Are you ready for the games of the end of the year? The big titles to come?
Ready for a Disney game based on their upcoming “big movie” The Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Are you ready?? Well tough ‘cause SquareEnix and Nintendo wussed out leaving you only this and little known RPGs like Magna Carte to look forward to… so on the count of three let’s all pretend we actually care about this, ready? One… two… three… here’s your first look at Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the major consoles (this being a PS2 review).

I know about as much about The Chronicle of Narnia as I do about the history of the Supreme Court.
I.e. I heard about it, but don’t hold me to knowing every little thing about something I have zero interest in.
Now color me odd, but I was always a Lord of the Rings fan over a Narnia fan, though I guess I can’t go blame the whole “Christian symbolism” thing since it didn’t leap out at me when I first glanced the books years and years ago, which means it didn’t play a role in me not embracing this a long time ago.
However if you ARE a fan of the Narnia trilogy of seven books you might still find something in Disney‘s delivery of the series which might yet turn you away from the movies. Which also means, ugh, unless the movie bombs in box offices you can expect to sit through a seven movie franchise for the next decade or so whether you like it or not. But will it turn out possibly bad? Well, let me put it to you this way… if you don’t think Disney is going to (bleep) and butcher this somewhat fond childhood memory of some then oh heck you don’t know Disney at all do you.
So hold your breath, and bring tissue, ‘cause you may cry at the Disney rendition of Narnia’s opening salvo of seven movies slash seven video games… though I don’t think those tears will come in a good way.

Based on the series of books by C.S. Lewis, the Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe follows the “Fantastic Four” of Peter (not of Pan), Susan, Edmund (not to be confused with the former royalty turned fanatical babystealer slash would-be murderer from CBS daytime soap The Guiding Light) and Lucy (sans Linus) as they are thrust into a war against the “White Witch” (not to be confused with Christopher Lee’s White Wizard from LOTR) and her minions in an attempt to lift the perpetual sub zero cold chill of the evil winter wonderland that smothers the land of Narnia. In other words you have to put winter out to pasture and sentence Frosty the Snow Witch to a “time out” for her nasty evil ways.

Developed by Traveller's Tales (who have made games that you‘ve actually liked in the past), you’ll take control of

this oh so “fantastic” foursome as they traverse both the mortal world of 1940 and the world of Narnia… huh? Oh, right. The story takes place during the time of Hitler’s bombing assaults on the UK, and the four kids who are the “heroes” of this movie have been sent to the countryside to escape the blitz, where (in a large mansion they are sent to reside in with a professor and a bossy housekeeper) they find the portal between worlds and enter the world of Narnia, where I‘m sure much of the gameplay takes place.

Now before I continue there’s something I need to note. This first look at the game is based on an article which looks at an early BETA version of said game, with a fistful of levels done in a rather incomplete manner (the entire game was not polished and wrapped for shipping by the time the original article was written)… of course by NOW the game is done, and all the levels have been polished and completed, so the information I have here might not be true anymore so we’ll have to see if this holds true on the final version.
Sadly I guess that means I have to sit through ANOTHER review of this in the near future… oh, joy.

The game, from what I’ve seen and read though, seems to be more of a platformer than an RPG or the more recently coined phrase “RPA” (Role Playing Adventure) genre, last seen describing the gameplay of “Graffiti Kingdom“. In each level you’ll have all thes coins scattered about, of which you need to collect. These coins, both lying in the open and hidden within things like environmental barriers and objects like furniture and so forth, can be gathered to upgrade each of your characters by either adding new skills to your characters basic skills, or upgrading skills already known. Apparently earning skills through fighting ala X-Men Legends is a no-no in this game. You can also buy health upgrades and probably other skill building upgrades as well, if this game has anything in common with the excellent X-Men Legends game’s character skill upgrading ability which it probably should have.

As for skills? Each character has a specific ability that they excel in.
Edmund - Edmund’s power is the ability to climb lampposts and drainpipes, as well as wield sticks as weapons against enemies or clear away environmental barriers… and yes, you can even light up said stick after climbing aforementioned lampposts (lampposts in a fantasy realm?!?) to add a fire attack ability.
Yeah, I don’t get the importance of a pole climbing ability either, though I do get the playing with fire thing.
Lucy - She’s the smallest of the group, so she can crawl through small spaces to reach areas out of reach of the other three characters… go figure! A completely generic power for little characters! Egad!!
She can also climb on snowballs and roll them about like a circus performer to reach high up powerups (since the ability to jump

doesn’t seem to be a skill you can learn in this game), though to her saving grace she’ll later on become your White Mage character and deal out healing magic that’ll keep your team going and going, which means she’ll actually be useful in a fight which is good.
Peter - He runs around and punches things for coins, bonus items and is good in fights… and that’s it.
Susan - She can throw snowballs! Snowballs, man, snowballs!! That and maybe other things… maybe… maybe a rock or something more dangerous than snowballs… ‘cause she can throw things and… eh.
Ok. She can knock flying enemies out of the sky with her ability, as well as damage unreachable foes or close out of reach grates -- why she would want to do such a thing is not entirely known to me.

Yeah, yeah, their powers are not X-Men Legends caliber by any stretch. They’re also not LOTR, Final Fantasy or even Tak level powers… lame, lame, lame. Still I guess it’s better than nothing… maybe.
But perhaps in an attempt to improve the lame individual skills you have the ability to form “COMBOS” with two characters performing a tandem (COMBO) attack… only I don’t think it’ll sound as cool as it does in X-Men Legends…. COMBO… and, yes, this is proven quickly since this tandem ability seems to have a majority use in terms of solving puzzles associated with the environment of each level.
For example you can combine Lucy and Edmund to steal Michelle’s baby and then try to kill her, or to crush The Great Pumpkin and… wait -- no they can’t. You can use Lucy and Edmund in this way : Edmund slides Lucy across the ground like a giant hockey puck, which uses her small tiny fleshy form to shatter rock and ice as well as the ability to drag Lucy’s body through deep snow… uhh… nice use of the little girl character, by the way! Thanks, Disney!
Other examples of “tandems” sound even less appealing. For instance one character can swing the other around their torso like a hula hoop… (what the hell)… or one character can mount the other’s shoulders like that weird “Goro” thing with the two kids from the “adventure” mini game opening cutscene in Mortal Kombat : Deception… and this is supposed to be good things, right? It doesn’t sound good.

All characters can punch (either single blows or combos depending on their fighting abilities), which is nice since this game already sounds like a sucker punch to your gut from the get-go… eck, why is it half the time I do an advance look at games like this my cynicism burns through like acid through paper -- other than this kind of deserves it. Anyway as you can guess your go to for fights is Peter, while Lucy is better as your go-to for reaching areas the others can’t to open paths or retrieve coins or stuff for useage, as well as healing your team during tense fights. Edmund is

better at using a stick weapon than his fist, which he can use to thrash even large packs of wolves in a few swings, while Susan is good for tagging distant and flying enemies. And while you’re supposed to be able to do things while your AI controlled teammates cover you, you still end up having to jump in to help them fight since apparently things go faster when you’re controlling the combat (go figure).

As for speed each level won’t be very long. Don’t expect to play each level for more than half an hour or so, and don’t expect to be very challenged by this game. With expected “light” simple combat, light puzzle solving (Prince of Persia it ain’t), item collection and action sequences here and there… well, that just doesn’t sound so good. And, as you might expect, the combat system is once again the ancient art of “hit the (-) button until something dies”. And while that’s just fine by me in games like X-Men Legends, this sucks in games like this where you would expect better … then again considering it’s a literary masterpiece set in a fantasy world you’d expect a deep RPG style world -- so how the hell did we get a damn platformer!!

As for the puzzles? Some actually do sound interesting.
One, for instance, involves walking across thin ice in a puzzle sequence to clear a path for your team. Blue blocks equalling safe paths, and… well… broken blocks equalling non-safe paths. Don’t worry, you won’t drown your character. Anyway this sounds like an interesting puzzle to solve, so I’m interested here.
Another involve shattering or burning bramble… hmm.. Wonder who your go to character will be here.
There should be more puzzles, and as long as there’s more puzzles like the ice puzzle then maybe there might be a saving grace for this game. But with a few sequences that sound rather lame (a half pipe riding sequence that sounds like the downhill riding sequence from Banjo Kazooie : Grunty’s Revenge for the GBA) and things that made the game sound more boring than exciting, I have serious reservations about the playability of the game or even if it’ll be worth renting (forget buying) when it comes out this month.

I guess there’s no choice here. The only way to know whether you’ll enjoy this or not is to rent it, which means I’ll be putting down a full review in the coming weeks of this game. Whether or not it’s going to be worth your time and effort to play, however, is something I can’t tell you until then.
Though to tell you the truth I’m not happy with what I’m seeing right now. Let’s see how this works out when the game finally hits in the coming weeks. Cross fingers and hope for the best, ‘cause if this game tanks there’ll be nothing to fall back on in the major franchise RPG genre for the holiday season (So thanks SquareEnix/Nintendo! Thanks a lot!)