The Golden Compass review

Another movie tie-in that deserves to be left out in the cold

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Iorek’s combat sections, where he clumsily swipes his paws at packs of wolves and leaps over crevasses in the ice reminds us of King Kong and not in a good way. Once you’ve tramped around the icecaps for a while you’re rudely dumped back to the start of the story and, after a rambling cutscene voiced by sexy witch Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green in the film), you’re introduced to Lyra’s adventuring/platforming abilities.

The Lyra sections are, on the whole, rubbish. Your time is split between agonizingly slow beam-balancing, bog-standard platforming, and - thankfully - OK conversation minigames. This entails chatting to other characters (lying occasionally) and collecting items to complete tasks.

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GenreAdventure
DescriptionThe game sucks for many reasons - mostly because it's broken and pug fugly. But what did you expect from a movie tie-in?
Platform"DS","PS2","Xbox 360","PS3","PC","Wii","PSP"
US censor rating"Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+"
UK censor rating"12+","12+","12+","12+","12+","12+","12+"
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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