The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

By Sam Leitch

As gaming becomes more and more ingrained in popular culture, we are seeing more and more companies realise what a powerful medium the humble video game can be. Recently, movie companies have seen gaming as being a great way to expand their films past strict viewing times. Some titles such as Prince Caspian go as far as recording entire scenes in parallel to the film's production just for the game.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian maintains a close knit relationship between the film studios and the game studios. As well as featuring scenes from the movie itself to set the plot, the game features two unique scenes to provide more back-story to fans of the Narnia movies. This authenticity trickles down to all aspects of the experience.

The game itself is an action/adventure romp. We’ve probably all played this style of game before - think the Lord Of The Rings hack n’ slash games or the 3D Gauntlet titles. This style of game can get repetitive, but is great in shorter doses. Players can drop in and out of the game, so playing with a mate will guarantee some good times. Just remember you both share the same screen, so it may cause some good old fashioned arguments as to which direction you want to move.

With the movies having such an emphasis on special effects created by some of the best in the business, it would be fair to expect that the game would be a bit of a looker. Sadly judging from trailers and videos of the game play, Prince Caspian doesn’t take full advantage of the next-gen hardware. In fact it looks like a prettied up PlayStation 2 game, which is a shame as Narnia should be a rich and vibrant world. Hopefully more effort has been put into other places as it would be a shame if this game turned out to be just another average game with a movie licence.

At the end of the day, the game is being created as a companion to the movie and book series and fans of Narnia will be keen to check it out. If Prince Caspian can rise above the trapping's typical movie tie-ins then we could indeed have something special here.

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