One game to go down a treat at E3 this year was SEGA’s official game of New Line Cinema’s forthcoming movie, The Golden Compass.

It helps that the movie itself is shaping up to be truly awesome, of course, but those journalists who’ve seen something of the game have reacted with very positive commentary indeed. A preview of the game in the August issue of the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, for example, says: “If there’s one game we’ve got all our fingers crossed for it’s The Golden Compass.”

Well, us too, as it happens. But then that’s a given…

It continues: “With such fantastic source material, developer Shiny has all the substance it needs to craft a fine PS2 adventure game.”

They speak no lie. Take a look for yourselves. And don’t forget to watch the making-of movie on the official game site if you haven’t already (click the Media section).

Watch a new movie, right here, detailing the making of the official game of The Golden Compass movie.

The movie was launched exclusively on Yahoo! Games last week, but that particular embargo is now over now, meaning we can play it right here via our YouTube account. Featuring cameos from leading lights at developer Shiny Entertainment,
the video offers up an insightful glimpse at the creation of a game
licensed from such a massive blockbusting movie.

Enjoy!

New Line Cinema, producers of the forthcoming Christmas blockbuster The Golden Compass (the first film adaptation of the His Dark Materials book trilogy by Philip Pullman), have added a neat new toy to the official movie website. Now, since we’re all over here working away on the official game of the movie, we thought it only right that we spend lots of work time playing around with it.

The clever device introduces site visitors to Pullman’s concept of a person’s soul being manifest as an animal - their daemon. The little heroine of The Golden Compass, Lyra, (usually) has an ermine buddy called Pan, for instance.

On the site, you’re asked a series of 20 questions about your own personality. At the end of the process you’re told what form your daemon would take, as well as its name.

But that’s not the really clever bit. Once you’ve created your daemon you’re given a piece of code that allows you to slot it onto your own blog / MySpace / website / bit-of-internet. Other people can then see your daemon and answer more questions about you, altering the look of your daemon if they don’t agree with your own answers.

See? Clever!

Dave and I have given it a go. Dave’s come up with a kick-ass snow leopard called Desra. I, on the other hand, seem to have produced a timid-looking rodent called Trina.

Trina, I think, would make a great mid-afternoon snack for a snow leopard. I’m afraid for my soul.

Go get your own daemon now at www.goldencompassmovie.com.

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var so = new SWFObject(”http://goldencompassmovie.com/goldenCompass_blog.swf?id=70071″, “flash”, “450″, “400″, “8″, “#FFFFFF”);
so.addParam (”menu”, “false”);
so.addParam (”scale”, “noscale”);
so.addParam (”wmode”, “transparent”);
so.write(”flashItem2″);