Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Rated PG for PlayStation 2

IRON MAN: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian puts you in the role of not only the four Pevensie children but also some of the mythical creatures abundant in the land of Narnia.

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Another game based on a movie, this one comes from developer Travellers Tales, the company behind the fantastic Star Wars Lego and Indiana Jones Lego games.

The game follows the story of C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian novel, putting you in the role of not only the four Pevensie children but also some of the mythical creatures abundant in the land of Narnia.

There is also an extra sequence that covers the 1300 years since the children were last in Narnia, with the kingdom having been conquered by the Telmarines and now under the control of the evil King Miraz.

During the game, players get to control up to 20 characters, including a minotaur, a dwarf and talking mouse Reepicheep, as well as Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy as they battle to defeat the evil king.

The adventuring takes place in a variety of locations such as castles, ruins, forests and beaches and players have to solve puzzles during the roughly six to eight-hour story to move along.

Each character has two attacks: light and heavy, and also an interaction button which will let them do things such as pick up objects, throw grappling hooks or fire arrows, depending on the character.

It's a fairly linear romp and objectives tend to get repetitive, but you complete objectives in pretty much any order you want, and it's definitely a highlight jumping on the back of a giant to smash catapults and toss rocks. The combat, though, is generally of the button-mashing variety, especially when up against some of the "boss" characters.

Most of the puzzles involve simple things such as pulling levers or finding missing pieces of a mechanism and a nice touch is being able to swap between characters at the simple press of a button.

There is also two-player co-operative play, which means a second player can join or leave the action whenever they want, although a lot of the time the second player has little to do.

Visually, the game play is interspersed with footage from the movie and I was impressed at the size of some of the battle scenes dozens of characters fighting at once and not once did the PS2 creak or strain at the effort.

Prince Caspian won't appeal to the experienced gamer, but would suit gamers in their early teens. It rises above the usual rubbish generally associated with games based on Hollywood movies.

- © Fairfax NZ News