Ok, to begin with I was going to review these episode by episode, but in a fit of madness I decided to go through the whole lot all at once and base my review on the series (apart from episode 1) as a whole.
Now, who doesn’t love the crazy adventures of Wallace and Gromit (show of hands?), the inventor and his trusty pooch are a beloved franchise that is aimed at audiences of all ages with the humour levels leaping up and down like the famed techno trousers that Wallace had invented early in the television series, and the games are no different. However humour is not the be all and end all in games such as these.
Each episode plays out just like the television series with the hapless duo getting into bizarre situations with alarming frequency, and in order to deal with these events you will play as either Wallace or Gromit depending on whom the game gives you control over.
Ok, let’s begin with the tutorial sections of the games. After you leave the title screen and get to the new game section you will be given the option of playing through a short tutorial. I would recommend this only to learn the controls. I would not recommend playing the tutorial in each episode as the controls remain the same. Once is enough!!! The tutorial in my mind should be fun, engaging and should actually have something to do with the episode, however it is an incredibly slow moving mini scene which, far from making you eager to play the main game, makes you feel like switching it off and vowing to never play again. Don’t let this small hiccup put you off the games as a whole though….at least not until you play through them.
The episodes I would say have been aimed at a young market, but even with the assist mode on the puzzles may be too tricky for younger players, too easy for older gamers and to be honest I can’t see many teens going out of their way to purchase them unless they are major fans of the series. This is where the episodes fail for me, as the writers have spun out classic Wallace and Gromit tales that would have been amazing on the television and passed them on to developers who wanted to make a challenging game. Fair enough, but the developers seem to have forgotten or perhaps were not sure of whom they were making the game for and changed the difficulty level of the puzzles so many times through each episode that it ranges from the too easy to the mildly annoying. Now being a huge fan of the point and click adventure games, I was able to play through each episode relatively quickly, but to be honest the only reason I could see for replay value would be to finish off getting the very minor amount of achievements included or perhaps just play it as though watching an episode. After all, you know where everything is and what it does, so you can easily play the game out as your ideal Wallace and Gromit television episode.
I found that in order to enjoy the series it is better to play them all as I don’t think I would have continued to play if they had been released any further apart. I feel that the developers have missed the point and could have released these as a whole game on the retail market rather than downloadable episodic content. The fan base of Wallace and Gromit is large enough that the game would have made a tidy sum. Also, releasing the episodes as the retail front brings out some of the most exciting games this year was not the smartest of moves. Wallace and Gromit (to me at least) is a show I watch around the Christmas holiday period and so I would have been more interested in purchasing this around that time, especially if there are younger relatives staying over who need entertaining! I mean it’s not that hard to look ahead, but as per usual I expect the developers were over excited about their product and wanted to bring it to the limelight as quickly as possible.
If you can afford it and you really are a big Wallace and Gromit fan then I recommend buying the whole series rather than picking just one as they all interlace. You can buy episode by episode and it really is important to play them in order as a lot of the plot devices may become a little confusing without knowing what had happened previously. This was a bold move by the developers that may work, but personally I feel it was a bit of a bullying tactic to make you need to buy each episode to complete the story and leave you with that little sense of closure. In saying that each episode could stand very well on it’s own if you aren’t too interested on what happened previously, but for a completist (like myself) it becomes infuriatingly annoying when you can’t figure out why person A is involved with a caper with person C while person B tries to calm both parties down.
Anyway, back to the point. I would only recommend this series to either fans of Wallace and Gromit who want a new story with interaction to add to their collection or newcomers to point and click adventures who don’t want too much of a challenge, but if you want more for your money then Monkey Island: Special Edition is a more solid game and will keep you coming back for more.
VideogameUK verdict: 6/10
