The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The first Chronicles of Narnia game (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) was an amazing game. Stellar graphics, seemless transition from movie to game, imaginative level design, excellent two player strategy, a level system for special attacks, etc. Therefore, I was excited to play Prince Caspian.

I think there are a few things that ruin this game. First is it not being linear. Each level is open-ended. Each stage is broken down into different areas that are re-accessible over and over again. Items re-appear and you are asked with a prompt if you'd like to re-do the area. I don't know who thought that would be a good idea.

Second, most of the game is just finding the missing lever so that you can re-attach it to the crank. There is an over-abundance of crank pulling, which takes 5 seconds or more of button mashing to complete.

Third, there are no special attacks. In the first game you were allowed to level up and earn special attacks. Characters now are limited to three attacks or less, with very little variation. Lucy cannot even use her cordial to heal, Susan does not use the pan flute or the horn, etc.

Fourth, there are 20 or more playable characters in this game. You cannot choose the character you want at any given time, but are limited to whatever characters they give you in each stage. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather play as the main characters and not as a tree, centaur, or Caspian's tutor.

Fifth, Huge Battles play out in the background. They are just eye candy. You can stand in the middle of a huge battleground and never be hurt. The game is easy. Involving button mashing to get through.

Sixth, missions are boring. More crank turning and many things in the game were not in the movie at all.

Seventh - The first game featured cast interviews and other interesting extras and movies. This game lacks in that department.

The problem with this game was that there wasn't much to the movie or the book, so they didn't have much to work with in the first place; however, it could have still been a great game, if it played like the first.

I'm a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, but this game is nothing more than button mashing, crank turning, and major character hopping with characters I had no desire to be. I recommend the first Narnia game over this one any day.

The Good:
Graphics
Sound

The Bad:
Gameplay - button mashing, crank turning, and lever pulling game
Lack of special attacks
Unremarkable playable characters and gameplay
Non-linear stage design gives game a choppy feel to it
Lack of interesting extras/unlockables

I'll preface my review by saying that I am a huge fan of the books and two films that have come out as of this review writing.

Saying that, I really enjoyed this game, from start to finish. Most movie tie-in games I've played usually have turned out to be really bad, and just seem to be thrown together to make a quick buck. Not this game. I'll give you my thoughts about what I did and didn't like about it:

The Good:
- The graphics are very well done. Besides the cutscenes that are pulled directly from the film, the rest of the game's cutscenes are all rendered, and look great.

- The story integration between the game and the movie is very well done. There is a good balance between missions that tell a backstory not elaborated on in the movie, and missions that are directly from the movie itself.

- The gameplay is not complicated; no learning curve in mastering the controls. No one will have any problems just picking this one up and playing right away. There are always on-screen directions on what to do next. Simply put: it's just a fun game to play!

- The missions in each chapter do not have to be completed in any particular order to advance the story. For me, I like games that present missions in this type of non-linear fashion, so I don't feel like I'm tied down to completing things in a particular order. If this type of gameplay doesn't appeal to you, then you can consider this under the "bad" category.

The Bad:
- The camera angles can be annoying at times. Not problematic to the point that it hinders gameplay, but noticeable enough to get in your way every once in a while.

- As another reviewer pointed out, there is a lot of repetition with some of the puzzles. The puzzles don't really present as much of a challenge, as they do just requiring the player to collect cranks and levers, and lots of button mashing to advance to the next area.

- The entire game does not take very long to complete. I would say that I spent around 6-8 hours going through the story, then maybe another hour or two going back through the missions to get the remaining achievements.

- There really isn't any replay value once you've attained all of the game's 50 achievements. There are very few extras. There are 4 bonus missions you can unlock throughout the game, but nothing outside of that. You may want to rent the game instead of buying it if this concerns you.

So to summarize, I feel that if you are a fan of the Narnia saga, you should be able to overlook the game's flaws and enjoy the experience as much as I did. If you're not a fan, I would say that you might want to skip this one.

I might be a little cranky becuase the game made me dizzy with lousy camera angles, but mostly, the game just fell short of my modest expectations.

The movie integration was decent and the film clips were great, but beyond that, there's not all that much good to say for the game.

The puzzles are really annoying. Pick up lever, put lever in, press b, press a like 40 times... and so on and so forth.
The boss fights also sucked. What happened to just smacking the evil dude enough? No, this game wants you to trap bears, trap strong guys, and pull down pillars on evil Telmerines.

The bonuses were lousy. You go through the whole game collecting keys to open boxes and then at the end you find out that they're clips from the gameplay. Couldn't they have gone for a new character or two or a different costume or a new weapon?

I'm a huge fan of the movies and the books. Story-wise, the game's good, but in most practical aspects, it stunk.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  3.0 out of 5 stars