Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees
Score: 88% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Telltale Games Developer: Telltale Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Telltale Games does it again, with yet another faithful rendition of an existing property. This time, the team takes on the Wallace & Gromit universe, and kicks it off with Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees. Like Telltale's past games, the art style does a great job re-creating the look and feel of the original license. This time, the company re-creates Aardman's distinct clay-mation style. Everything from the character's big eyes to the way the light reflects off of the clay texture and the way the various characters walk just feels like the TV show. Major props have to be given out for this because it just wouldn't be a Wallace & Gromit game if it weren't for that look. Heck, I don't believe the license's previous games got the look quite this well. Audio also hits the mark dead on. Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees seems to use the same voice actors as the animation studio's previous productions, so everyone in the universe (including the prominent duo) sound exactly like they should. At first, I was a little put off by the lip synching, but then I realized the lip synching was off in the same manner as the show itself.
Gameplay: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees puts you in the pants of that loveable absent-minded inventor and his dog. In this new adventure, the duo have started up a new venture and this time, they hope to get out of debt by starting a honey-making business. In standard Wallace & Gromit fare, Wallace gets an order that is a bit more than he can handle. A new customer has asked him to deliver 50 gallons of honey by nighttime, but since his bees haven't been fed, they aren't really in the mood to produce more than a single jar (too bad Wallace had that jar for breakfast). So Wallace is off looking for (or growing with a super formula) flowers in the most unlikely places and ways. The episode's story isn't overly complex, but there are a few different directions it goes and is a fun ride. Like most other aspects of this game, the story just seems like it could have been an episode of the show, so fans of the characters should definitely be pleased in this department.
Difficulty: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees is pretty straightforward and fits nicely into an hour or so's worth of gameplay because of it, which seems about right for an episodic series. Puzzles are presented in a logical manner, and there are only a few times when the solution seemed to come out of nowhere. The few times when the way to solve a problem took a bit of extra effort, it was typically because the answer was much more simple than I was expecting and stepping away from the game briefly caused me to see the solution pretty immediately. In the end, experienced adventure gamers will be able to plow through this episode a lot quicker than those who haven't played a lot from this genre.
Game Mechanics: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees's controls differ a bit from most adventure titles, even games that Telltale previously released. Most adventure titles use a point-and-click for everything. Not only do you use your mouse to grab and use objects, but also for navigation around the world. Typically, simply clicking on the area that you want to go causes your character to move to that area. Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures still uses the mouse for interacting with objects, but it uses the keyboard's WASD keys for navigation. While adventure gamers might find this a bit odd feeling at first, it doesn't take long to get used to, and because of this slight difference, it makes it really easy for the developers to support the Xbox 360 controller, which feels really good in this game. In the end, Wallace & Gromit looks like it provides the level of fan service that Telltale has been known to bring. The game's story has that wacky adventure feel that the show was known for, and the look of the game fits perfectly. So, if you are a fan of either Telltale Games, or the Wallace & Gromit franchise, than you owe it to yourself to give this new series a try.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP / Vista, 2.0 GHz Processor or better (3 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent recommended), 512MB RAM (1GB recommended), 310MB Hard Drive Space, 64MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card (128MB recommended), DirectX 8.1 sound device, DirectX Version 9.1 or better   Test System: Alienware Aurora m9700 Laptop, Windows XP Professional, AMD Turion 64 Mobile 2.41 GHz, 2 GB Ram, Duel NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB Video Cards, DirectX 9.0c
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