  Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Not Peter Pevensie. |
Back in my Grade 5 creative writing class, our teacher told us we weren't allowed to use the word "nice" in our stories, because it was a cop-out in place of thinking of a more descriptive turn of phrase.
But I'm no longer under the thumb of Mrs. Hill (unfortunately, as she was the hottest teacher at the school), so I can declare without fear of bad grades that The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe is a nice game.
It's nice to look at, it's nice to play, it's a nice adaptation of what seems like will be a nice movie. It's just ... nice.
If that sounds like damning with faint praise, maybe it is. The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe falls squarely into the action-RPG genre thoroughly explored by EA's The Lord Of The Rings games or Activision's X-Men Legends titles, but doesn't do anything to expand on it, other than dish up similar gameplay in a Narnia setting.
You play as the four Pevensie children from C.S. Lewis' classic novel, which lands on the big screen today when Disney's answer to the runaway success of the Harry Potter films opens in theatres.
The kids sometimes work together as a group, when you can switch among them at will, and sometimes they split up into pairs to get the job done. The gameplay is a fairly predictable mix of combat, item-collecting and puzzle-solving, though the upgrades to each sibling's abilities are surprisingly varied and large in number, with some devastating combo attacks available later in the game.
The four kids are basically slotted into RPG archetypes, with Peter and Edmund as the fighters, Susan as the archer and Lucy as the spellcasting healer. After a certain point, though, Peter's swordsmanship and Lucy's healing spells become so mighty, only the largest battles or trickiest scenarios provide much of a challenge.
Unfortunately, sometimes that challenge stems from the poor A.I. of your computer-controlled allies, which is why playing the game in two-player co-op mode is much more satisfying. Even if you get stuck with the mostly useless Edmund.
Solid visuals, great music, cinematics lifted straight from the movie and a decent variety of battles and puzzles make The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe an engaging experience, though it's heavy reliance on standards of the genre keeps it from being more than the sum of its parts.
In other words: It's nice.
BOTTOM LINE: An entertaining but not groundbreaking title that should please fans of action-RPGs who like lions, witches, wardrobes and beavers. Talking beavers.
WHAM! Rating: |
7 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
E (Everyone) |
Official Web Site: |
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