Review
Release Date: 11.14.2006
Platform:
Xbox 360Developer:
Stormfront StudiosPublisher:
Sierra Entertainment, Inc.Reviewed by
Richard Brownell on 12.20.2006
| Review Rating: 6/10 | User Rating: 6/10 |
It seems that any time a license is adapted from one medium to the other, it loses something. The most common occurrence of this is when a book is made into a movie. In some cases though, such as Eragon's, licenses are moved more than once. Eragon was initially a fantasy novel, then made into a movie (which was just released), and then made into a video game. And it looks like something was lost in that process.
Eragon is the story of a young farm boy of the same name living in the world of Alagaesia. He comes across a blue gem which turns out to be a dragon egg. It later hatches, and Eragon realizes his destiny as a dragonrider. It becomes Eragon's quest to defeat the shade Durza on his way to dethroning the evil king of the land.
The game barely expands on that core plot. While we do meet Brom, save Aria, meet up with the elves, and see other events in the original story, these events are usually told in short cinematics with limited narration. If you aren't familiar with the story already, you might feel a bit left in the dark. The cinematics themselves are an odd mix of scenes rendered in the game engine and stylized segments that look like an odd animated comic book.
The majority of your time in Eragon will be spent hacking through a huge amount of the king's evil minions. From helping Brom win a barfight in the first level to saving the elves from the king's army, you better be prepared for sword swinging, because you'll be doing a lot of it. Eragon has some basic sword attacks available to him. In what is being used all too often in action games, you have a weak attack and a strong attack and the ability to do some combos using them. We've seen this kind of combat before, and there's nothing special about it here.
What does make the combat a bit more fun are the extra abilities. You have a bow available to you at all times that you can fire rapid shots with or hold the button down to do a more accurate shot for better damage. As the game progresses, you also gain various spells. These start out similar to the force in Star Wars, giving you the ability to shove enemies around and evolve into more powerful attacks, such as a fireball. These make combat more engaging, but it doesn't make the enemies any less repetitive or more intelligent.
From the beginning of the game, the enemies have two strategies. If they have a bow and arrow, they will fire at you from afar. If they don't, they will charge at you and attack you. There is no flanking, very little parrying, and almost none of the enemies have any magic to speak of. Normally, this style of game would end each level with a boss battle of some sort, but Eragon only has a couple throughout the entire game. So the few enemy types we see in the beginning are basically the same throughout the game.
A few of the levels break away from the normal combat and put you in charge of riding Eragon's dragon, Saphira. This may sound cool at first, but the dragon combat has the least polish of any aspect of the game. Saphira flies on rails, though you can move her around a bit. The hit detection is awful, so moving her to avoid obstacles or flying arrows can be a fool's errand. She can of course breathe fire, but the levels it is required in just aren't all that fun. They involve flying around in large circles through valleys attacking armies, but each time you go around all the enemies are respawned, so it never seems like you do anything. Ten minutes later you're either dead from arrow fire, or the ending cinematic for the level starts. At least you can still fire Eragon's magic arrows.
The camera view in the dragon levels is a typical third person system. But the ground missions are done using a third person fixed camera system. These always provide for some occasions where the camera angle prevents you from seeing who you are fighting, but this camera is better than some other recent fixed camera games.
The world of Alagaesia is somewhat well represented in the levels of Eragon. The Xbox 360 version is mostly just a port of the PS2 and Xbox versions, but considering that it wasn't really designed to be a next-gen HD game, there are some levels that look pretty good. But several of the levels are just very dark and uninteresting. And because it is a port, most of the levels don't look very good compared to the rest of the Xbox 360 library.
Eragon's magic is not just for combat. Each level has several spots where Eragon must use his magic to alter the landscape in some way in order to proceed. These provide for some simple puzzles to complete, but are also a nice reminder that Eragon uses his magic powers for more than simply lighting enemies on fire. He also must occasionally summon Saphira to accomplish certain tasks. Both of these types of actions are always indicated with visual indicators on the screen when needed.
The music of the game is one of its highlights. While sometimes it's barely noticable, other times it truly shines as a strong orchestral soundtrack. It's accompanied by some decent sound effects to complete the audio feeling of the game. But the voice acting, what little there is, is nothing to shout about. Most of the cut scenes are narrated, so we don't see any conversations and the action of the game is littered with typical one-liners that get tired long before the game is over.
While most of Eragon is pretty average, it has one feature that at least provides the possibility of added enjoyment, which is co-op. Depending on which level you are playing, a second player can always join the action to play as Brom, Murtagh, or Saphira herself in the dragon riding levels. Of course, if your friend is frustrated by licensed games, I would not recommend doing co-op. And for some reason, the developers opted against including an online co-op, which is becoming standard in recent games like Gears of War and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom.
For the most part, Eragon is a solid game. Nothing stands out as being particularly noteworthy in it, but it's not bug-ridden and may provide a worthy adventure to play through for fans of the franchise. If you're looking for a fun action game though, it'd probably be best to look elsewhere. That is, unless you're looking for some easy achievements to earn.
