We’d never heard of Eragon before Vivendi told us about its latest release. A quick search on Google not only revealed plenty of porn, but also that Eragon is the first part of a currently unfinished trilogy of popular children’s books by Christopher Paolini. Oh, and coincidentally, a film’s just been released as well.

If Stormfront Studios’ game adaptation is any indication of what the book and film are like, then you may not want to bother with them. It’s not that Eragon is a bad videogame; it’s just that in all honesty it’s not a particularly exciting one. Take the gameplay for example. While the hack-‘n’-slash action is initially fun and interesting, and features a variety of different combos to uncover, the constant fighting soon gets rather boring. While Eragon (the hero of the piece) constantly gains experience and subsequently new skills, the fighting itself never feels that great and the game’s button mashing and limited structure soon becomes painfully apparent. Strange when you consider that this is from the same developer who created EA’s rather fun LOTR: The Two Towers.

Fortunately, while the generic fighting engine is likely to send you to sleep, the wonderful flying sections will instantly jolt you awake. Featuring beautiful locations and extremely responsive controls, flying through the skies of Alagaesia is a joy and greatly goes some way to justifying Eragon’s hefty price tag. Like Sega’s Panzer Dragoon games, the sections are completely on rails but Stormfront has crafted these levels with such cunning that they feel far more open-ended than they actually are.

Sadly, the majority of Eragon’s levels require you to move around the welldetailed environments on foot. Still, there are nice touches. Being able to summon your dragon companion to dispense with more difficult enemies does add a little to the rather dreary fighting – oh and it’s got a rather nifty two-player option as well.

If you’ve read the books and are a fan of the movie, then Eragon could well be the best thing since sliced bread. Anyone else will realise Stormfront Studios’ latest title to be nothing more than a competent (if unspectacular) action title. If only those dragon sections had featured more...

Darran Jones