by Robert Workman on Thursday, December 13, 2007
As if Beowulf wasn't displeasing enough, here's another movie-licensed stinker hitting game shelves just in time for the holidays. The Golden Compass, based on the film adapted from the Philip Pullman book, fails to deliver anything worthwhile. It promises an epic adventure, but all it delivers is disappointment.
In the game, you play as Lyra Balacqua, a young orphaned girl who sets out to rescue kidnapped children from the mysterious (and dangerous) Gobblers. She can't go it alone, though. She obtains help from two unlikely sources -- an embodied spiritual guide named Pan and an armored polar bear by the name of Iorek. She also receives guidance from her alethiometer -- the Golden Compass –by asking it any question that pops into her head.
Unfortunately, the story doesn't make any sense. Shiny Entertainment fails to include a solid narrative. It skips all over the place, whisking you from an Arctic countryside to a university somewhere in London.
If the story doesn't turn you off, the awful gameplay certainly will. Throughout Golden Compass' various stages, you'll uncover numerous game-crippling flaws. Lyra's exploration stages, for instance, require you to do stupid tasks, such as mopping the floor and keeping your balance on beams. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that Lyra moves slower than an 80-year old marathon runner. Pan is useful with his transformation techniques, giving Lyra the power to glide over gaps and swing across poles, but you don't have full control.
Finally, there are Iorek's fighting sequences, the best part of the game. However, he's limited to blocking incoming attacks and fighting back with a weak offensive arsenal. On occasion, you can unleash a Fury attack, but aside from a couple of inexplicable throw moves (bears have hands?), that's the extent of his powers. He can jump over gaps, but hitting the Y button (once prompted) does this automatically.
Compass also has a nasty stealth segment that'll take several attempts to get through, if you haven't given up on the journey. Finally, you'll run across several Quick-Time Event-like sequences, where you perform button presses in order to get something done. These are just stupid. Is it really necessary to press three or four buttons just to get Iorek to knock down an ice pillar? Don't even get us started on executing the Compass' question-and-answer functionality. It's dreadful.
As far as presentation goes, Golden Compass starts out promisingly, but runs into its lion's share of problems. The graphics look okay (particularly the use of lighting), but the collision detection is off the mark. The game also spits out relentless amounts of glitches and blurry textures. Worse yet, the camera isn't manually controllable, so you must deal with whatever angle it gives you. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't positioning itself so badly and swooping around. It's almost like we're fighting the perspective almost as much as we're fighting the in-game witches and wolves.
At least the music is good, with an orchestrated soundtrack. The in-game dialogue, on the other hand, is terrible. One minute, Lyra compliments Iorek on his technique of getting past certain platforms. The next, she sounds like a whiny, ungrateful brat, unmotivated in her quest. It gets to the point that you just want to leave her at the orphanage.
With a disjointed storyline, lack of reliable controls and faulted presentation, The Golden Compass is yet another example of how not to produce a movie-licensed video game. It'll only lead you into a world of trouble.
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