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Eragon

Posted March 5th 2007 by Matthew Warren.

Take a movie like Eragon. 15% approval rating amongst critics on Rotten Tomatoes, a 4.8 score on IMDb - this, truly, is prime game-making material. Most companies start out with a movie that's good and then make a bad game out of it, like Wayne's World on the NES, most Star Wars games, and King Kong DS. Despite knowing absolutely nothing about Eragon except that it's just the word "dragon" with an "E," I decided to give its DS outing a try. Luckily enough for Vivendi Games and Amaze Entertainment, the game isn't nearly as bad as the movie would appear to be.

Apparently, Eragon is the name of a kid who finds a dragon egg, hatches it, and then rides around on it in an attempt to defeat the evil dark lord Galbatorix (wow). The storyline may not be too epic, but the game certainly is - the map is absolutely gigantic, especially for a DS game. You'll spend entire minutes crossing a field or a lake, and while this wasn't too much of a problem in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker because the art style always allowed for some entertaining distractions, Eragon does not fare as well. "Uninspired" comes to mind when you see the textures, as most of them are fairly devoid of detail and bright color. Characters look a tad better, but not much.

You attack enemies via a liberal use of Z-Targeting, a system that's become prevalent in the gaming world during the last couple years to the delight of everyone who enjoys actually hitting the enemy they are attacking. Most enemies are frustratingly hard to defeat in the beginning of the game until you figure out in what order to attack them and also acclimate yourself to the controls. The controls are pretty responsive, but firing arrows becomes extremely irritating due to the required degree of accuracy. You have to make sure the target locks onto the enemy, and if it doesn't the arrow will usually cause no damage, despite hitting the enemy. The touchscreen allows Eragon to cast magic spells by drawing different designs with the stylus. The recognition is forgiving enough that you need to draw the right icon, but not to a frustratingly exact degree.

In addition to the action/RPG-type gameplay, you can hop on your big blue dragon (kinky) and cruise around a level on rails. It could be a lot of fun, but for some reason you have to guide the dragon through a series of hoops, a video game cliche that hasn't even been employed in a fun manner.

The music is really pretty good. It's not too loud or distracting, and it really adds to the atmosphere of the game. Music in handheld games has traditionally been lackluster, but Eragon's is an exception. This is one of the few games I won't mute so I can listen to my iPod. There's no voice acting, which is kind of a disappointment given how good the music is, but there can't have been that much space left on the cartridge after they loaded the gigantic world map. Besides, there's more than enough variety in the background music to make up for it.

Steady Beat - A movie license worth your time and attention.

It's hard not to recommend this game to fans of the hack-and-slash Action/RPG genre. If you're a Zelda or Diablo fan, Eragon might be right up your alley - and since the movie tanked, this game should be headed to the bargain shelves pretty quickly.

Posted in: Reviews