Eragon

Doubt Riding on the residual beard-chic left by the Lord of the Rings movies, Eragon is billed as the next big thing in the fantasy flick world, and funnily enough the game isn't all that different from EA's previous Tolkien action games (it's even been fudged together by the same team). As such, it's a basic hack-and-slash adventure with simple combos, drop-in/drop-out co-op and combat that gets repetitive very quickly.

The combo system is dead simple, with moves made up of three button combinations resulting in beat-downs that most of the time look very much the same. There's also a bow you can whip out for ranged kills and grab manoeuvres with a bit of bullet-time thrown in for good measure.

You play a fabled 'dragon rider', which means you can call upon a fire-breathing beastie for some pre-scripted carnage when you're in a tight spot, as well as flap about on the back of one in some Panzer Dragoon-style stages. Flying around roasting enemies and firing arrows is a fun distraction from the vanilla foot combat, but the flight stages are hampered by the uncontrollable camera which sometimes makes dodging rocks and trees a real pain.

If you can put up with the repetitive combat, Eragon is a reasonably enjoyable outing. However, in the end it has nothing to offer that we haven't already seen in a thousand other hack-and-slash adventures.