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Computer Times
Editors' Choice Game Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures Reviewed by Angie Kibiloski
Telltale Games, the company that brought us the quirky and entertaining Sam & Max franchise, has come out with a new series of games based on the ever popular Wallace & Gromit films. The series, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures, has been released online. Each can be downloaded from www.telltalegames.com for only $8.95. You can also purchase the entire series all at once for $34.95. This complete set comes with a collector’s disk, for just the additional cost of the shipping charge, sent out at the end of the season. Anyone who has ever seen and loved the Wallace & Gromit movies will thrill at the prospect of taking control of the characters in these new adventures. All the same cute personality quirks of the characters, distinct look and feel of the animation, and zany plot twists from the films are present in these new games, making them a seamless addition to the franchise. The game play is basically a point and click adventure, much like the Sam & Max series was. You have to guide both characters through various environments, like their West Wallaby Street house, and the town, interacting with any objects that you can, speaking with neighbors, and using collected items to solve practical puzzles.
In the first episode, Fright of the Bumblebees, Wallace is starting up a new enterprise of selling honey straight from the source. “From bee to you” is his motto. He needs to find a way to fill a very large order of honey. His idea: grow giant flowers to help the bees make honey faster. He’ll come up against an assortment of obstacles along the way, which you must help him overcome to complete his goal. A couple examples of these “could only happen to Wallace” road blocks are: busting his cheese sniffing robot mouse out of jail, and retrieving a tea bag that is stuck to his neighbors bosom. Of course, as this is Wallace, his scheme backfires a bit. Giant flowers create giant bees, which decide to cause a good deal of trouble for the town. Gromit, as usual, must clean up the mess and save the town from Wallace’s latest bright idea.
The second episode is The Last Resort. Our heroes are going off on a fun filled beach holiday. However, as luck would have it, rain ruins their plans, and keeps them confined to West Wallaby Street. Wallace’s solution: bring the beach holiday home, into the basement. And why keep it all to themselves? Why not open it up to guests? Unfortunately, one of the guests who they manage to lure into staying at their basement beach resort gets assaulted by an unknown assailant, and it is up to Wallace and Gromit to discover who. Of course, Wallace has an invention ready for the job, and high jinks ensue because of it.
The third episode, Muzzled, finds Wallace and his canine pal trying to thwart the scheming of their new neighbor, Mr. Monty Muzzle. He is holding a large “charity” fundraiser to renovate the local dog shelter. But once he has the townspeoples’ donated funds, he plans to use them and the new dog shelter for his own dastardly motives. You have to help Wallace and Gromit stop his plans and save the town’s pooches and pocketbooks from this schemer’s clutches. The final episode in this series is called The Bogey Man. Wallace is actually allowed to join a prestigious country club, where he is excited to go and practice his golf swing, with poor Gromit as his caddie of course. Soon, club politics and a long standing dispute get our heroes wrapped up in a situation that might threaten the entire town and their peaceful lifestyle. You must help them get to the bottom of the mess and save the day once again. If you are a fan of the Wallace & Gromit films from Aardman Animations, this is a must buy series. There are little treats for you throughout the games that you will recognize from the movies, like a famous pair of mechanical trousers that randomly pop out of a crowded garden shed. But even if you have never seen a Wallace & Gromit film before, these games are fun, uniquely entertaining, and a pleasure to play. Plus, at such a low cost, you can’t beat the value for hours of enjoyment in the quirky world of two very beloved characters. System Requirements:
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