Gameplay
In Reign of Fire, you can choose to play either the human or dragon campaign. The human campaign puts you behind the wheel of a variety of vehicles as you complete a selection of missions. The missions range from simple convoy escorts to firefighting (with an firehose loaded with plenty of water) and search-and-rescue operations. The dragon campaigns are pretty simplistic, you play as a giant fire-breathing lizard that sets out to torch the last remnants of the human race. If you take the dragon, don't expect a real in-depth campaign, but it is more fun than playing as a human.

The human campaign consists of you driving around in a variety of vehicles completing rather simplistic objectives. The missions are generally related to convoy escort, though they may throw in some search-and-rescue to spice things up. One of the most boring missions has to be firefighting, which has you driving around in what amounts to an armored firetruck hosing down farmers and their crops as dragons are torching them. After you extinguish the burning farmers, you have to make continuous trips to the fields to pick them up and return them to your HQ. It starts to feel like the old Choplifter video game, where you have to spend all your time running back and forth picking up only a few passengers at a time. It gets pretty old pretty quick.

The convoy escort missions aren't much better. You have to follow a simple path (yes, it's actually dug out of the road to make sure you know where to go) to the target. Once there, you turn around and head right back with the convoy following you again. The only thing that makes these missions challenging is the fact that your convoy is slower than dirt. Your vehicle is almost always twice as fast as the convoy, so you're stuck waiting for them. One really sad thing I discovered was that you could actually race ahead of the convoy and just keep driving until their leader tells you you're going outside the mission area. At that point, just stop your vehicle and wait. During that time, the convoy's weaponry has taken care of almost all the enemies, leaving you at full health. When the convoy catches up to you, you just forge ahead at full speed and repeat the process.

Speaking of the convoy leader, he's probably the biggest annoyance in the game. From the training missions all the way through the game he is constantly giving instructions to you. And they are all the same instructions, I think he can say ten things at most. In his incredibly annoying simulated Southern US accent, Van Zan the human leader will ramble on about how you should keep your eyes open, or how you're passing out of the mission area, or how great you did (even if you just lost almost every vehicle in your convoy !).

Some of the missions make no sense in their execution. For example, an early mission has you defending a human encampment from a dragon attack. So long as you keep showing up at the checkpoints in time, the human leader will cheer on your great prowess as a fighter. At one point, I was told I had done a great job getting rid of all the enemies, even though there were still four flying terrors in the sky and two running on the ground. Basically, all the missions are time and location based. Just be in the right place at the right time, and you'll succeed without ever firing a round.

I can't tell you how annoying the human leader is. It got to the point I tried blowing up his command vehicle on several occasions, only to discover that his is the only vehicle that can't be destroyed ! This shifted my gameplay completely, because at that point I realized the enemies couldn't kill him either, so I just let his attack truck mop up all the dragons while I explored the levels.

Speaking of exploration, don't bother. The levels are very limited and are all just bland landscapes of grayish-tinted hills,valleys and some water. Get too far off the path and Van Zan, the human leader, will tell you so, and keep telling you until you can't take it any more and you back up into the mission zone.

There aren't any tactics required in Reign of Fire as the enemies are limited in type and incredibly stupid. There are the flying dragons and ground based jackal dragons. Jackals are stupid and just ram your vehicles, causing almost no damage at all but are completely annoying anyhow. Later you will come across some other dragon varieties, but they are equally stupid and uninspried.
 
Another problem with this game is collisions. Any time you collide with another vehicle or major structure, you'll just bounce off of it with almost no speed loss. Trees and rocks are another matter as you can simple drive right on through them. You won't slow down or bounce or anything that would reflect you having just ploughed through a stationary object. Also, the rocks will stay right where they are, and the trees will have no response to your collision at all, as I said, you just pass right through them. Oh, and you can jump your vehicles off cliffs at your leisure without taking damage.

There are only three ways to take any real damage in Reign of Fire; dragon fireballs, shockwaves or dragon napalm. Dragon fireballs produce the most amount of damage if they strike you directly, which they rarely do, they do their damage by producing shockwaves. A shockwave ripples across the ground causing some vehicular damage. The last damaging attack, the dragon napalm acts just like it sounds. The dragon throws down a splashing wave of fire which clings to whatever it hits. Once you get hit by it, your vehicle will continue to burn and slowly lose points until you can extinguish the fire. To put yourself out, you must find a water supply and blow a hole in it. From there, you just drive under the stream of water and you're all set. It takes a lot of effort on the enemy's part to destroy you as there are plenty of health power ups in plenty of locations.

Once you suffer through the human campaign, you'll be able to play as the dragon. The dragon campaign centers on destruction. Just destroy everything that moves. As simple as it sounds, it's more fun than the human campaign since you don't have to kid yourself that there's any real substance to your missions. And a real fun part of being the dragon (beyond being able to flame everything in view) is the ability to pick up certain human vehicles. It's like being in a monster movie, you pick up a human vehicle and can drop it from great heights, or drop it down on another vehicle to destroy it. As the dragon you've got fireballs and dragon napalm at your disposal, so use them wisely and you will actually find some enjoyment in Reign of Fire.

Before I go into graphics, I have to mention two more things; the sluggish controls and the lack of weapons variety. The controls vary from acceptable to completely frustrating, which is especially evident when you're trying to use heat-seaking missiles to take down a dragon. The weapons are pretty lackluster, basically a chaingun and two types of missiles. Not much fun for those of us used to a military level variety of weapons in a combat game. 

Graphics
What a totally mixed bag we have here. The vehicles look realistic, as do the dragons. When in flight, the dragons are amazing to behold, with their flaming breath and flapping wings. You actually believe they must have motion captured these mythical beasts to create the animation for this game.

Sadly, the landscapes aren't nearly as good. The environments are eternally drab and gray with no sunlight to be had. The surfaces of the burnt landscape are littered with rocks, tree, destroyed vehicles, and a plant here and there. There's just no texturing to the landscape, which makes it look artificially smooth and surreal.

Animation in Reign of Fire is pretty poor with the exception of the dragons. As you drive along the pathway you'll notice huge chunks of landscape slowly being repainted by the computer right before your eyes. It's pretty poor to say the least. You can't do any damage to the landscape whatsoever, so even spinning a 360 in the grass won't cause so much as a single blade of grass to bend. Shooting at terrain or structures is likewise effect-less, leaving not even a scratch in the target.

It's pretty apparent that the animators spent all their time working on the dragon effects. From their flapping wings to their open mouths belching flame, the dragons look as realistic as a mythical monster can hope to. The flame effects are pretty good, though once the flame hits the terrain or a vehicle, it looks very obviously like a graphical layer slapped on top of another instead of merging to become one graphic.

Sound
There's not much to say for Reign of Fire's sound since the game makes very little use of it. Human voices are generally dull and lifeless, though Van Zan's is one of the most irritating in videogame history. There's nothing worse than a poorly done Southern accent voice-over, except having to hear it every five seconds.

The rest of the sounds are unremarkable, leaving you with a sense that they just couldn't be bothered with the sound work in this game.

Replayability

Due to the limited number of missions and the ease at which you'll finish them, don't expect to ever pick up Reign of Fire for a replay again. Once you're done, you'll never look back. Maybe on a rare occasion you might try the dragon missions again, but it's doubtful.

In the end, Reign of Fire just fails to satisfy completely in any way. The graphics vary from amazingly good to amazingly dull, while the gameplay and sound are middling at best. It's not a game I'd suggest anyone buy, but you might enjoy it as a rental, since it shouldn't take you more than 5-10 hours to complete it.