Who buys movie tie-in games? Well, the answer seems to be lots of people, as they keep coming, and often the quality is inversely proportional to how soon after the film hits the silver screen that the game appears. That's somewhat to be expected, as developers are often forced to rush out any old rubbish to meet the hype cycle right at its peak. Every once in a while, though, the simultaneous release movie game is a gem.
Except that in Prince Caspian's case (or, to give it its full title, The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian) it's not one of those gems. At the same time, it's not a truly awful game; it's merely average. For the most part, it's an action game aimed at younger players with a smattering of very easy puzzles along for the ride. It plays surprisingly like EA's run of Lord Of The Rings movie games, which isn't all that surprising given they share a fantasy setting, with the attendant usage of swords, shields and mythical creatures. At the same time, the world of Narnia is generally brighter and happier than that of Middle Earth, even when bad things are happening.
Prince Caspian has its share of movie clips for those that liked the film, but we'd strongly suggest that you at least have a passing knowledge of the plot from there (or preferably from the book), as the game is very bad at progressing the narrative in anything approaching a coherent fashion.
It's a pity, especially as it features an all-new section of narrative that bridges the gap between the end of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, right at the start of the game, when you have to defend Cair Paravel from an invading Telmarine army. Unfortunately, you're given little clue as to why you're attacking all the invading soldiers, and while the objectives are simple, they're often not very well explained or laid out, which can lead you to running through many of the same respawning fights over and over again.
It's this exact repetitiveness that proves to be Prince Caspian's worst failing. You beat up the same creatures over and over and over again, and beyond improving your health, and getting to play as a variety of different creatures, there's no progressive skills to learn, or different abilities to take advantage of. Besides changing the location, the game plays exactly the same at its conclusion as it does at the start.
The game boasts that it features over 20 characters (and to be fair, one of them is Reepicheep, possibly the finest mouse warrior ever conceived), but many of them play in a very similar style. That kind of repetition might not be a problem given the young audience that the game is pitched at — it carries a PG rating for "Mild fantasy violence", which is presumably the OFLC's way of saying you can ride around on the back of a giant, squashing people like berries — were it not for the fact that the action often also becomes cluttered. Very quickly on you'll be beset by camera issues, combined with combat that lacks a real competitive edge; enemies are either stupid, or overly numerous, and sometimes both. On the plus side, it does support two-player co-operative play, which does make things slightly more fun.
To make sure we weren't being too harsh on it (from an older gamer's perspective), we ran it past some younger gamers, and while they were initially somewhat wowed by the visual design, which runs very close to that of the film, although not in any way that's truly stunning looking for a system with the visual capabilities of the Xbox 360 version we reviewed, our test players were quickly annoyed by the lack of direction and generally unexciting combat. They did appreciate the fact that pretty much every container in the game can be smashed open to reveal collectible shield pieces that slowly improve your health more than we would have thought, however.
Die-hard CS Lewis fans would undoubtedly gain more enjoyment from a decent, leather-bound set of the books, while younger fans of the movie may get some enjoyment from Prince Caspian — but it's enjoyment that's not likely to last very long.
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