I really liked this game growing up and thought it was a pretty sick tie-in to one of my favorite movies. I wanted to revisit it as an adult to see if the game was actually a strong experience, or my strong affinity for the film was clouding my judgment.

The first Narnia title plays like a cross between the simple hack-and-slash action of the Lord of the Rings titles of its era, and the co-op focused basic puzzle solving in the Lego titles. The second comparison makes a lot of sense as the game was developed by Traveler's Tales in the same year they put out the first Lego Star Wars game. You can honestly see which title they put their passion and energy into (spoiler alert: it wasn't this one).

Like the Lord of the Rings games, the story is told through poor quality abbreviated movie clips to start and end each level (with the score changed to some generic fare for licensing reasons I imagine). This is a pretty poor way to experience the narrative and the game is better suited as a companion to the movie. I did appreciate how they got the kids to voice their parts for the game, and they seemed to have a fun time working on it and seeing their likenesses in the game so that's nice. The game itself looks and sounds pretty bad. I liked the level select screen being the different art panels on the wardrobe, but otherwise the presentation doesn't hold up at all.

The linear levels feature 2, 3, or 4 of the Pevensie kids as they traverse the winter wonderlands of Narnia. Each are given a different special ability so you'll be often swapping between them to move forward. Lucy can crawl through small spaces, Edmund can climb poles (a bit random but alright), Susan can shoot projectiles, and Peter is the strongest.

Early on in the game, the variety gives the game some personality. The tutorial level has the Pevensies trying to escape their house during a London bombing raid, and one of the early Narnia-set levels has a segment where you sled down a hill on a patch of ice, escaping an avalanche and avoiding holes in your path down the slope.

These rather easy early levels were my favorites as a kid, and it's the later ones where the cracks in the game's design really start to show. The combat becomes a major focus quickly and it's extremely shallow. It comes down to simple button mashing and spamming simple combos. While I appreciate there's an unlock system for new abilities, certain ones sort of break the game. By the late levels I was absolutely shredding through every type of enemy.

The game never gets that difficult even when playing by yourself, but the frustrations nevertheless hold it back from being fun. This game was definitely designed with two player co-op in mind. There are tag-team abilities where 2 characters can link up for a more powerful attack. That sounds sort of fun, but in single-player I rarely used it as finding the other Pevensie sibling I'd want in the chaos of the brawl, linking, and unleashing the attack could prove a chore. The siblings are also pretty imbalanced in combat. This makes sense in the context of the story, but the fact that I couldn't switch to Peter or Edmund fast enough seems like a poor design choice when so much of this game is brainless fighting. I barely played as Lucy except to switch to her for a quick team healing.

The companion AI is terrible which becomes a problem specifically when you need to shoot enemies in the distance as Susan. The lock-on system is bad enough, but getting swarmed by constantly respawning goons as I'm trying to shoot some archer is no fun. If I had a buddy sweeping away these enemies it would be much easier but the computer-controlled Pevensies just stand there and don't help at all.

A few levels have sort of multi-tasking objectives where you have to run around and prevent enemies from progressing. These are often poorly explained to the player and can definitely be annoying and take a few tries. They were definitely my least favorite level types in the game.

Like the Lego games, the game encourages you to pick up currency for upgrades and receive a good score in each level for collecting stuff. There are unlockable bonuses in the menu like behind the scenes clips of the actors recording their lines (I liked these) and weak bonus levels that amount to little more than frustrating combat arenas (I didn't like these).

This is a very short game and a first playthrough will probably take experienced players somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. I've definitely played worst movie tie-in titles than Narnia but it still leaves a lot to be desired.