I'm pretty excited for the film adaptation of CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardobe. Regardless of your feelings about Lewis’ heavy Christian propaganda (spoiler alert: Aslan is Jesus!), it’s a timeless tale, right up there with The Lord of the Rings series in terms of seminal fantasy writing. No doubt this new film was made possible by the success of Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Tolkien, and it’s also clear that this game takes a good deal of inspiration from Stormfront Studios’ video game version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Like The Two Towers, The Chronicles of Narnia emphasizes small-group hack n’ slash combat, with a simple control scheme augmented by various co-op, special, and unlockable moves to add some depth. Each of the children has their own abilities (Lucy is a healer, Edmund can climb poles, etc.) and you’ll frequently have to switch between them to solve puzzles and keep ahead of the often hectic battles. It’s not a bad concept; I just wish it were implemented better. Playing solo, the AI members of your party are painfully dim – instead of helping out in the battle, they’ll just follow you around like cute English zombies. As the game throws tons of enemy fodder at you, it gets annoying having to deal with, for example, defending yourself and trying to use a ranged weapon to hit a boss character at the same time. Also, the level and puzzle designs are too bogged down in tedious busywork, making what should be a thrilling epic feel more like herding a group of kindergarteners through an obstacle course. As the game wears on, the simple pleasures of the gameplay fade, and the incredibly frustrating boss battles mount in aggravation, leaving us with nothing more than another unsatisfying licensed game.