The Golden Compass (DS) Review
The Golden Compass on the Nintendo DS is a poor game. Unimaginative puzzles separate by-the-numbers platforming and simplistic stealth gameplay sections to create yet another poorly made licensed video game. Everything about The Golden Compass on the DS is forgettable and there is no reason to recommend the game to anyone, including fans of the book or movie.
At its heart a simple 2D platformer, the development team have attempted to add depth by including stealth elements and puzzles which revolve around switching between main character Lyra and her animal companions, Pan and Iorek. These stealth skills and animal companions add a great deal of variety to the core gameplay, but the completely uninspired level design fails to take advantage of the added depth. Instead, the game becomes a repetitive experience of simplistic puzzles and confusing character switching, with broken stealth elements adding to the frustration.
This is a frustration which will play out over a ridiculously long period of time, as in an effort to help meet some sort of arbitrary length, the game is stretched out over far too many levels which only the most dedicated players will bother sitting through. With the limited development cycles licensed titles tend to receive, it makes more sense to concentrate on making a shorter game, comprised of a few high-quality levels, rather than a longer game consisting of many mediocre ones. In the case of The Golden Compass, the developers have equated quantity with quality and the finished product suffers as a result.
Graphically the game is a bit of a mixed bag. Characters are modelled reasonably well in 3D, but the environments are repetitive and bland. The animation is limited and frame-rate issues exist when there is too much happening on-screen. In keeping with the rest of the package, the music and sound effects are also quite bland and add very little to the atmosphere of the game. The music is very repetitive, which is inexcusable when there is a whole film score from which to draw inspiration.
The Golden Compass on Nintendo DS is a cheap cash-in of a book/film license which does not provide an experience that I can recommend to anyone. The core gameplay is repetitive and bland, the game is too long and there are other games on the DS that do the same thing, but do it much better. Fans of the book may be drawn to the game, but they will only find a frustrating 2D platformer which does little to expand or enhance the original story. Avoid.
