This is a review of the family friendly Action/Fighting game How To Train Your Dragon, based on the Dreamworks CGI animated film of the same name. First off, let me say I play a ton of these cheesy family games, with a 5 year old running around here most of the time I have to keep the bloody stuff for the later nights. O.K., that being said, on to the game: The story is about a Viking kid named Hiccup, who must train his dragon to fight in a tournament against the other warriors of the village and their respective dragons. There is also an arcade mode where you fight with your dragons from story mode, create new ones using the dragon editor, or use one of the legendary dragons that you unlock along your journey. Basically arcade mode is an extension of the tourneys that are apart of the main campaign.
The dragon “designer” part of this game is not all that great; basically you choose your color, your wing shape, your spine type, tail type and various other add-ons for your dragon. Early on in the game, the selections for each attribute are few but you unlock more as you complete various tasks in the game. Lets start with the village: It’s not large, acting as a hub of sorts, there is the main village with the entrance to the tournaments, the shopkeeper, various villagers and the docks. As you progress in the story you will open up other areas in the village like the wild lands and the training area.
Okay, on to the heart of the game, training. Training consists of learning the various fighting moves and combos that you will use in the tournaments and the Wild Fights. You need to train your dragons to do each level of training if you want it strong enough to win. Training is very easy as most of the time your opponent just sits there and takes the damage you dish out. Training will level your dragon up and give him attribute points that you can assign to various skills that your dragon possesses.
There are challenges that you complete to level your dragon up RPG style. These challenges are essentially a collection of mini-games that must be completed at three different difficulty levels. The mini-games consist of Ice Sculpting, in which you mash the corresponding button to build a meter to the specified location and your dragon will breathe fire and melt an ice block. Next is Looping Race; this is a flying mini-game where you need to fly through rings and score enough checkpoints to clear the challenge. Then there is Flying Shepard, which was a fun little challenge where you need to take your dragon around a specified area and collect a sheep with your dragon’s claws and take it back to the corral. There is Memory Torch challenge, which is a really dumbed-down version of the old Simon color matching game. Lastly, there is the bane of my existence, the Puzzle Dragon challenge in which you will see a dragon walk on screen and then you will need to remember what it looked like and try to re-create it with out letting the time expire.
Next we have the tournaments: There are 5 in total. They will progressively get longer and a bit harder as you go. The tournaments consist of a group of fighters with their dragons; you will need to choose your opponent and fight them one-on-one style like Primal Rage or Mortal Kombat, but seriously simplified. Your moves consist of combos that you learned during your training sessions. Needless to say, the fighting is not epic by no means. Winning a tourney will garner you the choice of a new dragon at the docks.
Graphically the game isn’t horrid, but it is by no means a masterpiece; it falls along lines of the Kung Fu Panda game or Bee Movie. The controls are fluid and very easy to pick up and learn: Whipping off a stun combo is as easy as X,Y,Y,Y. The music is so so; the soundtrack is not great, and the sound effects are lacking. Now, as for the achievements; they are a piece of cake for the most part. Most of them will come naturally as you progress in the game, but there are a few that will drive you nuts, especially the tournament and challenge specific ones. You also need to go through the game a total of two times to get all 1000 points, but it goes by fairly quickly. All in all the game is good if you like the family friendly games, and if you are a hardcore gamer score whore then this will definitely be a good waffle for you, 6.5 out of 10.
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