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Good: Use of footage from the movie

Bad: Combat; Family A.I.

The Pevensie Kids: Worst Siblings Ever

With the release of the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe looming on the horizon the release of a game based on the movie is inevitable. Enter the game of the same lengthy title. Hopefully the movie's better.

The beginning finds the Pevensie family during a World War II bombing raid. You assume control of Peter, the oldest Pevensie and must scour the rather large house in search of your brother and sisters. Along the way you'll pummel furniture for coins and secret items and you'll also get your first taste of the teamwork element that fills the entire game. Once you've found Edmund you'll be able to climb to higher ground, Lucy can access areas too small for the other Pevensies to fit and Elizabeth can throw projectiles in order to hit hard-to-reach targets.

After you've gathered your family and escaped your home it's off to the professor's house where you'll enjoy a long, awkward stealth mission. Finally after the first two filler missions it's off to Narnia.

Gameplay remains largely the same from the first level on. In Narnia, you use your family's abilities in clearly defined situations in order to open pathways and gain access to new items.

While you control one of the Pevensie's the others follow robotically behind you. Apparently brotherly love wasn't a quality that was taught in the Pevensie household because during combat they rarely attack, leaving the fighting up entirely to you. Even when they do attack it doesn't matter because they can't kill enemies on their own, you have to deliver the final blow. Often times they offer no protection against enemies whatsoever allowing you to take damage during key moments like when you're taking aim on a target or trying to move an object into proper position.

Even worse, there's no way to issue commands to your family members. Their actions (or lack of) are completely out of your hands. The result is frustration in its purest form.

There is also no way to switch directly to the child necessary for the situation. Instead, they must be cycled through until the right one has been selected. This makes moments where time is a factor even more difficult to contend with.

It doesn't help that the same mission objectives are recycled multiple times within a given level. At times a counter will appear at the top of the screen indicating how many of a specific enemy you need to kill. Once you've taken care of the given amount a new breed appears at the top with the same number. This goes on three sometimes five times during a level and is found in more than half of the game's 15 levels.

Combat is also repetitive. It is possible to purchase new moves at any time from the Inventory menu, which is nice, but it doesn't make much of a difference overall. Button inputs are so unresponsive that in the end button mashing is the order of the day. Even if the control was more responsive there's no finesse involved with any of the enemies just hack away until they're dead and then repeat.

Boss battles are stilted as well. It's one thing for teamwork to be an integral part of gameplay, but Narnia hits you over the head with the concept like a 50-pound Gallagher hammer. There's only one way to defeat a Boss and if any part of your family unit fails it means restarting-it's not teamwork when it's mandatory.

In spite of the previously noted exercises in repetition Narnia is not an easy game. This is due in large part to the continuously respawning enemies and mission objectives that constantly recycle and overlap themselves. This puts the game in difficult position: it's too tough for kids but too mindless and repetitive for adults.

In the end that's the source of all of Narnia's shortcomings. It overemphasizes teamwork and features paper-thin combat to appeal to a younger or more casual audience while at the same time its difficulty curve so steep that it alienates that same demographic. If the movie was guilty of this during test screenings it would be delayed and reworked. It's too bad the same can't be said for the game.

Graphics: B-

Sound: B

Gameplay: D

First Play: C-

Last Play: D

Overall: 66% D