I’m serious, I’m getting sick of the notion that we get in this marketing driven industry that movies automatically translate in to good ideas for games. Eragon, our latest entry from developer Stormfront Studios and publisher Sierra only furthers my point here. It’s a bland brawler that barely holds up in comparison to the previous efforts of Stormfront Studios. Odds are you’ve played their games before; they were the hand behind the Lord of the Rings titles developed for EA. Well take what made those games decent and strip them down even further. Eragon is a game that smacks of a boring battle system with a number of broken moves and hiding spots, ugly graphics that a progressive scan mode cannot help in any way, and a story that really seems like it would fare better as the backdrop to an RPG.

For those who have seen the movies or read the books then you know the story behind Eragon. It is actually a trilogy of books that follows the story of a young boy who is destined to be the next “Dragon Rider.” I don’t want to give much away as I don’t know what kind of spoilers the game holds so I will just refrain. But for the game itself the storytelling feels very sparse. All of the information is delivered in horrendous cut-scenes that look like they jumped off a late PS1 titles.

At times the game is absolutely hideous and I hate to be so critical, but at this point in the PS2’s life cycle this is almost unacceptable. We have seen what companies are capable of, and Stormfront Studios is no exception, they have had good looking games. Again progressive scan mode does nothing to help how this game looks.
Whether this game was the victim of a short development cycle or a skeleton crew I cannot say but either way, this game suffers. And it’s not just the main game that looks ugly, even the HUD is a mess with blurry character portraits and a nice green line that stretches across the center of the screen to signify your Fury Mode meter between you and your ally. The only real saving grace here is the main character models for the heroes, they actually look good if you get a look at them up close, but considering how this game plays, that is not a very common occurrence. And as I have said before the cut-scenes of this game, absolutely atrocious. This game also has a number of graphical issues whether it be seaming, shaky textures, or missing shadows, it’s a bunch of little things that really bog this title down. And as I’ve heard before, it’s the little things that kill.

Audio uses a lot of cuts from the movie which I will say is a good thing. I actually enjoyed this music and it does a good job of adding atmosphere, though it doesn’t flare up very often. The voice acting uses a few snippets from the movie and at times can get to be a bit grating. Hearing Eragon call out most of his moves is a less than pleasing experience. It also feels like the enemy drones are just voiced by one person, causing for even less enjoyment. Aside from that there isn’t a whole lot going on the sound department, so let’s just move along.

This game breaks down to a whole lot of hacking, and a whole lot of slashing, and if you happen to be a friend going over to visit a buddy with a copy of the game, demand to play as Eragon. This will get your friend so bored playing as the back-up character that they will want to turn off the machine and go do something a little more fun. So while there is the useful feature to have a second player jump in an...