I’ve written a lot about my childhood video game memories here at TheGamer. It makes sense, seeing as those formative years spent maxing out the clock on Pokemon Silver and doing very little else have informed who I am today. If you’re an avid Ben Sledge reader, as I’m sure you are, you’ll know that I only played games on my trusty Game Boy Advance for years, finally getting a Wii as a teenager and then an Xbox 360 a few years later.

You may think that I missed out on a lot of ‘00s games due to that fact. And you would be correct. I’ve spent recent years punctuating new releases with classics from my backlog, games that most of my colleagues played when I was running through the Johtonian Elite Four for the hundredth time. However, while I may have missed genre-defining titles like Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, I did play Eragon.

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Eragon was a very middling adaptation of a very middling film, based on a pretty good children’s novel. I’ll admit I’m remembering those pages through a heavy fog of nostalgia, but I loved Christopher Paolini’s debut novel, and so did my best friend. We were big fantasy nerds and devoured books, but there was one crucial difference between us: he had a PlayStation 2.

Our favourite PS2 games were Godzilla: Save The Earth and Spider-Man 2, but on one particular sleepover he unveiled a game I didn’t know existed, a game I didn’t even know I wanted before that moment. We would take on Eragon in co-op, playing together to traverse this fantasy world we’d imagined for years in our heads and recently seen realised on the big screen. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how video gamey this video game really was.

Eragon was decidedly average. The PS2 version has a 51 on Metacritic. It was unoriginal and boring. PC Gamer called it “profoundly uninspiring,” and said that the plot was “thinner than hospital undies.” But we loved it.

You’ve got to remember how few games I’d played at this age. I’d rinsed Super Mario Advance 2, but I’d never played a 3D platformer before. There was very little platforming in Eragon, but I struggled with it. I remember attempting time and time again to jump up some large stairs on a hillside and I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know what it was, but these stairs were far more fierce a challenge than any of the game’s bosses. After spending a solid 15 minutes trying to teach me how to jump in just the right manner to ascend, gently coaxing me up the clearly simple hill, my friend gave up. But not before he showed me one final trick.

eragon video game platforming

In Eragon co-op, if one player disconnects their controller, the game’s AI simply takes over and continues whatever you were doing. Boss fight? Let the AI take over for a second. Need to go for a wee? AI. Can’t walk up some stairs? You know the drill. If you feel like this is cheating, or that I didn’t properly experience seminal fantasy video game Eragon, I’ve got good news: I didn’t ask for your opinion.

This tiny addition to Eragon’s co-op made it so much better for kids like me. It kept me and my best friend playing the game when we otherwise would have quit to fight Mecha-Godzilla or something, and I’ve not noticed it in any other game I’ve played. Making things easier is no bad thing, and keeping players engaged by tagging in the AI – which was capable of climbing stairs but not particularly helpful in a fight – would be a great addition to most co-op games.

As I’ve got older, I’ve found much more fun in lowering difficulty settings. I don’t regret fighting through Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2 on the highest difficulties when I was a teenager with far more time on my hands, but I believe the reason I’ve stuck with The Witcher 3 this year after bouncing off countless times before is because I lowered the difficulty to normal. As a result, I’ve enjoyed The Continent’s wonderful stories in a way I would have otherwise missed. And, without knowing it, Eragon paved the way for this. I’ve come full circle, and I’m back to being comfortable about making my life easier so that I can enjoy games more. Eragon may have been a middling game, but it was instrumental in my personal video game journey and created the gamer I am today.

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