This might be a rather cynical view, but hear me out before tearing my Face Off. There is barely a semblance of a plot to hook you in. Through a few cut scenes and dicey dialogue with characters that don’t resemble their movie counterparts, we learn the basic premise. Dave, who we control in the game, is a physics student and has stumbled into being an apprentice to Balthazar, one of Merlin’s apprentices from back in the day. Dave accidently releases Balthazar’s nemesis into the world, who is trying to free other evil sorcerers as well. Then, before you know it, you are controlling Dave on the street, who can now shoot out turquoise-colored magical bolts from his hands to destroy the animated everyday objects out to kill him. This is your emotional investment to the game.

Somehow, Disney Interactive managed to roll Snake Eyes with a game that has a surprising amount of unrealized promise. The magical system is a varied, with a wheel on the lower touch screen allowing for quick access to your preferred method of destruction. Super attacks can be called upon once you’ve collected enough of what I like to call, “spiny, shiny, glowy plate-looking things,” and then are released by completing some of the simplest mini-games I’ve ever seen. The boss battles are actually fun, though that could be because of the welcome change they present from the otherwise unbearably repetitive gameplay beforehand.

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Because of its unrealized potential, all we are left with is another forgettable video game based on a summer movie. If you’d like a no-thinking, but fun, action game based on a movie, check out Iron Man 2 for the DS instead. It manages to do things right in all the areas where The Sorcerer’s Apprentice went wrong. With both the movie and game being so blasé, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice seems poised to fade quickly from public consciousness, which isn’t such a bad thing, really. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start brainstorming how Inception: The Game would work on the DS…

By Caleb Newby
CCC Freelance Writer