The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is the latest in movie games to come out on the handheld front. The movie though is (I’m hoping) a faithful recreation of the classic C.S. Lewis fantasy novel baring the same name. While chronicled as the first in the time line of stories within the realm of Narnia, this game and movie are based on a book that actually fell toward the center of a seven book series by the writer. In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe the story opens upon a time during the early part of the 20th century just after World War II. The Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, have been orphaned in England due to the war and have been moved into a family foster home. Early in their stay at the Professor’s home they set out on a game of hide-and-seek to pass the time. Lucy though while attempting to hide stumbles upon a very beautifully wood-carved, large wardrobe. Deciding to step inside the wardrobe sets her off into an entire new realm of hiding, an entire new world known as Narnia. All, though is not right in the land of Narnia as young Lucy soon finds out.

Shortly after entering this icy winter wonderland, she discovers none other than Mr. Tumnus the Faun who brings her home as a supposed kidnapping, but really refreshes her while telling her a story. Afterwards she returns home and tells of the wondrous place of Narnia to her brother Edmund who just happened to enter the room. He, not believing a word of it, enters and gets separated from Lucy, but discovers the White Witch who befriends him wanting to meet his family. So he returns back to the lamp post portal to get his family and start the adventure in Narnia.

Will the game ultimately deliver a package worth buying or will it be another in a long line of sub-par movie titles made to cash in for a quick lousy buck better left to the White Witch to put on ice for all time?

Audio and Visuals:
As one would hope for an epic tale which is what The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is, the player would humbly hope for a well assembled package to compliment people’s creative imaginations inspired by the book and movie. Well be rest assured that the package given to the gamer in this title does deliver with a standard that should be expected of the Nintendo DS and more from your typical movie based game. Within the audio package given to the player there is an excellent balance of both music and sound effects complimenting the environments of the game.

Depending if you are in an open field, a frozen land, night or day, or perhaps within a nasty dungeon each area will have a nice distinct melody that fits the tone of the area. The music has some very distinct instrumentation to it so it doesn’t come off as your typical mediocre quality riff one would expect from an average movie based game. As I had stated though the sound effects were just in line with complimenting the musical scoring of the game. Each and every effect you can watch in this game, whether it is your team, your potential animal partner, the enemy, or even just some random thing considered a background object, they all bare sound effects. The greatness of the sound effect package though is that each thing you come across has a distinct sound so it’s not another case of someone busting out "Generic Audio Samples CD Vol.1" by any means. Whether it is the clash of any of your swords, daggers, arrows, enemy clubs, axes, magic spells, or even the cracking of a warm fire or a bird taking flight, it is all there and very crisp and distinguished.

As well as the audio package delivers a good one-two punch for the gamer lost in the world of Narnia, the graphical engine compliments it quite well in pretty much every way. Visually the game is an interesting melding of both the worlds of 2D and 3D, which creates a very pleasing environment for the game player to explore. The land of Narnia itself is portrayed in an overhead view with some very high color and detailed environments which have some amazing attention to detail. Each of the outdoor realms offered in the game actually have four entirely different graphic sets to compliment the shift of time from night to day, and from green spring environment and a cold white winter which occurs within the game.

Whether you’re in an icy wasteland or a green habitat, you will find that the detailing comes down to the smallest pixel to give even the leaves on trees a distinct non-tiled appearance. Aside from the combat screen though, the lower touch panel also has a fully 2D sprite setup for its menus that does not disappoint. The touch panel has the ability to display the children’s faces, gear, and stats, two levels of a map of the land, and various other menus as well. All have a similar detailing to them aside from the map which was kept in a brown parchment and ink type style to match with the sketches found in the original C.S. Lewis book. Complimenting the 2D though is a very well 3D engine that covers all the in game characters, enemies, and beasts you can converse with on the top panel. The detail levels are quite high to where you can make out the rings in Peter and Edmund’s chain mail armor, or when talking to Aslan the lion you can see high detail with his fur texture, teeth, eyes, and so on which really makes the game stand out.

These standards are kept up throughout the entire game no matter if you got just the four siblings on screen, or all of them and a pack of six or more enemies. The only fundamental problem with the engine is when you get like six enemies on screen you can see and feel the game slow down a bit as it taxes the DS a bit. I can’t say if it needed more development time or that’s the best they could do, but seeing other games out there I think it could have been remedied.