Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures is a crackin' good time

March 25, 9:19 AMPC Game ExaminerBryan Edge-Salois

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As usual, Wallace and Gromit's inventions seldom work
perfectly...

Telltale Games Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures is a charming, family-friendly romp sure to delight both Wallace and Gromit fans and adventure game fans.

The first episode, Fright of the Bumblees, pits our favorite cheese-loving, British inventor and his tirless canine companion in their latest venture to go into the honey business.

Unfortunately -- as is usually the case with Wallace and Gromit --  things don't go as smoothly as they'd hoped. It's up to you -- playing alternately as Wallace and Gromit -- to sort things out and get their honey business off to a jolly good start.

Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures is simple enough to play that adults and kids should both enjoy it. You control the protagonists by using the WSAD keys for movement and the mouse to interact with objects. Adults should find just enough challenge in the adventure game puzzles to keep the game interesting without lapsing into tedium, and kids will (well, my kids anyway) enjoy watching (and sometimes controlling)  the antics of Wallace and Gromit.

There are even a couple of very light 'action' type sequences to break up the pace a little, but the game never punishes you for failure or sends you back to a previously saved game, which is nice.

I would have appreciated it if the game made it easier to scroll through conversations more quickly (I can usually read faster than the characters are speaking), and I also would have enjoyed more freedom with the in-game camera to better explore Wallace and Gromit's world first hand. Aside from these minor quibbles, I have to mention that I did encounter more than a few bugs in the game --  and I'm not talking about the bees.

More than a few times the game simply behaved 'oddly' if I did something unexpected, or clicked too soon to exit a scene. None of these ever proved to be fatal (although one was close enough to scare me), but I encountered enough of them to make me think that the developers need to spend some time tinkering with their invention to get it working properly.

Hopefully, future installements will iron out these first-episode problems. The episode is fairly short at about 4-6 hours, but my kids and I are both eagerly looking forward to more episodes Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures. They're a crackin' good time. 

Visit Telltale Games home page for more info

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