Dragons, dragons everywhere and not a lot of fun. This game will disappoint hordes of Eragon fans who might like the idea of playing the book or the movie. The reality of Eragon the game is that it could be a drop-in for any flight combat game on PSP. It has very little distinction other than the dragon images and the magical attacks you unleash on opponents. The graphics are not bad and the worlds you play in are bland, but well designed. There was supposedly consultation between the folks realizing Eragon on screen and those making the game. Since we haven't seen the movie yet but loved the book, the game has the hard task of meeting readers' visualization of what Eragon should look and sound like. The sounds are really not impressive and the dragons could be almost anything with wings through most of the game. Playing as anything but the dragon is not in the cards, so this is a flight combat game at heart.

Where flight combat games are concerned, I've had my share of heartbreak. For my money, nothing yet quite matches up to Time Pilot, but that's probably just my nostalgia talking. If I were trying to carry an analogy past the breaking point, I'd say that TP got right what most games like this get wrong. With TP, no matter where you went, you could still shoot down enemies and move toward your goal. The navigation was all about fighting rather than exploring. When you were far enough along, you could fight some great boss that came to you (how convenient) and signaled the change to a new level. This went on indefinitely. The flying was easy to learn, so the fighting could be your focus. Eragon falls into a rut quickly because it doesn't offer much fun gameplay. The missions are too predictable. "On rails" would be another phrase that applies. When you get a shot at multiplayer, it's possible to have more fun, but the overall experience falls short of a good time. The first mission being vanilla is acceptable for training purposes, but the subsequent missions are not much different. There also is no gameplay apart from the flying, which will seem strange to readers who liked the story between the humans as much as the dragon action.

If dragon action is your thing, a case could be made for Eragon as a good game. If you really, really like flight combat games, there might also be a good spin on this. All the typical elements from flying/fighting games can be found, including bombing runs and lots of wheeling about the sky locking on targets. The ground-based enemies don't pose a challenge and don't seem capable of damaging you, unless you just sit in the sky like a big drago-kite. As you play, there are new abilities and skills that Eragon adds to his arsenal and Saphira also gets a few upgrades. This allows you to fight larger enemies or more at once, but it doesn't make the game fun to play. "More of the same" is not a strategy for much of anything except compound interest.

If it didn't come across already, be sure to note that there isn't much challenge in Eragon. The missions have triggers in them to spur you to action, so you don't just wheel around in the sky aimlessly forever. There is a quality to the dragon that makes for a rather invincible demeanor. There are many ways to take out opponents, but not much challenge to think about puzzles or navigate through the game world. There is no real strategy or RPG element in the game, which makes it an action title with nothing to stimulate your gray matter.

There are lots of ways to move the dragon around, which means there was much rejoicing during all the tech demos, no doubt. Someone should have stepped back during the demos and asked what the game was actually going to consist of other than dragons spinning around in the clouds. Since nobody apparently pushed this point, we ended up with dragons in clouds. At least there are lots of things to do on the back of a dragon, not just the obvious things like fireballs. There are magic attacks and arrows that can dispatch enemies from afar or a sword to take them out at close range. Attacks like picking up enemies and eating them or dropping rocks can make for some fun times. There are still far too few opportunities to really get deep or feel an ounce of the excitement you'd naturally associate with dragon-riding.

In this way - as in the others mentioned - Eragon misses the mark. This is just an expensive warm-up to the movie that opens this Friday, a chance to ring up some excitement and get kids who are hooked into the book to put the game on their Christmas list. Parents of these kids will be wiser to find a quality title that can be played for more than a few hours before being put away forever. I know the PSP may be short on flight combat, but this isn't the answer. Eragon fans may find something to love about playing the characters they know, but more likely they'll get frustrated at seeing a great story diminished to some flight-combat action. And not even very good action...