The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
May 29,2008 - The Chronicles of Narnia series has long been a popular foray into a magical world and fans have waited three years to continue the adventure in the famed series. But while the movie continues its prominence at the box office, Prince Caspian’s fate in the video game market pales in comparison, with a beautifully created, shallow action title. Fans of the series will no doubt love the movie tie-ins, character models, and level designs, but if your birth certificate states that you are older than the age of 13, this might not be the game for you.

Prince Caspian follows the fate of the majority of movie-based games; the game is incredibly shallow but does a great job of giving fans plenty of extra substance that was not seen in the movie. For example, the first mission has you running around Cair Paravel Castle controlling minotaurs, centaurs and elves in a gigantic battle between the Narnians and Telmarines. This gigantic battle was only briefly mentioned in the movie, and the game even gives you lengthy viewings of movie scenes to help you understand the plot and missions. Although the movie tie-ins are helpful in understanding the story, many of them are too nonsensical to even consider them helpful and sometimes the sound is so low when these scenes come on you will have to turn your volume up just to understand what everyone is saying.

The basic gist of combat boils down to whether you know how to rapidly smash the buttons of your controller. There really is no substance to the combat, and although you have three different forms of attack, randomly pressing the melee button and plowing through enemies is just as easily enough advantageous and obtainable for victory. Most of the game’s missions consist of alternating between characters in order to solve puzzles needed to advance. Some missions have you teaming up with another character in order to utilize each person’s selected traits. Peter, for instance, has a grappling hook which he can use to scale tall objects while Susan can fire her arrows to knock down high objects. The puzzles themselves aren’t remotely hard as the game basically gives you the answer to each one by flashing icons all over the screen with the direction and correct buttons you have to press.

While mindlessly dallying through the puzzles you will come across hordes of clone soldiers hell bent on stopping you. The problem with that proposal is that the AI in the game is atrocious. Numerous times have we seen Telmarine soldiers swing wildly at nothing at all, Narnian soldiers attack their own, and characters that spastically go nuts when they get caught in a devious situation, such as being surrounded by enemies or stuck on one side of a bridge. It is easy enough to just mash down on the melee button and run through all the enemies, but if you felt inclined to use the other attacks, such as projectile and counter-based ones, be warned that although they might seem more effective, utilizing said effectiveness is frustrating in the thick of battle.

The difficulty in the game stems around how fast you can solve puzzles and mash down on the controller. You will never find yourself in a precarious situation thinking you might not survive until probably the last level, but even then it is very easy to achieve victory. The missions themselves usually revolve around saving a certain character, holding off more Telmarine forces, and then running to a lever or switch to press to continue on. Sometimes you have to go through different areas and backtrack in order to advance, but at least the game deviates the lever pulling into areas that make the most logical sense, for the most part (levers in a cave?!). The game also saves what seems like every five minutes, so the fear of dying in battle (which should seem like never) is spared with the fact that you will restart right where you left.

For what it’s worth, Prince Caspian does look good at its finer moments. The level designs are a spot-on re-creation of sets from the movie, character models look accurately imitated, and some of the monsters and enemies have striking flairs of detail, such as hair that flows in the wind and weapons that move in characters holsters when they run. While those finer moments may please many fans of the game, Prince Caspian also has its fair share or darker moments as well. Telmarine and Narnian soldiers all look the same, sans the clothing, the screen is glittered with too many icons (such as shards, heart pieces mini map, etc), which makes most of the levels look cluttered at times, and characters and buildings constantly pop up on screen during moments of intense action. There are also moments of horrendous slowdowns, often times in the middle of battle or even during moments of calm tension such as dungeon crawling.

The musical score in the game is one of the highlights, with stunning orchestral score from the movie’s soundtrack. The voice acting is passable at best, with many of the game’s characters lending their voices to the game, but it is most notable right after you view a scene from the movie as to which character lent their voice or not. The other sound effects, such as swords clashing and people screaming, are too repetitive and drone to even take notice of their importance at all.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian had plenty of potential to withstand for fans, but in the end all it amounted to was another mindless drone in the market of bad movie games. Fans of the series will no doubt enjoy what is given to them, the chance to re-enact your favorite scenes from the movie and control your favorite characters, but there are just too many problems, most notably in the shallow combat that will keep many veteran players away. Prince Caspian is sure fun for any fan or gamer under the age of 13 as it requires no central thinking to complete, but older gamers will find this game’s bland combat too dull to even consider a try.

Games, News, Reviews, Media and More