The making of a video game - especially one based on a movie, or worse yet, a "kid's movie" - is fraught with peril. Nobody denies this; generally, there's a major rush to market (movie and videogame need to be out at the same time). There's a better level of collaboration for a CG picture... maybe. Voice acting might, or might not, be tied into the contracts of the movie's cast. And, of course, there's always the question of how to fill out a 90+-minute script into 20 or so hours of gameplay.

With How to Train Your Dragon, Activision's gone with an interesting formula. They've got the visuals down pretty much correct, having used models that look an awful lot like lower-resolution ones direct from movie production. The environment doesn't look that bad either. And since the game's based on a series of books targeted to grade-school age kids, they're able to use that world, rather than the movie one, to try to flesh out their story. The only problem is that apparently, nobody on the team was working on the same game.