You are a young Viking hero who must embark upon an epic quest to become the ultimate dragon trainer. Play as Hiccup or Astrid on the vast Island of Berk, which features expanded locales from the film including Vikings’ Village, Wild Zone, Training Zone and Fight Arena. In this truly larger-than-life adventure, you will train dragons, explore environments and battle in prestigious dragon tournaments as you battle for Viking victory...

How to Train Your Dragon is a third-person action-adventure which is split into a number of gaming areas. Firstly there's the village area (which reminded me, in style, somewhat of a basic version of Fables. Here you can wander around doing tasks for the other villagers, pick crops and kill animals to feed and heal your dragons, and even capture a new dragon for your collection.

Then we have the dragon tournaments, where you must take your dragons into battle against other viking tribes. Making sure your dragons are fit and well for these battles is essential.

You can go to your dragon den and care for your dragons. Here you can heal and feed them as well as make sure they're well rested and earn their trust. You can also (once unlocked) customise the look of your beasts, as well as level up their characteristic (like stamina, defence etc).

You can train your dragon (this is basically tutorials and hints on how to perform certain moves for the tournament) and there are also minigames that allow you to unlock special items.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the game is that after a while you'll find you spend a little too much time running from one area of the map to another and then back again. You know what you have to do, but simply getting there is dull and tiresome - and soon starts to drag the game down.

While far from a classic game, there's certainly enough here to appeal to fans of the movie.

7

Darren Rea