How to Train Your Dragon for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

I wish I could give game recommendations based on good ideas.

The concept of How to Train Your Dragon is a solid one: coddle and teach a fire-belching lizard in the hopes of turning it into a powerhouse for what are basically Nordic chicken fights. It's a lot like Pokemon -- minus the satisfying sense of accomplishment or character development that's kept it going so strong for over a decade.

I won't pretend to know what the plot of Dragon is so I can give you a synopsis, but my son seems to think it's safe to assume that the game takes place after the film. There is no coming of age story that thinly veils a theme of racial equality here; just straight up grinding in order to get your mount in tip-top shape for local schoolyard tournaments that put your recess dodgeball games to shame.

You go about "training" in a couple of ways. The first is by maintaining five status bars that have no bearing on anything other than your health. Your dragon raises his rest by, um, resting; everything else is a hunt and gather throughout the village for the various things that arbitrarily raise the rest of your stats. Once adventuring makes way for hoarding, the game got very boring. You can also go through a regime of what basically amounts to tutorials in order to earn the right to add combos and other special attacks to your move set to use during the tournaments.

When you finally sign up to prove your worth, you're introduced to what I'd like to call Soulcalibur...made by first year design students. There's a semblance of 3D dodging, parries, blocks and attacks; but none of it works well at all. It breaks the first rule of fighting games by not having a gratifying connection when you make hits. It all looks and feels like a bunch of flailing, which isn't helped by the egregious amount of clipping going on. Whether I approached it as a button-masher or as a strategic fighting savant, I had a hard time of it -- enough to turn me off permanently.