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There is some action buried in here, though it's found mostly in the game's first and final levels. Even some boss fights are won in this manner. Need to push over an ice bridge? Press some more. Attacked by a giant bee? Press some buttons in the right order. The Golden Compass relies heavily on timed button sequences, already one of the most overused mechanics in modern-day games. Expect to reload this level countless times, while cursing the designer who created it.
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Even worse, the camera has a tendency to move on its own in the middle of jumps and balancing acts. Not only do the slippery controls make Lyra a pain to maneuver, but you can't manually control the camera, which makes it impossible to judge distance. The controls are super-loose, which is deadly on the dock level-one of the dumbest platforming sequences ever dreamed up. There are also beams to keep your balance on as you cross, though these moments seem to take forever, since Lyra walks across them so slowly. Lyra can use Pan as a grappling hook and latch on to poles for simplified Prince of Persia-inspired swinging, and the duo can glide for short distances. In other levels, these tasks may have you hiding under furniture or throwing snowballs, but none of them are interesting, and they are generally sliced up by cutscenes and other gameplay mechanics. The highlight during this level is-get ready for it-mopping the deck. You spend a lot of time roaming about doing busywork, particularly in an insanely long and boring sequence on the Gyptian vessel. There are a lot of ideas at work here, but none of them pan out all that well. Yet you'll likely never care about Lyra or her companions, and important chunks of exposition are completely glossed over, leaving you wondering what's going on or why you should care. You'll figure out what's going on in bits and pieces and with the help of short clips from the Golden Compass film. Lyra also possesses an instrument called an alethiometer-the golden compass of the title-which can answer any question that she asks it. Lyra is accompanied by her daemon Pantalaimon (or Pan, for short), who is the physical embodiment of Lyra's soul, and she is occasionally joined by a hulking armored polar bear named Iorek. As Lyra Belacqua, you seek to save your friend Roger from the grasp of evil folkloric kidnappers known as Gobblers. If you aren't familiar with the accompanying film, or the Philip Pullman novel on which it's based, you will probably be rather confused by the game. When playing, be sure to don a warm sweater.
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The result is a muddled mishmash of gameplay ideas that lacks focus and certainly lacks any sense of fun. Yet for some reason, the designers picked all of the bad stuff while leaving behind the good. Like Narnia, it is a game based on a film based on a fantasy novel, and it even goes so far as to summarily lift hunks of gameplay directly from the earlier title. The Golden Compass for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owes a lot to 2005's The Chronicles of Narnia.