Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole Impressions

If you consider the mighty owl your favorite creature in the animal kingdom, you've likely heard of the upcoming movie Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. This CG-animated, Zack Snyder-directed movie stars a young owl named Soren on a journey of self-discovery and, presumably, occasional hooting. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will be publishing the video game tie-in on a variety of platforms, with Australia's Krome Studios at work developing the console versions. We've just had the chance to see and play the Xbox 360 version of this owl-based flight game here at E3 2010.

Who's Making It: Krome Studios, a developer with experience making movie tie-ins like last year's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

What It Looks Like: Legend of the Guardians depicts owls flying through the air, high above sprawling forests, through gloomy caves, and past giant, snowy mountains. It's not cartoonish by any means, but it still manages to paint these worlds in a bright, vibrant light.

What You Do: Legend of the Guardians is described by WBIE as an "action flight" game, which essentially means that you're tasked with performing feats of midair dogfighting without the traditional airplane weaponry. Instead, you play as owls who must pick up things like burning coals and fling them at distant foes, or counter the swooping attacks of enemy birds with a counter system that relies heavily on timing.

How It Plays: Your basic flight is mapped to the left stick, while more advanced techniques can be performed with simple flicks on the right stick, such as moving left and right to do a barrel roll, or pulling back to do quick 180. You can also lock on to enemies and hit the face button to shoot projectiles and counter enemy attacks. Overall, it's a simple control scheme.

What They Say: Warner Bros.' press release states that "players take the fight against evil to the air, armed with battle claws and aided by trustworthy allies." Trustworthy allies we could give or take, but battle claws? We like the sound of that.

What We Say: Legends of the Guardians strikes us as a competent flight combat game for kids, with a friendly ornithological world in place of the usual fighter jets. You could certainly do a lot worse. Like, for example, picking a game about pigeons.