The Golden Compass Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

More like the Wooden Compass.

This is a silly game. I say that with all due respect but it took me about 27 attempts to get past the first level and I almost gave up. When I persevered and finally finished the first level, it took me just under thirty minutes to complete the rest of the game.

So with that in mind let's get started with the basics. In case you were unaware, this is the mobile game of the hit film, which I haven't seen. But it's supposed to be good if you like duelling polar bears. The game, I'm guessing, follows the plot of the film pretty closely and you play the part of the main girl, Lyra, as she trundels along trying to rescue her brother and follow the Golden Compass.

Graphics are fairly standard and really nothing to write home about. There is a reasonable amount of detail but they are distinctly 2D and give the impression of a game which is much older than it seems. Maybe this was just me, but the animation wasn't that smooth either and there was one major flaw with object detection which I will go into later. Sound was minimal but there at least.

Controls are simple, move around using the stick or the pad and jump diagonally using 1 and 3. You can throw pebbles at enemies by pressing the main button or fire and the longer you hold it the further it will go. This is about it and should cause no problems or frustrations right? Wrong. The ledge and jump detection is really abysmal and it's this that caused me to miss completing the last bit of the first level as I played it over and over again. When you jump to a ledge, the action will automatically pull you up, but if you are even the slightest bit off then you will fall to your doom. Sometimes, even when you think you have made it, you still fall and begin to curse the game repeatedly.

The action never really hots up to any level of addictiveness, the stages are fairly linear and quite quick to memorise. There's one level where you have a lot of doorways to explore, but as long as you are quick on the trigger finger and have a half decent memory, even this shouldn't be a problem. I guess the developers tried to keep things interesting by injecting a riddle at the end of each level, but if you're not in nursery school you should be just fine. There are also a few parts of the game where you control either Pan or the great big polar bear who's always up for a fight it seems. In some of these levels, you have to hit an attack meter at the right time, but again it's far too easy.

With only 5 levels, the game being very easy and frustrating at the same time, and with average graphics and sound, this is quite a let down.

As this is an old game which we should have done a while ago I'll take solace in the fact that it's been ages since we've given anything a wooden spoon and it will hopefully be ages since we give it again.