Wallace & Gromit Fright of the Bumblebees Reviewed!

For those who have been gaming for quite a while, many of us have fond memories of a genre that ruled the PC realm for a time called point and click adventures. You know, games like The Secret of Monkey Island? I happened to love that genre, in fact Monkey Island is still one of my favorite games of all time. These adventure games were known for usually having great humor and clever puzzles difficult enough to make you think about it, but not so much that you want to quit. The genre slowly fell from its throne after a streak of lower quality games and the shooter genre taking over the PC. Here we are years later and at least one developer is carrying the torch, and doing it well: Telltale Games. They are the team behind the Sam and Max adventure series and also Strong Bad’s Game For Attractive People, and now they got a hold of the rights for Wallace and Gromit, the successful animation series. The first episode of their Wallace and Gromit games has released for the PC and is soon coming to the XBLA… how does it fare?

Gromit preparing for the worst in my review.

First off, for those who haven’t seen the fairly long running animation series, don’t worry, they do enough setup in the game for you (in all honesty you don’t need much for the game). Wallace is a well meaning absent minded inventor, always looking for a new business venture with his inventions and Gromit is his loyal, loving, and seemingly more intelligent than Wallace, dog, that only communicates through facial expressions and body language. That’s about all you need to know before you start.

Wallace and Gromit in their basement… with a lot of bees.

The gameplay is quite simple, for those who haven’t played this type of game before. You move around with the arrow keys or wsad on the pc, and I’d assume analog stick for 360, and click on objects to interact. Through interaction with objects in inventory and moving things around you solve the puzzles to fix contraptions or just cook breakfast. This system works well in it’s simplicity, and as expected, works well here. They also have a hint system to help out if some of the puzzles get too hard, I played through the 2nd time with it on to see, and it does help, but it also gets in the way sometimes it seems.

Oh come on guys, I wasn’t that harsh….

The two things these type of games hinge on is how interesting the puzzles are, and how good the story/humor is. The puzzles are in that good balance that they take some thought, but aren’t ridiculously obscure and difficult that you just click around till you find it, although a few times I was looking around for a while with no clue and then all of a sudden it hit me like a sack of bricks. The story and humor are great, fitting right in with the well received animation series and keeps you interested till the end.

My advice: never turn your inventions on to the bash setting.

Graphics: Well done, just below the quality of the animation, barely though.

Sounds: Also well done, voice acting and all, even with Wallace being done by the backup voice actor instead of the “real” one.

Best Experience: Laughing at the interaction between Gromit and his absent minded owner Wallace.

Biggest Complaint: The hint system got a little annoying at times, but overall not many complaints at all.

Will You Continue Playing: The other episodes I shall, and I would like to try it out on 360 to see if it plays different much with the controller and how the looks compare.

Final Thoughts:

Wallace and Gromit: Fright of the Bumblebees is a well done and entertaining adventure game that should give you 4-6 hours of entertainment depending on how used you are to this genre. The gameplay is fun, story entertaining, and makes me want to check out the animation series itself to see what I’ve been missing. The real key here on whether you will like this game or not lies in whether the point and click adventure games are for you. Check out the demo now on the PC or when it comes to XBLA soon.