Completion Time: 9h:07m:00s
Rating: 7/10

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Into the Wardrobe

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A large part of this "GameCube Gauntlet" exercise is going back and playing through games that I grew up on (for better or worse), and completing things that I was never able to complete or finish as a child. This is one of the exceptions to that rule, in that I completed this multiple times as a kid, so I feel I know it pretty well. I had a limited supply of games before I started my own collection, and titles that allowed for multiplayer co-op were vital in my youth as it gave me something to play with others. I ran through this one inside and out, and when it was completed I would hold off on it for some months and play other things, knowing I would eventually go back in, erase the save file, and start it all over. I didn't even really care about "Narnia" as a franchise, it's just one of those things you hyper fixate on as a kid when you don't have much else to go to. At any rate, nostalgia tangent aside, its best to jump into this again and see what it has to offer.

Young me was just enthralled with all the flashlight gameplay

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The Battle for Narnia

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Making your way through the world of The Chronicles of Narnia is more or less patterned after the Disney film adaptation specifically of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe". And that makes sense, given this is licensed to have come out following the release of the Disney movie they created. This even has the benefit of having those terrible compressed snippets of footage from the film to get you excited to watch the movie in better quality than what your GameCube is giving you. The rough charm of the actual CGI cutscenes in the game are amplified because of this, however, and I was smiling watching these horrible, ugly things.

This scene does not instill the drama they want, but it does make me smile

So you hop around throughout the plot of the movie, going from stage to stage and fight bad guys, every now and then solving puzzles along the way. The fighting in the game can get a tad tedious at times, especially during stages where you just run back and forth between multiple different areas while waiting for a beaver to chew through a section of brush. So many times the quests are just doing something repetitively to either clear out a wave or buy someone else some time to finish a task. And yeah, most of them ARE a beaver chewing through a wall, at least in the early game. So get ready to bash things in the head, and to do it A LOT.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth

I will say, though, that while the combat can get tiresome, the game does try to diversify it as much as it possibly can. Enter the Move Store, as I call it, where you spend the coins you collect throughout the game to purchase moves for all the characters. Some of these upgrades are more health for the characters, or better super abilities for them to use (this really comes in handy for Lucy, whose special power is to heal all players on the field). But this also allows you to purchase button combination attacks for the likes of Peter and Edmund, which is a great boon to actually feeling like you're mixing up your gameplay styles. You can do a shield bash to eliminate small enemies and weaken the larger ones all at once, or you can even get "insta-kill" abilities that will take out specific enemy types with two-three simple button clicks. And for some of these later stages, you're gonna need these moves. You start getting into a ton of boss fights in the endgame, and having wolves, goblins, and boggles (boggles?) running around and bothering you are antithetical to you're real goals.

How do I kill 8 Boggles when I don't even know what those are?

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Completing the Game

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There are two primary collectables throughout the game: shields and statues. Shields are your most base level grabbables. You get these items in most every stage for just banging around the environment, shining a light on certain objects, playing Susan's horn at designated spots, and getting combos in boss stages. They can be most anywhere, but all they really do is add towards your overall completion. Simple as. The statues are a bit more complicated, as they can only be found in Narnia levels and must be whacked to unlock them. Occasionally, you'll find a red musical note you can play Susan's horn over, which will cause a few hidden statues to spawn into existence for you to beat. However, these actually have a point. In the later stage "The Battle for Beruna", before it starts you can use the freed statues you've obtained to purchase special attacks during the fight, which can take out some of the more difficult foes more easily. Thus, after this stage there are no more statues to collect. I like it when the items actually come into play like this.

Oink

Touched on briefly already, you also collect coins for doing most everything in the game, and these can be used to purchase moves for each of the playable characters. You may need to grind a tiny bit at the end of the game to get the remaining couple of moves, but I didn't find myself having much trouble here. The real final completion is actually a bit hidden if you don't know where to look. At the bottom of the wardrobe, which acts as the level select screen, there's a drawer which opens up into an Extras menu. You'll notice at the top right of the screen is a percentage that ISN'T 100%. Why is that? Well, in addition to the behind the scenes videos in this drawer, there are also Bonus Levels! Each one you complete adds an extra percent to your overall tally, and these are primarily completing waves of enemies and surviving until the end of a timer. One of the challenges presented here has nothing to do with fighting, and instead has you playing as Lucy, taming various creatures instead of beating them. In fact, that's the last challenge! Some of these levels gave me lots of issues, with constant death being the norm. But then the last level comes along, in the White Witch's castle, and it's a short tame mission that I finished in 40 seconds. Seems a little underwhelming to me. But at any rate, completing these challenges will now give you the final unlockable video: unused models from the game!

Neigh

A lot was flooding back to me while playing this one, and I still think it mostly holds up for this type of game. There are some frustrations with the stage layouts for sure, and as always the compressed video cutscenes ripped from the media don't play as well now as it did when it was still novel. But the gameplay loop is kept fresh enough with the varied movesets and unlockable skills, and the fact that the levels actually implement different types of challenges is a refreshing change of pace for a game of this nature. Slight recommend from me!

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 25/652