Chronicles of Narnia (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

The Nintendo handhelds have always been popular for film studios to produce miniaturized versions of their latest wares and the festive season generally throws up an abundance of them. In fact The Chronicles of Narnia is also one of a handful of games this year with it's eyes firmly placed on the Christmas number one spot. Another one is Ubi Soft's King Kong, which hit's the cinema only a week after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe hit's our screens. There's then, of course, EA with their popular Harry Potter franchise, which has had a considerable amount of time to fine-tune itself into just what, the gamer wants. That aside, this review is focusing on the C.S. Lewis classic tale with the question, will it please fans of the book, the film or no one at all?'

Gameplay

The story begins when four children (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy) are evacuated from London during WWII to a large but rather dull house in the countryside. That is until one day when Lucy discovers a wardrobe that leads to a magical world called Narnia, where animals can talk and the whole land is permanently covered in snow and it's always Winter but never Christmas. It's up to you, playing as these four children that you must bring harmony back to Narnia, defeat the evil White Witch and allow the seasons to finally move on.

This all begins as a bit of a mystery really and it's only in conversations with Narnia's inhabitants that you will learn exactly how to progress through the game whilst also befriending the various animal leaders. You accomplished this by completing a series of tasks with each completed task rewarded with not only a variety of gifts and tokens but also the individuals trust. You'll always know when someone wants a chat with you as they'll have a red exclamation mark over their head, which is pretty hard to miss, even in Narnia. The tasks themselves start out pretty simple to say the least with an early one to clear a bear's den of wood and litter. It quickly gets a great deal more complex though with more being asked of your, initially limited, abilities whilst also being attacked by all manor of creatures as the White Witch learns of your presence. Building on your abilities is all important for success in the game and while these can be traded you can also achieve greater skill in battle by taking on one of the more neutral inhabitants. Taking on a Boar (and winning, of course) gave is an extra level of amour during combat which can then be applied to any of the four children. This brings yet another element to the game and as you work as a unit it's essential that you equip the various members with enough skills to be an asset rather than become a liability to the group.

It's not all about combat though and with such an enchanted land you'd expect magic. Wouldn't you? Well it's here anyway and throughout the game Lucy can collect both Magic Cordial and Mr Tumnus' Pan Pipes. Once she has acquired these she can assist her siblings both in and out of combat, which was rather useful as here main combat was simply to kick enemies. On the down side the game can become very tough and you will occasionally wander around for some time looking for a hidden entrance of vine ladder. I suppose this is all part of the game design but it's still incredibly frustrating. Finally, there's the multiplayer mode and while we should be praising the fact that up to four players can enjoy battling in snow covered Narnia you will all require a copy of the game each which does limit the appeal somewhat and given the games engine it should have been possible to allow at least two players from a single copy of the game.

Controls

Easy, responsive and intuitive. Need we say more?

Graphics

Visually the game looks stunning with some incredibly well designed locations and lighting effects plus some wonderful portraits of the children on the bottom screen. There's also some sketched, sepia style cut screens, which span both the top, and bottom screens allowing for a very cinematic feel to the whole thing. In addition to the game has some of the smoothest animation we've seen for some time and the detailed characters, whether human or otherwise, move about the screen with a great deal of grace and fluidity. In fact, the overall look of the game has a level of polish, which appears to be missing from a lot of recent release, and even if the game was totally unplayable it's still a wonderful demonstration of the kind of thing the DS is capable of.

Sound

As with the visuals the audio is just about as good as it gets and everything here adds to the games overall atmosphere. Firstly there's the wonderful score, which plays throughout the game, but because of variations it never feels tired or repetitive. The sound effects are also spot on to the extent that the sound of your footsteps will change just by walking over different terrain. It's this kind of attention to detail which is rare in a game of this nature but really is very welcome.

Dual screen

While the bottom screen isn't used as innovatively as we would of liked it is used a lot which is more than can be said for some recent DS titles. To put things simply the bottom screen acts as a kind of PDA and it's here where you can select maps, inventory and even check on tasks you've yet to complete. This is also where the story branching takes place with each conversation having multiple responses allowing you to befriend, ignore or irritate another character.

Final comments

If you had to pick a genre for this game then the action adventure with RPG elements is probably a perfect fit especially if you've had time to read the books. Outside of that anything which avoids the dreaded movie tie-in platformer is a welcome addition to the DS library of titles in our humble opinion. We've only managed to give the DS version a full review here but from what we've seen of the GBA version it retains the same high standards although, obviously, without the touch screen. Highly recommended and definitely one of the better movie tie-in's we've seen for some time.

Pro: Wonderful Visuals.
Con: Can be Frustrating.
Final score: 7.3

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