The Golden Compass (Wii) Review

NB: This review is intended to be humorous. The Golden Compass won't make your soul cry or ruin Christmas. It is just a very bad game.

We're not normally ones to suggest boycotting something, but this game is certainly worth the call to arms. About six years ago we played a game on the PS2. It looked lovely back then. The other day we played a game with a polar bear in it and some little brat of a child...it looked exactly the same, if not worse than the PS2 title. This game has so few redeeming features that it is utterly forgettable, utterly insulting and, if it manages to sell enough copies, it may just ruin Christmas. Oh yes indeed, it truly is that evil.

The game attempts to follow the events of the movie but sexes things up a bit with more action and bears and stuff. You play as Lyra or Iorek (small child or huge polar bear wearing a suit of armour, if you're not familiar with the book/film). After being taken from her lovely school and escaping the evil talons of the devilish Marisa Coulter, Lyra sets off to find out what the dickens has happened to a load of children up North. Lyra has the Golden Compass (hence the title of the film and game) and she must use it to find the truth. The compass will always tell the truth no matter what is asked. Whilst the book is brilliant and the film is pretty decent, the game takes all the magic and whacks it in the groin with an axe, watches it slowly bleed to death in unimaginable pain before burying it in a shallow grave and dancing on it gleefully.

Games based on films have always gotten a bit of a bad press. Whilst some have awful cameras or woeful controls others have really nasty graphics and tedious gameplay. Some, have all of the above. This game is one such game. Combat involves bashing buttons or waving the Wii-mote about a little bit (you can do either...which kind of makes the Wii a bit redundant for the most part). So you can attack, block, grab, throw and even unleash a special attack when your rage meter is full. And all of that can only be done when you are controlling Iorek. When you control Lyra you get to erm...dodge and talk to people and even balance on stuff. The excitement almost makes us want to have a quick nap. You also get to play a very boring and utterly pointless minigame that involves the Golden Compass itself. Needless to say...it is rubbish.

We can almost forgive the developers for creating a title with such awful gameplay and controls though. Actually no we can't, that's a lie. But what is even more infuriating and insulting is just how bad this game looks. The animation is terrible, the environments suffer terribly from pop-up and 'ruddy hell, where did that tree suddenly come from?' syndrome and the characters look like the strange love child of Michael Jackson and a bag full of rocks covered in dog crap. We'd have complained about the slack visuals if this were a PS2 title from back in 2002. Now its nearly 2008 and somehow it looks worse. Confusing stuff. The voice acting is irritating and very badly implemented too, making the story slow and boring, which is odd seeing as it's based on a very good book and quite well scripted film. The music is super though, so that's one tick in the 'good' column against a whole shed-load in the 'mummy, why does this game make my soul cry' column.