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Review
The Lord of the Rings trilogy were always aimed at a mature audience (have you ever tried to read one? It takes fifty pages just for someone to have breakfast!) but Tolkien's brother in arms C.S. Lewis appealed more directly to the child in all of us with The Chronicles of Narnia. So with the success of the second film, Prince Caspian, along comes another in a long line of movie/game adaptations.
Dotted throughout are clips from the actual movie - there are even a couple of scenes shot just for the game - but for the most part this adventure is (predictably) kiddie-light. There's some puzzle-solving by moving rocks onto pressure pads to open hidden doors, and firing arrows at ropes to release drawbridges, but if you're over the age of six then you'll sail through this stuff in a day or less. The real difficulties you face are down to muddled missions and clumsy camera positioning more than anything.
For example, you begin fighting to save Cair Paravel in a prologue to Prince Caspian's tale, wading through armies of Telmarines - yet you can't kill most of them and eventually figure out what you're supposed to be doing by bringing up the mission screen. Once you discover this you'll be on easy street, climbing on giants to smash trebuchets and collecting keys that unlock treasure chests (that in turn unlock bonus items found in the main menu).
Throughout the game you can switch control of your group members, initially a Minotaur, Dwarf, and Fawn, and then later Lucy, Edmund, Peter or Susan as they arrive back in Narnia, 1300 years after the attack on Cair Paravel. Each person has a skill with either a sword or bow and arrow, and you take control of whichever character's individual skill is required to move forward. So, if you need someone small to fit through a hole, you take control of a dwarf, and to shoot targets up high you'll need someone with a bow and arrow, like Caspian or Susan.
