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Fun for everyone, but perfect for no one

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit tries to satisfy all gaming tastes, and mostly succeeds. It wants to be an action-platformer, collect-a-thon, rhythym based game, open-world sandbox, and even a gardening simulator. It's amazing that such an ambitious design based on a relatively obscure property succeeds as often as it does, but it's not without some pitfalls.

The first thing a player notices is the stunningly accurate rendering of the claymation world of Wallace and Gromit. The animations of every character are spot-on, and the art design of the town truly lends a feeling of controllable stop-motion artwork. The voice work is tops all the way too, and favorite characters from the shorts reprise their roles. Every inch of the town is a joy to explore, with lots of hidden surprises and a high level of interactivity. Truly someone with a great affection for the series built this game. Widescreen TV owners will appreciate the 480p widescreen capabilities.

The basic mechanics of the game are fine, with responsive jump and attack controls, and the ability to interact with every non-playable character in the game through the Y button. Trouble pops up when the "combo" obsession rears its ugly head. Like so many modern action games, Wallace and Gromit ventures into the land of Street-Fighter style multiple button actions. Unfortunately, the game engine just doesn't respond well to fast button pressing and the result is a lot of frustrating platforming. The controller mapping is also unecessarily complex, and can take a good couple of hours to become comfortable. Throw in the insanely difficult jumping challenges, and the sometimes brutal pest-collecting exercises, and Wallace and Gromit can at times be too tough for the seasoned adult gamer, let alone the intended child audience. However the joy of exploring the W & G world always kept me coming back to try and overcome my last trial and failure.

I really can't overemphasize the brilliance of the level design here. The game builds on known areas of the clay town, and adds new exciting areas like a seaport, a wood, and a colorful town fair. And each area seems to fit perfectly into the Wallace and Gromit lore, even though we've never seen them. Each new block is fully interactive, with an amazing amount of verticality for exploration. Though this is somewhat hampered by the camera, which can at times feel like it needs continual manhandling. The scope of the gameworld is a bit unnecessarily daunting, considering the general lack of direction. The game's story does follow that of the movie's, but story breaks occur at disruptive and unpredictable intervals, and rarely seem to have any connection to the gameplay. A little tighter scripting could have helped the game feel more purposeful.

The two-player cooperative aspect adds a lot to the fun, and can make some of the toughest collection challenges easier, though again the camera can be difficult. If players genuinely cooperate, it's a fun addition to the game. If they're trying to go in opposite directions, it aggravates all the little pre-existing problems and makes things a chore.

In summary, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a game that will appeal to both adults and children with its colorful and faithful re-creation of the world of Wallace and Gromit, and its rewardingly interactive nature. Kids will be put off by its sometimes ridiculous difficulty, requiring adult intervention with the "hard parts." Considering how much fun exporation of the game can be, you grown-ups might actually find that to be a good thing.

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