly a good–if simple–experience. The feeling of burrowing underground and emerging to chomp tons of zombies is smooth and completely satisfying. That said, there are times when the action can be halted by bizarre environmental interactions, and the depiction of the main character is just unecessarily uncomfortable.