How To Train Your Dragon

Rating: E10+

Score: 5.5/10

In 2003, a children's book was written titled "How To Train Your Dragon". Seven years later, they decided to not only make a movie based on the book, but a game as well. Thus, here's How To Train Your Dragon: The Movie The Game (perhaps one of the longest titles for a game ever). This game is available for the Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Playstation 3.

We should all know one of the biggest no-no’s in video game history by now; movie-based video games are almost never any good. Despite this, How To Train Your Dragon can't be that bad, right? The movie was extremely successful, so wouldn’t the game share that success? Oh right, changed story, bad video game clichés, and usually overall poor value. Key word being "usually", meaning there are exceptions. We're not so fortunate this time.

The story, I assume (I never saw the movie), is changed from the game and movie. You're a kid named Hiccup who uses a dragon to enter multiple tournaments and beat/set fire to many other dragons to prove his dragon's strength. I doubting that was the movie's storyline (a hour and a half long movie based on a dragon tournament?), or even the original book (a kid's book about animal violence? Really?).

The gameplay is a fairly standard fighting game. Press one button to use light attacks, another for strong attacks, another for fire, another for block. It works, I suppose, but it's not nearly as advanced as other fighting games with tight controls, smooth animations, and plenty of combos.

The big feature of this game is the customization. After you get your dragon, you can give it custom scales, ears, nose, head, wings, tail, color, whatever. One small thing I found weird at a point early in the game where you unlock the ability to customize your dragon, you're not given any customization options (other than color) at that time, almost like it's teasing you. After you level up a bunch, you start to accumulate all kinds of upgrades, and your dragon will never look similar to the default dragon ever again.

You also need to take care of your dragon. You need to give it food, medicine, let it sleep, increase its trust towards you, and better its mood. Each stat has a different "minigame" attached. Some minigames include running around town and attacking chickens and sheep to turn them into fresh meat (oh jeez, I hope the movie and kid's book don't have that little bit of animal abuse). Sleep lets you, what else, watch your dragon sleep (assuming you haven't fallen asleep first).

I could probably fill the rest of the paper with shameless clichés used in this game. Bad camera, button-mashing fighting, and stupid missions would only be few of many. One mission in particular made little sense: A guy working on a bridge about three steps out of town needs supplies from some town people, so what does he do? Ask you to get them for him. One: there's no reason he can't get them himself or better yet, two: there's no reason I need the bridge. I have a flying dragon, I would think bridges are a tad obsolete for me right now.

Admittedly, it's not the worst movie-to-game video game yet, but that doesn’t save it from being terrible. Awkward voice acting, bad clichés, and only decent gameplay plague it like, well, the plague. It doesn't get any better the further you get through the game. In fact, it gets worse with the terrible repetition of missions and gameplay shamelessly put together by game designers who were either being paid way too much or not nearly enough. Add one more to the bad movie-to-game trash bin, please.