Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Eragon

1. Official Site
2. Platform: Xbox
3. Publisher: Vivendi Universal
4. Developer: Stormfront Studios
5. Release Date: 11/15/06
6. Genre: RPG

by Mitch Youngblood

Alas, poor Eragon... I knew him well for all of a few scant hours. His tales of derring-do and high adventure on the back of a winged dragon should have held people in rapt attention instead of felling them into a lengthy slumber from boredom. His influence might have been felt by the evil emperor king Galbatorix if only he was not waylaid by a vile Dark Lord Shade whose name escapes me like the fleeting memories of this game completed barely a week ago by Yours Truly.

Oh the complex web we weave when we set out to rip off pay homage to the influences of our youth (specifically Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings), only to fail utterly by neither surpassing nor even living up to the standards set by those that have come before. In short, Eragon is about as trite and ineffectual a video game experience as it is possible to have not only when it comes to fantasy but gaming in general. Anyone else recall how brilliant Conan the Barbarian was only to watch it mercilessly cut down by the futility of the "me too" sword-and-sandal insults epics of the 1980’s?

Eragon will therefore be known as The Beastmaster of fantasy video games, and both of you who equate Marc Singer’s crowning achievement to the stuff legends are made from I say unto thee, "poppycock."

In trying to pin down what exactly made the world of Eragon so bland and boring, one must first examine how empty and lifeless the environments are. To be fair, each level is reasonably large in terms of sending players 'round and 'round completing tasks and battling evildoers for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. But on the other hand, players will battle said evildoers across repetitive and otherwise empty levels that hint at something greater than what you’re actually playing.

Take for example a level late in the game where the goal is to destroy roughly 500 enemies before the mission ends. Running through a village where the majority of it is an elevated wooden house with lots and lots of wooden decks is hardly novel because by this point you’ll have done the exact same thing in previous levels. Then a large amount of foes come charging out of a nearby wheat field. Naturally, the wheat stands very tall and blandly while foes simply appear out of it and charge. What was even more unnerving is how not one of them was Shoeless Joe Jackson.

The flying levels are equally bland because you just go in circles until your mission is finished. The appeal of strapping oneself to the back of a dragon touches the thrill seeker in all of us, but it would at least look cooler were we not flying around the same patches of forest, the same farmlands, the exact same two waterfalls, and so forth. Plus, giving the dragon more than three combat animations might have been a nice step towards imbuing her with some sense of personality which is sorely lacking from both the dragon and the game itself.

You know there is trouble in paradise when you’re more interested in listening to who gives the worst vocal performance in the game instead of actually, you know, playing it. The titular character from the film is voiced by the Edward Speleers who played him and while looking at the behind the scenes material it stunned Yours Truly to see the producers fawning over how good his performance in the game was. This leads me to wonder whether they played the same game as me because this kid has about as much personality as a tree. Scratch that. A tree at least changes with the seasons whereas this kid has exactly one note in his acting repertoire and plays only that note.

But what makes the audio even better, or lamer depending on your opinion, is the sonorous voice over narration by Djimon Hounsou who’s overtly serious recitation of horribly weak expository dialogue brought forth guffaws of laughter from this player. Listen to the way Hounsou, a great actor when given better material, majestically intones the name of each level. He sounds like he was trying to treat this shoddy fantasy as seriously as he would the works of Shakespeare and while I give him an "A" for effort, he really should have examined the script a little closer before diving into it.

The less said about the kid who plays Murtagh the better. He’s introduced late in the game and with little to nothing said about his backstory. Oh wait, some words were said about who he was and where he came from but the combined force of an overbearing soundtrack combined with them spouting dialogue while in several pitched battles resulted in Yours Truly not hearing a word they said. In the meantime, the only sounds coming through clearly were the clanging of swords, the grunts of miscellaneous bad guys, and a few avalanches here and there.

You have a combat game on the Xbox and it’s a combat game that does nothing else other than throw waves of enemies at you expecting you to slaughter them all. How is it then that the control scheme is so backwards as to cause confusion amongst the player(s)? While the thumbsticks controls are the same as pretty much everything else out there (left is for movement, right is for camera) it’s how you use the rest of the controls that throws normalcy out the window.

The A button is for quick attack, the B button is for the strong attack, the X button is for blocking/evading, the Y button is for jumping, the right trigger pulls out your bow, and the left trigger activates magic when the appropriate symbol appears on the screen. Still with me so far? Okay then, here’s where things get weird.

First of all, it’s not that tough to grab a stunned opponent by standing close to them and hitting B... your strong attack button that you’re more than likely already hitting as fast possible. Once you’ve grabbed your foe with the B button you hit the A button to attack them while hanging on for dear life. But you have to be careful because while you’re holding onto the bad guy courtesy of the B button, hitting the left thumbstick while holding down the B button will throw your enemy. By now you’re thinking this isn’t too tough to keep in the back of your mind and you’d be right if you only faced two or even three enemies at a time.

It is when there are 15 guys trying to pound you into dust that keeping the simple things straight in your mind go out the window. Then you’re too busy trying to remember all the combo moves you’ve unlocked thus far, like A+B+A for the kick-stun combo, when all of a sudden you’ve grabbed someone and pushed him into the nearest wall. Immediately thereafter you’re attacked by the two ogres standing behind you who have large clubs and short tempers.

Basically the controls are a pain in the neck to keep straight considering how many things are going on around you at any given point, all of which is directed at you. Oh sure, your faithful companion may take down a few bad guys with some wicked cool combo move that you unlocked three missions ago but you yourself will have a heck of a time executing it unless you are very, very lucky. It doesn’t help that the AI has the "target the player and kill them hard" mentality that developers use by default in place of an actual challenge when they’re on a short production schedule.

The basic hack-and-slash is always fun for a bit but the tedium sets in quickly. It’s sort of like the "hot yet brainless chick" compared to "the girl next door." One of them you want to have a spot of fun with sans commitment, while the other is the sort you take home and introduce to your folks. With the hack-and-slash, it’s always fun to take one’s aggressions out upon endless waves of cartoonish villainy, yet there’s nothing beyond that which makes the game worth showing to your parents.

Eragon is this sort of brainless, challenge-lacking slaughter-fest that developers crank out because they know it can be completed inside of 18 months with minimal effort. Everything is on rails, so to speak, because Eragon and his companions simply fight and defeat foe after foe after foe before hoping on the back of a dragon to continue fighting foe after foe after foe. Is there a pattern forming here for anyone other than Yours Truly?

What makes the game lack serious gravitas is how boring it is. One would think it inherently exciting to swing swords and throw fireballs at enemies, but Eragon is easily the best sleep agent this side of Tylenol PM. One grows increasingly weary after doing the same exact thing level after level after level. The developers didn’t even have the courtesy to throw any variation upon the theme as evident by the "stealth" missions, which are actually you sneaking around for about five minutes before launching into yet another full-scale battle.

If this were even fun past the first level then the score might be higher. As it is 13 levels of the exact same thing then the score stands. It would be lower but it helped get a few good naps in over the course of the week I played it so I remain grateful for that.

Buried somewhere in each level is a hidden dragon egg. Finding this dragon egg will unlock concept artwork or behind the scenes videos, absolutely none of which is fascinating. The art in particular reminded me of the fantasy dragons and drawings we all saw the kid wearing black and long hair back in high school drawing on his binder instead of paying attention to the teacher. So if you've gone through high school before you’ve probably encountered what sort of generic artwork you can now see in a video game tie-in. If you miss one of these dragon eggs then you can replay the level however many times you want but let’s be fair.

Who in their right mind would want to play this again?

These are the sorts of games that prey on reviewers. They seek us out, and proceed to strip away our very souls. Eragon is about as devoid of passion and energy as any project I’ve ever born witness to and the very lack of soul robs it of any chance to become something more than a quickie tie-in for a half-ass movie. Skip this title and never give it a second thought.

Ever.

Gaming Trend Score

51

1. Graphics: 75
2. Audio: 60
3. Controls: 70
4. Gameplay: 40
5. Value/Replay: 20
6. OVERALL:51