Reviewed: December 9, 2006
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud
Publisher
Sierra
Developer
Stormfront Studios
Released: November 14, 2006
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen
4
7
6
4
5.3
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
I really do believe that publishers should wait till the game works before releasing it. Eragon works but not nearly as well as it should, and there is plenty to complain about from this fan of not only Vivendi and Sierra but of video gaming in general.
Eragon is the much anticipated video game based on the movie that is due to release in December 2006. Vivendi Games and Stormfront Studios have brought the game Eragon to all the console systems, the pc as well as the handhelds. Eragon is the story about a boy and his dragon, and all kinds of fighting and killing. I get to review the PC and the Gameboy Advance version so here goes.
Eragon feels so very much like a port directly from the console version to the PC. The game starts out with some very poorly explained story line that has you playing the part of a farm boy out hunting deer when he finds an egg, a dragon egg. While playing you will be treated to cut scenes that hopefully you can follow but I had a hard time with it.
In each section of the games eighteen levels you will be fighting so many Urgals and other oddly named foes that it is not even remotely funny. For instance in one section toward the end you have to defeat four hundred enemies, a little box on your screens tells you this and keeps track. You have the help of the second character and your dragon but you still have to sit through all the bloodshed to get through the level.
The game plays as an adventure game where you have a primary weapon with your sword and a bow that you use when you get the chance. You will always have a second character that will be computer controlled if no one else is playing next to you during your game. This second player can huddle close to you and use the other keys on your keyboard or a controller if you have a gamepad controller like the console systems use. Sound like a console port? You haven’t heard the rest.
And the keyboard brings up another point; there is no mouse use in this game at all. At the beginning of play the game tells you that the controller like that used for the Xbox 360 is the best way to play Eragon. You can use your keyboard and struggle through but mostly you will be using the same keys, over and over and over again. Eragon is a button mashing fight game, no subtle fighting moves or fancy cool swordplay needed. During play in different areas your character will be able to gain techniques and moves till he has learned all of them and while fighting will use these even if you didn’t intend to.
The moves are things like jump on the bad guys back and pull his head up till his neck breaks or some such. And when you do this the camera pulls in close so you get a good view of the action, even if rocks or a building are in the way. The moves are learned along the way as you fight your way along the story line as well as the linear adventure. You also learn how to use the magic that comes with being a dragon rider, your new job now that you found the dragon egg and helped hatch it.
There are three main sections that have you flying on the dragon with another that is training early on and this was the time I groaned and ranted at the developers. The problem I had and was not alone is the scene and the characters placement. You can only move in one of four directions, forward, back, left and right. Any combination of this is achieved by moving in one direction and then another. You do not move in any diagonal direction and taking to the air on the back of a dragon compounds the problems.
Over hanging rocks and even the ground become obstacles when you can’t tell how high off the ground or just where your dragon is in relation to the rest of the world. You have a good idea but the camera is moving as you’re moving the dragon so to get the dragon to move where you want it using those four directions does not work out very well. Now try to hit moving targets in the air like pigeons during the training or running Urgals on the ground and you will have no end to the frustration as you retry areas to complete them.
Eragon has many problems with the controls and how the game just repeatedly killed enemies but it does work. You start off with a tutor of sorts and continue through several levels learning all the various moves and magic that is the right of a dragon rider. Many of these moves and magic will come in handy when fighting the bosses at a few of the levels but not for the majority of the enemies they throw at you.
Many of the problem or areas that were downright silly were not major but taken all together added up to be just thoughtless. One section has you trying to cross some two-foot wide beams in a barn and your character is holding out his arms and wobbling like he’s loosing his balance. You can fall off the beam here and a couple of other places but in so many sections of the game you are walking on small boards and across beams, ledges and what look to be smaller walkways that it is laughable. They could have easily made the beams you can fall off of smaller than all the rest but they did not.
During your trek across the land, I didn’t figure out till near the end that we were rescuing someone, you will kill a lot of Urgals and others. They have you sneaking past some characters in one section but the majority of the time you go around killing dozens of bad guys using your sword, bow and magic. You have the help of the other character and your dragon, Saphira, but it is a general bloodbath from one end of the game to the other.
There were other problems during gameplay like the camera and its zoom in while I was dispatching an Urgal or other bad guy. Many times I would be around a rock pile or other object and the camera would pull in for the close up kill only to have the rock pile I was behind get a good close up. I also had some problems with getting onto one building due to the nature of only going in four directions and misjudging the building placement from the camera angles.
The graphics were pretty good in Eragon and worked well enough. The biggest complaint I had was in the flying scenes while you’re on Saphira. You cannot tell how close to the ground or other objects you are until you hit them. I am not sure why this worked like it did but on the PC version it is hard to tell perspective and height on the back of the dragon. The camera would change angles or move independently from the dragon and the ground so you would loose your perspective.
This also occurred during gameplay on the ground but was a lot less annoying. You often found yourself mashing the buttons and just swinging away while you moved around to dispatch your foes. Eragon has no graphics settings other than gamma correction and brightness. The cut scenes were terrible, very grainy and poorly created. It looked very much like some games were they try to recreate old movies but you are supposed to be getting the story line during these grainy scenes.
The sound was fine during gameplay but the spoken portions of the cut scenes were terrible and hard to hear. I could not follow the storyline with the spoken parts or the cutscenes and had to guess or ignore it. The game had fine sounds during the gameplay but you really didn’t notice much in all the hack and slash of the fighting. Again like the graphics there was no setting other than volume.
I would have a hard time convincing myself to play Eragon again. I would have a really hard time recommending this to someone else. Overall the score will be a little above average but with the control problems being what they are and the typical hack and slash nature of this button masher port I would not buy it. It took me less than six hours to finish Eragon but would not really want to play again on a harder difficulty or to collect all the eggs that are hidden throughout the levels to open the bonus mission.
Eragon has some pretty grueling scenes of your character going around and cutting people down in so many ways and so many times that I just thought it would have been rated differently. I have not seen other reviews that talked about this but every time an enemy is dispatched the camera zooms in and the game slows down to capture the death of the character. This would be fine if it happened during boss fights or when you use certain moves but every time you kill someone and there are no other enemies close it happens.
There are basically three different ways that you go and dispatch your enemies in Eragon and once you figure this out the game is pretty much the same except for the different scenery. You have your typical shooting with your bow and magic, your hack and slash button mashing and the flying with the dragon in three scenes. The rest of the game has you trying to find out the next place you have to go with some moves like pulling up on roofs and rock ledges.
I did not like Eragon for the PC and I am surely not alone in this assessment according to the average score it’s getting from other review sites. The game seemed too much like a button mashing port from the console with no thought to gameplay or storyline.
They could have made things so much better with some thought and time but I am guessing the movie release had a lot to do with the timing of the game release. Eragon for the PC is not worth getting unless you just have to. Now if I can get my Gameboy Advance version of Eragon away from my kids I think I will have better luck with that version.