How To Train Your Dragon: Post-Review Thoughts

I've finished my review of How To Train Your Dragon for the Xbox 360. In fact, I've nearly completed the entirety of the game. A diminuitive 45 achievement points lie before me and a full 1000/1000. Here's hoping DLC doesn't wretch the perfection from my hands!

I played most of the game over Spring Break the other week, and while I was out, I didn't post impressions, so I thought I'd write a few things after the fact. These thoughts aren't exactly on the gameplay itself, but more on what it's like to have to play a bad game.

You could excuse a lot of Dragon's flaws based on the fact that it's a movie licensed game. Of course that means an extremely tight development schedule, a lot of unnecessary hands in the development process, and a lack of personal involvement by the creative team. Still, movie games don't have to be bad. Licensed games don't have to be bad, so why excuse anything at all?

The real trouble is the fact that everyone knows the game is going to sell no matter what. How much it sells is largely based on the product it's based on. If the reviews and numbers for How To Train Your Dragon are any indication, I'm guess the game will sell well enough to recoup its costs and make the publisher, Activision, a little money.

Why bother reviewing the game if it doesn't matter anyways? Why go through the trouble of decry all of the games negative points if no one is going to listen or take heed? I wouldn't say I was very conscious of this before or during the review process. I tried to be excited about the game. Jenna and I saw the movie, which I actually liked, and Jenna's mom even got me a McDonald's Dragon toy on my half-sarcastic, half-very-real excitement of such a prospect.

In the end, when it came down to the game, it just wasn't there. It's a bad game. I'll be sure to give you reader of PLAY READ WRITE the lead over to GR when my review is published, but until then, why not share your movie game experience in the comments?