games: Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Have you ever longed for the day your children wanted to don badger costumes or talk like public school boys from the 1940s? Well by Jove we’re half way there as we take a look at The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on the PS3.

In this game you play through most of the key sequences of the film controlling between 2 and 5 of the 20 characters playable throughout the game, including the Pevensie children and Reepeecheep the mouse.

The gameplay, as expected from Traveller’s Tales, feels similar, if simpler and less polished, than that of the LEGO games. Standard action adventure fare sees you interracting with the scenery to achieve objectives, such as sinking ships or taking out siege towers. You swap between different characters that have different attributes, such as being able to use a grappling hook or ranged weapon, or being small enough to fit through little holes.

There are also lots of smashable bits of scenery containing chips to improve your health, and keys dotted around the place which will open treasure chests and so unlock bonus content. The bonus material isn’t bad, including concept art, additional levels and some cool videos showing things like motion capture sequences.

Control is generally easy to get the hang of, but can feel button mashy at times, particularly in combat, which at least in melee is rather lacking in challenging.

Switching between characters also feels very clunky as you have to be very close to character you want to switch to which can take a couple of tries and sometimes means you have to go and find them first.

The puzzles and tasks are pretty simple and repetitive, many of them of the find a lever or gear to open up the next section of platform variety. Some are a bit more inventive such as needing to team up with a giant to harness their strength, or using fire in windy caves to keep back bats and insects.

It’s pitched at a brilliant level for younger kids, but this means that older kids and adults might get a bit bored, especially in co-op play (which is offline only) as there isn’t really enough for two players to do and few genuinely co-operative puzzles.

While it should be reasonably easy for fans of the book or film to work out what’s going on, it isn’t made obvious by the film clips or the often speechless in-game cut scenes. This holds both at the level of narrative and game objective and every now and then there will be blundery moments where you’re fumbling around desperate for a clue as to what to do next.

In a rather interesting decision the 1st level is something that wasn’t in the film: the attack on Cair Paravel by the Telmarines, ten generations before Prince Caspian. In retrospect, it’s fantastic that it was included to flesh out the history, and you also get scenes of Professor Cornelius teaching Caspian which were cut from the film, however, it was a little disorienting when playing for the first level of a movie tie-in to be so unfamiliar!

Another thing that doesn’t help is that anything in shadow, a cave or at night is very difficult to see and there is no option to adjust the gamma in the game. This extends to movie cut scenes, which when dark look poorly compressed and grainy. Well lit scenes look nice and crisp though. With the graphics more generally, some of the character models, notably the Pevensies, are a bit simplistic, but the backgrounds are impressively well designed and detailed and the battles well populated.

To be fair, some of the game’s flaws, such as the lack of personality in many of the Narnian’s, are more a fault of the not-at-all-fantastic source film then the game, but things like confusing structure and the dodgy camera which frequently assumes you can see through walls, are on the side of sloppy development.

In conclusion, there is definitely more here than in your average movie tie-in and Traveller’s Tales deserves some praise for that. If you have a young child who is a fan of the film, then it’s probably worth purchase, but most others would be better off playing the much more robust LEGO games instead for this type of action-adventure. Or go buy the book and remind yourself why Narnia was such an enchanting world in the first place. The game is at the top end of two stars, but sadly doesn’t quite make it to a 3.

For the best of the rest:

Game Spot:
Disney has done it again. For the second time now, the kid-friendly conglomerate has defied the odds and released a movie-licensed Chronicles of Narnia game that almost lives up to the source material, thanks largely to the talents of developer Traveller’s Tales (best known for its Lego Star Wars and Indiana Jones games). This summer’s Prince Caspian follows in the paw prints of 2006’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, giving C.S. Lewis aficionados a lunch-pail action adventure better than the kiddie dreck you were probably expecting. However, in both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, a number of issues still limit the game’s appeal to fans of talking animals. These include the game’s lack of imagination, as well as a confusing narrative and some oddly murky visuals.

IGN:
Disney may be having some trouble capturing that adolescent male demographic with their movies, but they seem to have found something with their games. After the success of Spectrobes for the DS, it’s no wonder Disney has put a lot of oomph behind their latest role playing game. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is a pretty solid, if just a little short, effort from first time developer Fall Line Studios.