Beyond Good and Evil

Often discussed alongside the Lord of the Rings trilogy as fantasy literature touchstones, the Narnia stories are told in much broader, fairy-tale strokes than the Rings books, often leaving much unsaid or told in summary. Wardrobe gives more dramatic import, for example, to Aslan instructing Peter to clean his sword than to the fight that bloodied it in the first place, but it's not even an emphasis on the lesson at the expense of the action that breaks this interactive expression of the Narnia universe. Fairy tale, religious allegory about pure righteousness versus heartless evil, or charming kids' adventure yarn – no matter how you see the story in book or film form, the game feels aggressively set against its subject matter, with the occasional exception of its graphical depiction of the bewitched, frozen forests and rivers. Whether your interest in Narnia is religious, literary or both, little of the wonder that accompanies Lucy on her first trip through the wardrobe makes its way into this Xbox version of the journey.