Eragon: ‘Cheeves Ahoy!
April 18, 2008 2:39 am Games for Points, Gaming
I’m a total point whore. Sometimes, in the name of getting more points, I’ll play a game that others might not touch with a 38 foot pole. Either to my advantage or my detriment (depending how you look at it) I’m an extremely brave and patient gamer who has a high tolerance for games that aren’t your typical AAA title.
After 1000 pointing Eragon for the 360, I will say that the game is pretty much what you’d expect. A less than average game, based on an even less than average film, based on a “best selling fantasy novel.” The game mostly consists of killing the same few enemy types over and over (one type is called an Urgal, which sounds a lot like Urkel) seperated by some cutscenes based on the movie’s story line. I never saw the movie, mainly because it looked crappy and I don’t get points for sitting through crappy movies, unlike playing a crappy game.
I will say a few nice things, mainly because I feel bad for the people who probably worked really hard on this game, and they need to know what they did right. First of all, shooting the bow and arrow was actually pretty cool, and I liked the “zeroing in” mechanic. It works by holding down right trigger and A. Eragon will start drawing an arrow back and a green targeting reticle will appear over and enemy, which will then start shrinking. Once the controller starts vibrating and the circle stops shrinking, if you let off A, you’ll get head shot which usually kills in one shot. This doesn’t work on armored enemies though, which often repel this headshot mechanic and reminds you that this game is kind of annoying.
Flying the dragon was also pretty cool initially, even if it wasn’t free flying. The final boss battle (you ride the dragon in the final level as well) art-wise looked pretty cool. However, breathing fire was totally annoying, since you have to press A, then aim by flying in the direction you want the fire breath to go, which is at the enemies, who are on the ground, which causes you damage when you hit shit on the ground. So really, you end up just flying around, trying to avoid getting shot while holding down a trigger and pressing A over and over and over…
By the way, I hate it when people make games that don’t have cascading achievements for difficulty. I know, your producers told you to make the game longer, and one idea they came up with was to make people play the same levels on normal AND hard to get the achievements. I really don’t care though. If I beat a game on hard, it’s pretty logical to assume I can beat it on normal, so just give me the fucking points already. Tons of games force you to play the game on different difficulty modes for achievements and it makes me want to punch a goat.
What else is there to say about this game? Oh! It’s nice because even though the game pretty much sucks, you can run past most of the enemies and still hit checkpoints and complete levels. I’d say about 50% of the game you can just run though, and not have to fight anyone. That’s actually more fun, because you’re just doing speed runs which breaks up the boring gameplay.
Overall, the combat (especially sword combat) pretty much sucks, calling the dragon in isn’t as useful or exciting as it should have been, the enemies are pretty bland and annoying, magic isn’t terribly useful or rewarding, and you’ve pretty much seen everything about the game in the first 1/2 hour of playing.
Also, thank god there’s no MP, because there’s nothing worse than a crappy game with MP achievements.